Set Your Alarm: Black Friday 2012

Ever wonder when the best days to go holiday shopping are? What about which retail categories are going to do well this year? All this and more in our conversations with SBC’s retail experts. Check back often for more.

Matt Wilson, General Manager and Partner

Do you think consumers will shop differently this year compared to last?
Consumers are smarter this year. News coverage of the real math behind deals during the stretch from Black Friday to December 24th have demonstrated that earlier shopping in the year will net better values. And retailers should not fear “showrooming” as much as they have in the past. A new Deloitte survey found that smartphone use in a store actually increases the likelihood of customers purchasing items at that store. In fact, roughly half of consumers surveyed said that the use of their smartphone for comparison influenced their decision FOR the store, not against. However, a third of consumers are using a third-party app to do the comparison shopping and general product searches…which has created an arms race for retailers to develop their own “price matching” apps. Good luck!

Seek the Sales: Black Friday 2012

Ever wonder when the best days to go holiday shopping are? What about which retail categories are going to do well this year? All this and more in our conversations with SBC's retail experts. Check back often for more.

Matt Wilson, General Manager and Partner

How do you think the longer gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas will affect holiday shopping?
December will deliver one of the big pushes for major brick and mortar sales, as two December shopping weekends will be fed by pay periods (the 1st and 15th are Saturdays and consumers will be paid on the Friday prior), one additional weekend and a Monday prior to Christmas day (Tuesday, 12/25). We will also see an increase in in-store fundraising for the Red Cross and a push from the Salvation Army to support recovery and response efforts in the Northeast.

Black Friday By The Numbers

Black Friday, retail’s biggest shopping day, is fast approaching. You’ve heard predictions, favorite ads, and what has been successful from our retail experts. Now, you can check out the latest from SBC Advertising in visual form. Looking for opening hours for major retailers on the big day, how technology will be used and the impact of online shopping? It’s all there.

Brave the Crowds: Black Friday 2012

Ever wonder when the best days to go holiday shopping are? What about which retail categories are going to do well this year? All this and more in our conversations with SBC’s retail experts. Check back often for more.

Shawn Brown, VP/ Creative Services

What is your opinion on retailers opening doors on Thanksgiving night?

Just as it seems every year, the holidays come earlier and earlier in the retail world. We all saw many stores decked out in holiday fare on some level around October, and the influx of holiday toy catalogs started showing up at my home even earlier.

As most of us know, approximately 10 percent of holiday sales happen on Black Friday. Walmart has decided to hedge its bets a bit by opening the official start of the holiday shopping season even sooner. At 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night, Walmart will open the doors and invite holiday shoppers in with a plethora of savings and "Black Friday" specials. This will give Walmart a 4-hour head start over most of their competition, essentially creating a 28-hour Black Friday shopping day. 

Collect your Coupons: Black Friday 2012

Ever wonder when the best days to go holiday shopping are? What about what retail categories are going to do well this year? All this and more in our conversations with SBC’s retail experts. Check back often for more.

Becky Ziegler, VP/Account Director

How is the idea of Black Friday changing for consumers? For retailers?

As retailers continue to move their store opening hours up to Thanksgiving Day, the significance of a traditional Black Friday retail model will become less and less important. More consumers are shopping online (post-pie shopping!) and using retail stores to showroom rather than purchase. It’s still an important retail day but not nearly as important as five years ago. Consumers are getting much more sophisticated and they know and even talk about “showroom shopping.” 

Make Your Shopping Lists: Black Friday 2012

Ever wonder when the best days to go holiday shopping are? What about what retail categories are going to do well this year? All this and more in our conversations with SBC’s retail experts. Check back often for more.

Matt Wilson, General Manager and Partner

What are your expectations for online sales?

Internet holiday sales will push close to $40 billion for November 1 to December 26 from the similar period take of $35 billion in 2011 - I $5 billion increase or around 14 percent. FedEx and UPS, the key logistics providers for holiday sales, have reported that they predict holiday shipments will increase 13 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Pinning Power: Make the Most Out of Pinterest for Your Brand

By Lyndsay Thiebert, Interactive Copywriter

The latest social site in the spotlight is doing more than just attracting 10 million-plus users in its first two years. Pinterest is also building a strong — and valuable — reputation in the digital marketing world.

Because Pinterest, like most social media sites, allows brands to connect with and better understand their consumers, the added bonus is an incredibly high percentage of engagement. More than 80 percent of Pinterest pins are repinned or shared on another board, so retailers’ products or ideas are bound to reach a broader audience.

B2B Musings

By J. Scott Mylin, Creative Director

Ours is a curious business, staffed by curious people. As a writer, I think curiosity has more to do with creative success than just about anything—and that includes raw talent.
Recently, I had the opportunity to travel with Jim Livecchi (or just “Livecchi,” which is what everyone calls him) for a client presentation in Chicago. Livecchi heads up our SBC B2B Core. The meeting went great, the client loved the work, and as we were sitting in a Chili’s Too in O’hare waiting for our plane and drinking celebratory Arnold Palmers, we got to talking about the nature of B2B marketing.
As a curious creative, I find this kind of stuff interesting. Also, I enjoy getting Livecchi all worked up about a topic, because he gets really animated and gestures with vigor and it’s fun to watch.
I’m not so new to advertising, and have worked on a bunch of B2B brands in my career, but he said a few things that made me think that just about everything most people think they know about B2B marketing is horseshit.
He said stuff like this: “People say all the time that they get B2B selling-based marketing, but what they really are describing is some functional or operational aspect of a transaction path, which is like a fraction of what actually drives B2B sales.”

Turning the Spotlight on Your Brand

Have you ever noticed more branded products in your favorite TV shows? Well, you should. According to Nielsen during the first quarter of 2011, researchers measured more than 5,000 product placements during primetime shows on major network and cable stations. Some might think these placements cost millions of dollars—some do and some don’t.

For the sake of this post, let’s focus on those that don’t have to cost millions of dollars. We conduct dozens of earned product placement campaigns for our clients that result in these primetime placements for a fraction of the cost of a paid placement. The cost is contained to a product donation and our time to pitch and coordinate the placement. How do we do this? Relationships, relationships, relationships. It’s all about who you know and how you can help fulfill their need-whether it is outfitting Mike Holmes’ crew with tools for accomplishing the projects on Holmes on Homes or coordinating the installation of a garage door on Desperate Landscapes in Minneapolis, Minnesota to show a homeowner the value of curb appeal.

The key to a successful earned product placement campaign is ensuring you have a sound process for evaluating and fulfilling each of these requests to maximize the impact a placement has on your internal and external audiences. Our process isn’t rocket science, but it does capitalize on the insights we have gained over the past five years of successful product placement campaigns. These insights include keeping in touch with producers as they advance from one production house to another, as well as understanding the audience of their show and demonstrating how our clients can provide a solution to their viewers. The steps of our process are:

• Research and discovery: thoughtfully review the viewer demographics, content and tone of a show compared to your target audience to prove compatibility. Our knowledge of production schedules is key to this step in the process, as lead times for product selection are often 3-6 months in advance of the show airing.
• Pitch development: demonstrate how the product is the right fit with the current production needs
• Request fulfillment: respond quickly and efficiently to the request and manage expectations with the production house
• Follow up and post-placement merchandising: keep in touch with the producer and put a plan in place for maximizing the coverage with target audiences

One thing that many people don’t realize is that these production companies are pitching their shows to the networks, in similar fashion to your PR firm pitching products to media outlets. Once a show gets the “green light” from the network, there is a frenetic pace for coordinating talent, shoot locations, production logistics…and of course, selecting products to fit in the context of the show. Simply put, “time is money” for these production companies – and our process saves them a lot of time – and money. Because the value proposition for our process is so tangible for the production companies, once we earn one placement, we typically get on the coveted “speed dial” list for more opportunities on even more programs.

Just one of these highly coveted placements can result in several million impressions with average ad values of more than $25,000. However, there is an often overlooked value with these placements – and that is the ability to strategically share them with your internal and external audiences. We’ve helped a lot of our clients to extend these placements into fun viewing events with their associates, local market promotions with their dealer/installer networks and plenty of great trade PR opportunities to drive increased sales traffic to dealer or retailer partners.

If earned product placement is not a part of your current public relations program, why not? It’s always exciting to set your DVR to capture your on-screen moments!

Creating A Valuable User Experience

By Kaylyn Bredon, Senior Interactive Designer/UX Specialist

The UX shift

It used to say a lot about your brand if you had any sort of web presence. But now, the world is changing. Today’s web content is infinite—everyone has a website, a subsequent mobile version and there are more apps than we will ever know what to do with. With all these choices, people are flocking to places that provide the best user experience, whether it's to places that make them feel good or to brands that provide them value.

At the South by Southwest festival this year, conversation around the user experience was at the forefront of many discussions. That's because, in the ad world, the campaigns and tools that are resonating the most, are all about the user. They meet the most basic needs, such as functionality working all the way up to delightfully surprising the user with unpretentious amusement.

For retailers, embracing the shift to making the user experience central (or the UX Shift) will result in: increased brand loyalty, repeat transactions, and deeper consumer insight that feeds future brand strategies.

Geo-targeting Consumers: The Potential And The Pitfalls

By Joe Sano, Director, Interactive Services
Marketers and retailers have been grappling with how to best capitalize on “organic” foot traffic near their stores for decades. “The heavy lifting is done! All I need to do is get them in the door!”

Enter geo-targeting (and its other contextually-aware brethren).

The term “geo-targeting” has been around a while, and it’s been used fairly primitively for a number of years. And, by primitive, I mean clunky and/or irrelevant.

But, recent advances in mobile tech have presented some pretty compelling, sophisticated and (surprisingly) user-friendly options that marketers should take notice of. Coincidentally, this is also the reason they were the focus of a LOT of conversation at this year’s South by Southwest.

The importance of adaptation: Evolving agencies

By Steve Agganis, VP Interactive

SXSW is a great place to learn about the existing and upcoming opportunities in the technology/interactive space.  In that regard, the conference is an absolute must and I believe continues to be highly relevant for all marketers. Technology will present itself, apps will emerge and Austin will continue to be weird.

You may have read or heard that this was the year that SXSW “jumped the shark” and was no longer “cool.”

I heard this myself while I was there. And, after a few days, I started to believe that the reason many vets likely felt it wasn’t as “cool” was because marketers have changed the questions they’re asking when presented with new technology.

Re-thinking the in-store experience

By David Smith, Senior Interactive Strategist

In recent months there has been a lot of chatter about the future of brick and mortar retailers. Price-slashing and cost-cutting by online-only retailers, primarily Amazon, has created a shopping environment that encourages consumers to “shop” in store, but buy online.

At SXSW this year, an extensive discussion revolved around this very topic. Here’s our take on the discussion.

Make shopping an experience again

Will most traditional retailers ever be able to compete with the low-overhead, high-volume model of the Amazons of the world? Probably not. But, should they even try?

Four different perspectives from the 2012 SXSW festival

For a week each year, Austin, Texas becomes the center of the tech universe as it plays host to an industry festival that has become unrivaled in terms of size and scope – South by Southwest.

This year’s SXSW was about ‘why.’ Why would a user engage with my product? Why would this experience I’m building inspire someone to make a purchase? Why would a user come back and continue to engage with my brand?

SBC Advertising sent four team members from our interactive team to this year’s festival: Steve Agganis, VP, Interactive Services; Kaylyn Bredon, Senior Interactive Designer, UX Specialist; Joe Sano, Director, Interactive Services; and David Smith, Senior Interactive Strategist.

Dispatches from the Future of Retail: GlobalShop 2012

By Matt Wilson, SBC General Manager

It’s the first week of March, and I’m out in Las Vegas attending GlobalShop 2012, the largest store design and at-retail marketing show in the United States.

DAY 1: Solving the in-store problems of today with the tools of tomorrow

GlobalShop is really two shows in one. Show One: Fixtures, store visualization, display systems, and data systems. Show Two: The Future. What was futuristic last year is now a reality.

Here are a few developments from this year’s show, with more coming at the conclusion.

Super Bowl Post Game Report 3.0

For the final installment of our post-Super Bowl advertising commentary, we’ve asked SBC Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer Neil Widerschein as well as Public Relations Management Supervisor Krista Hazen to weigh in on the big game’s successes and failures.

As time passes, the wacky or well-produced ads aren’t always the winners. Success is about consumers engaging with brands, something Neil, Krista, and all of us at SBC know a thing or two about.

Neil Widerschein, Executive Vice President, Chief Creative OfficerMost effective: Who won your vote for best ad of the night? What made it so effective?
I really liked the Acura NSX spot, although we had all obviously seen the long version before the game. The entire message was rooted in the idea of getting on a list to get a really cool sports car, which makes it inherently interesting to that segment of the market (Jerry Seinfeld types come to mind), so the celebrity tie-in with Seinfeld and Leno isn’t gratuitous. Plus, I never knew there was a super-secret celebrity zip line in New York (but always suspected), so I learned something. Always a positive.

Final Score :: Social Media Recap

So who were the real winners among Super Bowl advertisers? The immediacy and measurability of social media have redefined the metrics. This chart shows the results of the USA Today Super Bowl AdMeter voting, along with analysis published by AdAge of the volume of online chatter created by each spot. Kudos to the brands that did well on both lists.

Super Bowl Post-Game Report 2.0

The Super Bowl commercials are still at the top of our minds at SBC Advertising. For our post-game ad report, we asked SBCers to comment on which ads were touchdowns and which were groan-worthy fumbles.

A funny or well-made commercial isn’t always effective in engaging consumers. In this edition, members of our interactive team take on the ads – from a strategic point of view.

Read their retail-driven insights and be sure to check back for more updates in our continuing Super Bowl series.

David Smith, Senior Interactive Strategist

Most effective: Who won your vote for best ad of the night? What made it so effective?

Chevy Silverado’s “2012”. To me, this was the clear-cut winner for a number of reasons:

1.       The creative was strong – big budgets and some witty pop culture references (can you say “Twinkies?”) kept the spot entertaining

2.       The brand’s attitude came through – Chevy believes in its product enough to come out and challenge Ford in an extremely visible way. I like that.

3.       The digital integration was excellent – from in-app integration to promoted tweets displaying simultaneously to the spot airing, the multi-screen planning was very smart here. The only thing that surprised me was pointing to chevy.com instead of a Twitter hashtag.

Super Bowl 2012 Post-Game Report

It’s time to review the tapes, so to speak. For our post-game ad report, we asked SBCers to comment on which commercials were touchdowns and which were groan-worthy fumbles.

Read their retail-driven insights and be sure to check back for more updates in our continuing Super Bowl series.

Matt Wilson, Executive Vice President/General Manager

Most effective: Who won your vote for best ad of the night? What made it so effective?
I liked Clint Eastwood in the “second half” spot – thought it set the correct tone to continue their Imported from Detroit campaign. Though, Chrysler is a company being turned around by an Italian from Fiat.

Least effective: Which ad(s) do you think will be left forgotten? What was the biggest missed opportunity? 

GoDaddy’s ads are no longer “tit” a lating. Danika Patrick is sensuous, but I don’t feel like I want to see her naked as the spot suggests. It’s cool that they are promoting the cloud though. 

First Super Bowl app: Did Chevy set a new standard for Super Bowl advertising with the first game time app? Did you download?
No. Plus, for the flying car gig I was expecting George Jetson.

 

Becky Ziegler, Vice President/Account Director

Most effective: Who won your vote for best ad of the night? What made it so effective?

Several of the new product launch ads worked really well – Bud Light Premium – thought those ads were really well done. The new Acura spots with Seinfeld. I really believe that this is the most effective use of Super Bowl advertising in general – to launch newsworthy new products. I also very much enjoyed the Budweiser “Eternal Optimism” spot that showed Budweiser through the years – thought it was well done with a great soundtrack. 

Least effective: Which ad(s) do you think will be left forgotten? What was the biggest missed opportunity? 

I thought the Chevy truck “2012” end of the world spot was predictable and the talent/writing was weak. I also thought that the TaxACT spot, “Feel the Free,” with the boy in the pool was boring.

Which brand had the best use of social media integration? Why did it work? 

I liked the Bud Light “Rescue Dog” spot’s Facebook integration – they only have 19,000 fans on FB, but I think that’s still a worthy cause. The Coke Polar Bears were also very deeply integrated with social media – and the creative changes throughout the game were really cool.

Jim White, Vice President, Media

Most effective: Who won your vote for best ad of the night? What made it so effective?

Bridgestone Tires. The bottom line is to get people to engage with your brand. I thought their commercials were clever and funny but most of all I remember them. I now refuse to buy any tires except Bridgestone’s. 

How well did pre-game hype (for ads) live up to the actual results?

The expectations are set so high that the results get tainted in the public eye. 

Super Bowl 2012 4.0

Today’s the big day.

For the fourth installment of our pre-Super Bowl advertising commentary, we’ve asked SBC Executive Vice President and Chief Creative Officer Neil Widerschein to weigh in on past ads as well as to see what’s got him excited for today’s game.

After all, connecting brands with consumers is what Neil, and all of us at SBC, does for a living. And, let's face it, the Super Bowl is all about getting consumers to connect with brands, with a little football thrown in for good measure.

Be sure to check in with us during the game for more color commentary and insights on the ads by checking out our Facebook page and following the Twitter hashtag #SBCsbads. And don’t forget that you can join the conversation too.

Neil Widerschein, Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer

What has been your favorite commercial of all time? Why did it work?

There have been so many great spots it’s really hard to pick a favorite. But I think mine would probably be the Fedex Caveman spot. It’s the simple, funny story of how Fedex can help you succeed (or epically fail) in the business world, when so much is unfairly beyond your control. The usual formula for a Super Bowl spot seems to be babies, cute animals, and/or celebs. This is definitely not that.

Which advertiser are you most looking forward to and why?

I’m really looking forward to two (mostly because they haven’t released much yet). One is Doritos, but not because of the spots. Their real genius is the strategy. They leverage the power of the Super Bowl months in advance to engage the nation in their brand through crowd-sourced creative and national voting.  And they extend the engagement long after the game. The other is Anheuser-Busch because they bought four-and-a-half minutes and have the experience, money and inclination to blow everybody else away.

What are you tired of seeing in Super Bowl advertisements? Why does/doesn’t it work? Do you expect it to show up again this year?

Movie studio promos. I’m sure they’ve done the metrics and have found the investment works (at least I hope so), but standard movie promos in an environment of such creativity seems odd. It’s especially odd when you consider that studios are selling a creative product without any creativity. I get that they’re just in it for the audience size, but it has to feel kind of awkward to always be at the bottom of the rankings.

This year there are more first-time Super Bowl advertisers than ever. Who were you surprised to see in the lineup?

Century 21. Given the state of the housing market, it’s impressive that a real estate company is stepping up. Sure, it’s branding 101 – invest when things are at their worst – but it takes a really forward-thinking marketing and management group to actually do it. Regardless of how their effort fares in the inevitable ratings, give them credit for smarts.

This year, Chevy is introducing a Super Bowl app for smartphones and tablets. The game time app, available in the Android Market, Apple's App Store and at chevy.com/gametime, will award thousands of prizes to viewers using the app during the game. Will you download?

I like prizes. Of course I’ll download it. And I think it’s a great example of leveraging the power of social networks and multi-screen platforms to dramatically increase the value of the investment. But I think the Mayan “Apocalypse” spot is silly, except for the Twinkies at the end. That was amusing. But is the last thought you want in your truck spot … a soft Twinkie? Hummer did an end-of-the-world spot awhile back that was funnier.

The Chevy Sonic “Anthem” spot has some amazing stunts and is clearly aimed at younger drivers. But again, Chevy struggles with the ending – an older guy delivers the “Chevy Runs Deep” line at the end. Yes, it’s their brand standard, but maybe just let it happen graphically in something aimed so young.

Volkswagen debuted its Darth Vader commercial prior to the 2011 Super Bowl and ended up being one of the most talked about ads of the night. This year, it released a teaser and then the full commercial. What are your thoughts on the strategy? Do you think it will work again?

The Vader spot worked because it was such a surprisingly simple and beautiful story and subtly makes the car part of the family. It’s probably impossible to repeat that because the surprise factor is gone. Their “The Bark Side” teaser is really fun and you can watch it over and over. The actual VW Beetle Spot that will run is, of course, really well done. The charming dog taking control of his weight as a set-up to introduce the new slimmed-down Beetle keeps you in it. But it’s the self-referential appearance of Darth at the end that got me. Didn’t see it coming and I loved it.