Fiat is Chrysler LLC's fastest-growing brand, but a couple of years ago it experienced serious problems getting off the ground. A big piece of that was awareness among a younger, creative, urban crowd of people fitting the Cinquecento target. At the second day of Ad:Tech in New York, Esperansita Bejnarowicz, social media manager at Fiat USA, and Tony Mennuto, creative director at RadioFace (the creative services company behind FIAT's late-2011 custom branding strategy), talked about how late last year, the car brand grabbed this younger cohort's attention with an integrated, digital-focused campaign centered on a series of live storytelling events. Ad:tech branded content panel moderator Avi Savar, chairman and CCO of Big Fuel, set the tone. "It's about how we leverage content to drive social at scale. We believe content is the fuel that drives engagement and conversation: act like a publisher, not a brand; lead with people stories, not product stories; create content at the speed of culture to build and grow the brand network." "Alternate Routes: The FIAT Storytelling Series" was created, developed and produced by creative services company RadioFace, and utilized a radio drive-time buy as part of the campaign's implementation. The shows, under Fiat's "Life is Best when Driven" umbrella, were filmed in front of live audiences, generating long-form video, plus long radio spots on CBS radio in five major markets over eight weeks. The purpose of the ads: not so much to tout Fiat as to drive consumers online to watch the shows and learn about the brand. Thia was achieved because the radio spots were cliffhangers, said Bejnarowicz. The video content, meanwhile, was on Fiat's Facebook page. "So we mirrored the experience in the social space following the CBS radio flighting, and we also weaved in content and stories to CBS.com." The results, she said, were over 76 million impressions over the eight weeks, with 29 million impressions online, with videos -- eight to ten minutes -- being viewed 440,000 times. "That's 59,000 hours of content consumed, which drove nearly 7,000 people to interact with the configuration and shipping too on Fiat-USA.com." One takeaway, Mennuto said, is to "try to make your content as good as -- or better than -- the content around it; that's what we learned. Make sure your content organically fits with the brand. Real content, like stories, engages."
In the midst of one of retailing’s biggest makeover experiments, J.C. Penney released disappointing third-quarter results, including a net loss of $123 million, with total sales falling 27% to $2.93 billion for the quarter. On a same-store basis, sales dropped 26.1% for the quarter. And Internet sales tumbled 37% to $214 million. While the Plano, Tex.-based retailer has gotten attention for stylish new marketing efforts and plans to create more exciting shops-within-shops, featuring such brands as Levi’s, Izod and Liz Claiborne, the company’s stock has been pummeled as industry experts have criticized the company’s back-and-forth positioning on promotions as confusing. In its release, CEO Ron Johnson urged investors to look past the quarter’s declines and see the bigger picture, calling JCP “the tale of two companies. By far the largest part of our store is the old jcpenney, which continues to struggle and experience significant challenges as evidenced by our third-quarter results. However, the new jcp, centered around the shop concept, is gaining traction with customers every day and is surpassing our own expectations in terms of sales productivity which continues to give us confidence in our long-term business model." Meanwhile, at Kohl’s, JCP’s most direct competitor, net income climbed to $215 million from $211 million a year ago, while net sales advanced 2.6% to $4.5 billion for the quarter. (Same-store sales for the quarter inched up 1.1%.) The company says the results are in line with its expectations, and that it is well-positioned for the holiday. “We have made noticeable investments in Holiday inventory -- both in depth and content -- and the in-store experience,” Kevin Mansell, CEO of the Menomonee Falls, Wisc.-based chain, says in its release. “Our stores are festive and fun to shop. We are also very excited about our expanded gift strategy and our ability to offer great products at great values." And Nordstrom put up strong numbers for its third quarter, with net earnings reaching $146 million, a 15% bump. Sales grew by 14% to $2.71 billion, with same-store sales improving 10.7%. The Seattle-based chain says men’s shoes, men’s clothing and kids’ apparel were its best performers this quarter.
Jeremiah Knight, group account director of digital at Lexus' AOR, Team One, is heading up major changes in Lexus' online position, including a redesign of the lexus.com. At the core of the changes are customer service, scalability, simplicity and engagement, he explains. Knight tells Marketing Daily that the kind of work he's doing for the luxury auto brand would not be possible if digital were siloed at the agency -- so all interactions with marketers were secondhand. "The result of that is an artificial understanding of a client's problems," he says. "At Team One, where I've had an opportunity to grow my own team for Lexus, we have been able to do amazing fundamentals work." He says having a direct line to marketers helps put a lid on the tendency among digital planners and developers to do technology because it's new, and maybe aesthetically cool. "It's less technology for the sake of technology and more of a focus on real consumer-centric utility, which I admit is a word that kind of has a negative connotation; but if you look at what people most often want, it's utility. The most beautiful executions have great utility." That philosophy, he says, is central to Team One's "perpetual-data kaizen" philosophy [kaizen is a Japanese term for constant improvement in product and production]. The goal, through a rolling upgrade of Lexus.com, is to make it easier for consumers to digest information, and to make the template viable on all screens. "The older template was very text-heavy and tab-focused, and was not therefore designed for ingestion on smartphones or mobile, and it wasn't 'future proof' in terms of new devices," he says. "We were interested in responsive design." That means one template one server instantly scalable to any screen versus the redundant labor-intensive practice of doing multiple templates for multiple devices, he explains. "If you go to a small-aspect ratio like a smartphone, responsive design means the experience changes. You publish once and make it scalable." Knight says another focus at lexus.com is easy-to-share content. "Our responsibility at the page level is enabling that behavior partly by [focusing on] bite-sized social content, including videos and photos." The idea is that if someone wants to show a friend a photo of, say, a Lexus ES, they don't have to send the entire page or URL, but can extract just the photo. "That content should be unlockable and shareable."
With the holiday shopping season being one of the most important times for electronics and telecommunications sales, Chad -- the long-running spokescharacter for Alltel -- returns in a holiday campaign to pitch Santa on the benefits of saving money on one’s wireless bills. In a new television spot from agency Campbell-Ewald in Warren, Mich., Chad squares off against a red-shirted Verizon Wireless representative, with each trying to woo Santa to their wireless network. The Verizon salesperson unloads a litany of features, such as checking one’s Facebook status, post to Twitter and access Google Maps. (He does, unfortunately, begin the pitch with the line, “Check it, Tubby.”) After the pitch, Chad responds that Alltel offers the same features, “except you can save hundreds of dollars a year.” The spot ends with Santa throwing the Verizon Wireless salesman out of his North Pole home. “[The spot] is based around the simple phrase, “Switch to Alltel. Save Hundreds,” Mark Simon, chief creative officer at Campbell-Ewald, tells Marketing Daily. “The holidays are a time when people are trying to save money and that wireless sales go up. And Santa, just like everyone one else, wants to save money.” The blond, affable Chad has been a spokescharacter for Alltel since 2005, having appeared first in commercials that had representations of competitors’ mascots before facing off against salespeople representing different brands (AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile). (A few years ago, Chad and his nemeses were stop-motion animated for a holiday spot.) “We try to do new things with Chad, and we try to put him in different situations,” says Scott Moody, Alltel’s vice president of marketing and advertising. “We’re trying to introduce a little bit more humor and edge to chad to keep him fresh. [But] he’s still the straight guy who’s providing value to customers and the overall embodiment.” In this most recent commercial, Chad faces off against only one representative because Verizon is often Alltel’s main competitor in the “C and D” counties where Alltel provides most of its service, Simon says.
Harley-Davidson is continuing its tradition of honoring United States military veterans throughout the month of November. The program, now in its fourth year, focuses this year on raising awareness of DAV (Disabled American Veterans) and the Harley's Heroes program through a national video campaign spotlighting two veterans who have benefited from the program. Troy Torgerson of Wausau, Wisc., and Nick Bernardi of Newark, N.J., both served in Iraq and sought help from the DAV upon their return home. Their videos can be viewed at www.harley-davidson.com/military. The company’s relationship with the U.S. military dates back almost 100 years. More than one-third of Harley-Davidson customers are veterans of the armed forces, and approximately 15% of all Harley-Davidson employees are veterans. In recent years, in addition to the Harley's Heroes program, Harley-Davidson has paid tribute to the nation's veterans through donations made to the World War II Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Harley's Heroes brings DAV mobile service offices to Harley-Davidson dealerships throughout the country on more than 200 days out of the year, bringing services directly to where veterans live. DAV National Service Officers, all of whom are disabled veterans themselves, help veterans understand and apply for the benefits available, including medical treatment, disability compensation, insurance, home loans, continued education and training, and more. Veterans get help navigating the process of applying for and securing the benefits to which they are entitled through the Veterans Administration. Last year, Harley's Heroes helped the nation's heroes claim tens of millions of dollars in earned benefits. Harley-Davidson has provided $2 million in grants to the DAV over the past five years. DAV MSOs visit over 800 U.S. locations each year and serve more than 18,000 veterans per year through this program. "Through these veterans' stories, we're hoping to inspire other veterans by showing them the positive impact DAV can have, as well as motivate them to pursue the benefits they deserve," said Mike McCann, director of core consumer marketing at Harley-Davidson, in a release. "The services the DAV provides all across the country day in and day out are vital to helping injured veterans move onward with their lives, and we're proud to support their efforts with the Harley's Heroes program."
The prosecution rests. For some years now, I have been arguing that advertising is losing its primacy in marketing. This is for a host of reasons, almost all of them arising from digital revolution. In dozens of articles, in hundreds of speaking dates around the world, in a previous book and now in a forthcoming one, I have explored the loss of reach, the loss of attention and above all the loss of trust converging to undermine paid messaging. It should now be blindingly obvious to every marketer, and to more evolved bipeds, that nothing that comes out of the mouth of a brand or any other institution has remotely the influence of what comes from the mouths of 7 billion bystanders freely trading opinions online. It now matters very little what you have to say about yourself via slogan, bombastic 30-second spot or pathetically unviral “viral” video. What matters is what the public has to say about you -- based on who the public believes you really are. Which, once again, does not flow from your positioning or your strategy or your tagline. It flows from the brand self you project by all you do, and don’t do, in the actual world. Or put another way, if people don’t like you, they are no longer eager to do business with you. And in a socially mediated world, not to mention a world of enforced transparency wherein your every move is searchable on Google in perpetuity, you can no longer advertise your way into their wallets, much less their hearts. As I say, the evidence for these assertions will be cited chapter and verse this spring when Can’t Buy Me Like finally materializes. But -- know what? -- no need to wait. We have just experienced the mother of all case histories. It came a week ago, and you probably noticed, because it was in all the papers. The presidential election was an electoral drubbing for the Romney campaign, a repudiation for the Republican Party, a humiliation for Karl Rove and his American Crossroads superPACS and a lethal blow to the notion of advertising persuasion. For the past nine months, advertising has intruded, advertising has thundered, advertising has invented, advertising has lied, advertising has smeared, advertising has pleaded, advertising has metastasized. There is no evidence, based on Tuesday results, however, that it influenced a blessed thing. Persuade? Yes, particularly in the so-called battleground states such as Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Colorado, it persuaded people to tune out advertising. Not a hard deal to close, that. Let's look at the impact of the $408 million of superPAC money spent on behalf of Gov. Romney and other Republican candidates, according to the final tabulations of the Sunlight Foundation. Remember how the idiotic Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court (the one that called political spending protected speech) was going to place our fate in the hands of corporations and other special interests? Well, not so far. They foolishly spent the money on attack ads. The Romney-affiliated Restore Our Future Inc. alone spent $143 million. Rove’s American Crossroads, $105 million. (Meanwhile, superPACS affiliated with the Democrats, chiefly Priorities USA Action, spent a combined $196 million.) Rove’s superPACS poured cash not only into the failed Romney candidacy but eight Senate races. Six out of eight of those seats went to Democrats. In all, the Dems gained a net two Senate seats and most likely seven in the House. Crossroads, indeed. The real crossroads here was the demographic reality of 2012 America. The GOP tried to talk to young voters, women, African-Americans (in one unintentionally hilarious spot, we were reminded that Lincoln was the Republican who ended slavery) and especially Latinos. But those messages didn’t resonate, because the Republican candidates’ body language -- including their political histories and astonishing gaffes (“legitimate rape”) -- belied the claims. It’s hard to persuade Ohio autoworkers that you are a jobs creator when you agitated to bankrupt Detroit. And it’s impossible to reach out to Latinos when you first ask them to provide their documents. We are now and forevermore in the Relationship Era. What the GOP proved, and what all marketers must at long last internalize, is that you can’t advertise yourself out of a bad relationship.