So turns out you’re not the only one amazed at how much more you know about products than the average sales associate in a smock: A new poll from Motorola finds that 61% of retail managers think so, too. Last year, 59% agreed that consumers are typically better connected to product information than their in-store associates. Shoppers second that, with the feeling strongest among Gen Y (46%), followed by Gen X (38%) and roughly a third of Baby Boomers. And just-released research from SapientNitro reveals that 70% of shoppers wish retailers would do more to enhance the in-store experience with technology, including allowing them to buy in store but have products shipped home for free, which 79% would like; free Wi-Fi (63%); and interactive displays or kiosks (57%). Smartphone users would also like to see promotional store circulars on their phones (56%) and in store navigation devices (59%). The survey also reveals that that majority -- 51%--are “showrooming.” This holiday season, 33% of digital users have first gone into a store to investigate an item, with the idea of buying it later online. And 40% -- up from 33% last year -- say they have gone into a store after researching the product online, while 27% bought a product online after shopping for a similar item in a store. Interestingly, the survey also found that while consumers want more shopping in their lives, 62% wish stores wouldn’t open earlier on Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, forecasters are pulling back a bit on earlier holiday spending forecasts. ShopperTrak, which tracks mall traffic and sales, says it is lowering its prediction to a sales gain of 2.5% this season, down from 3.3% projected in September. While the company still anticipates a 2.8% gain in foot traffic, the first increase since 2008, it says it is lowering the estimate based on the amount of heavily-discounted merchandise, as well as the lingering effects of Hurricane Sandy.
Given the frequency and share-of-wallet owned by grocery retailers, this retail segment is on the front lines when it comes to the impacts of changing consumer behavior and expectations. And grocery retailers, facing commoditization and intense cross-channel competition, early on grasped that delivering the right experiences to their shoppers is a critical differentiator and highly effective strategy for growing their top lines and maintaining margins, according to a new PwC report, “Experience Radar 2013: Lessons from the U.S. Grocery Industry.” Grocery is the testing ground or learning place “for all industries to figure out how to use meaningful experiences to create a path to loyalty and price premiums,” says Paul D’Alessandro, U.S. customer impact leader for PwC. “Smart grocery retailers are exploiting the hard economics of experience.” Specifically, leaders in this retail sector are investing in experience initiatives that produce immediate returns, but also in initiatives that yield financial returns over time by ensuring positive, accumulative experiences that build loyalty, differentiation and willingness to pay more for that retail experience, D’Alessandro tells Marketing Daily. The key to successfully leveraging experience, says PwC, is understanding what really matters to specific consumer segments -- segments defined not just in traditional demographic and geographic terms, but by the experience features that they most value, their social demographics and their behavioral profiles. That’s the premise of PwC’s Experience Radar offering, based on a series of studies that measure the experiences of U.S. consumers (about 6,000, this year) across multiple industries. In basic terms, the service identifies and ranks what experiential elements are valued most by specific segments within a given industry, which elements they’re willing to pay for, and which trigger loyalty or its reverse, “churn.” Different consumer segments have different “recipes” for experience, and one of the biggest mistakes a retailer can make is “over-investment in areas not part of the ‘recipes’ of their customer bases,” maintains D’Alessandro. “Investment must be focused on what your customers want, need and truly value.” In the grocery sector, PwC identifies four distinct consumer experience profiles: experiential, traditional, mindful and frugal. But other retailers, and consumer product makers, stand to benefit from understanding two sets of core learnings from the grocery industry, PwC says. First, the five core attributes of the grocery customer experience are quality (performance and value received); support (friendliness and ease of obtaining help); convenience (including ready, anytime access); presentation (aesthetics, arrangement of offer); and community (customer’s personal brand and connections with others). Second, the report defines the five areas of focus that have been shown to enhance customer experience and create value in the grocery environment: *Make it fast: Convenience matters – in fact, it’s the second most important influencer of purchase among grocery shoppers (28% of grocery customers report that they purchase based on convenience, while 37% report purchasing based on price). And in grocery stores, convenience first and foremost mean short checkout times. Fast checkout times account for 30% of “memorable great experiences,” according to PwC. In addition to ensuring adequate checkout staffing, retailers need to inform customers about checkout times and wait times, and enhance convenience with mobile checkouts and coupons that let shoppers check out on their own via smartphone apps and staff handheld devices, says PwC. *‘Emotionalize’ shopping: Creating relationships with customers by evoking positive emotions based on what they care about. Consumers embrace brands that reinforce their lifestyles, says PwC. For example, retailers that offer expanded organic and sustainable products are attracting the rapidly growing number of consumers willing to pay a premium for such products. Also, with 10% of premium customers willing to pay for a storewide discount loyalty program, investing in robust loyalty programs is essential. But there’s a critical codicil: Reward programs must be targeted and carefully designed. “These programs and the customer data they yield should be used to understand exactly what the experience ‘recipes’ of a retailer’s core customer segments are,” in order to maximize spending and retention among loyal customers, and to attract new customers or increase the shopping frequency of infrequent shoppers at a specific retailer, says D’Alessandro. Loyalty programs that indiscriminately offer loyal customers coupons or promotions on items that those shoppers likely would have purchased at the store anyway can end up “giving money away,” adds John Greener, managing director of PwC’s U.S. Retail and Consumer Sector. *Balance high-tech with high touch: Promotions and tech draw customers, but staff quality is the most important factor in determining grocery retailer preference (as opposed to “purchasing influencers”). Staff quality influences where customers shop one-third of the time, reports PwC. Grocery shoppers highly value employees who are polite, helpful and efficient and deliver “engaging experiences.” While high-tech self-checkouts are essential, some customers feel more at ease with conventional methods, and will pay a premium for attendant checkout to avoid technology difficulties. *Avoid ‘spoil’ (bad customer experiences): More than two-thirds of shoppers report having had bad experiences of some kind at a grocery retailer (disappointing service, products, cleanliness of store, etc.) – and two in five never return after a bad experience. Many don’t provide feedback to their grocers, but are quick to warn their social networks. PwC stresses the importance of incentivizing customers to provide direct feedback, as well as creating a vigorous social media strategy to “listen hard” to customers, and implementing systems to quickly resolve issues. Retailers should have a thorough, well-promoted “service recovery strategy” that includes a “catch-all” returns policy. *Empower customers to make satisfying choices: While 20% of shoppers rank product selection as a top purchasing driver, consumers are also confused by extensive assortments, inundated with product information, and seeking ways to make easier shopping decisions. For instance, growing numbers are willing to invest in ‘green’ products, but frustrated by how to determine the true sustainability value of products making such claims, notes D’Alessandro. Retailer solutions: Investing in labeling programs that help customers cut through the clutter of conflicting information; establishing your retail brand as a trusted, go-to resource by offering recipes, nutrition tips and advice to create stronger relationships; and offering new-product samples in-store to let customers try them with no risk, as well as making it easy for customers to return new products if they’re dissatisfied. The full report can be downloaded from PwC’s U.S. retail site.
Last month, Dodge, Chevrolet, and Ford came out on top in the ad awareness wars, according to YouGov Brand Index. The firm bases the ranking on a daily poll of 5,000 per weekday via online panel meant to be demographically representative of the national population. Dodge launched the "New Rules" campaign for the 2013 Dart in July, and the campaign, which featured JayZ and Kanye West, and which Dodge has sustained with new ads over the ensuing months, has been a huge awareness builder for the Chrysler, LLC brand. Giving a boost to the brand last month were a trio of ads: “How to Test Your Car for Fun,” “How to Make a Great Car Interior” and “How to Make a Car for an Unsafe World,” per the firm, which says 39% of U.S. car shoppers affirm that they have seen ads for the brand. Second place is a three-way tie between Chevrolet, Ford and Lexus at 36% awareness. For Chevrolet, the awareness boost came from its partnerships with Live Nation around its Sonic subcompact vehicle, and with dailybreak.com social media push that offered a chance to win a new Cruze, Sonic or Spark. Parenthetically, the brand has been playing in the Comic-Con sandbox, with painted Sonics featured at the animation convention series. As for the blue oval, a new 360-degree African-America-directed campaign for the Fusion sedan matched Chevrolet's awareness level. The spot, also on the general market, features Andre Royo of HBO’s “The Wire” who uses a faux laser gun to shape a clay model of the car into the real thing. Rounding out the three-way tie with Chevrolet and Ford is Lexus; Toyota got 33% awareness; in another three-way were General Motors' four brands together, Volkswagen, and Dodge sibling Fiat; next was Mercedes Benz at 27%, and Honda at 26%.
With more products, features and services being developed all the time, Time Warner Cable has launched a new ad campaign bent on educating its customers on all that they have to offer. “We have so many features and functionality and things that we provide to our customers that we felt like we needed to get out,” Jeffrey Hirsch, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of residential services for TWC, tells Marketing Daily. “There are some people who knew about all the stuff, there are a lot of people who don’t know about the things, and there’s a lot of new things we added this year that we wanted to talk about.” The new campaign, called “Did You Know,” features one of the company’s products or services combined with a somewhat related factoid for a humorous break. One commercial tells of people using TWC’s on-demand service to catch up on television shows for free, while also sharing that Americans eat enough popcorn in a year to fill the Empire State Building 18 times over. “That should be enough to cover your shows,” says a British-tinged voiceover. Other features showcased in the campaign include online account management (coupled with a fact about Neptune’s distance from Earth) scheduling and the increasing presence of WiFi hotspots (coupled with a factoid about the number of volcanoes erupting at that very moment). “We felt it was a good vehicle to remember what we’re doing,” Hirsch says. “There’s a feature and then there’s a related fact.” TWC will use the campaign to highlight a different feature or service each month, both for existing features as well as new ones when they roll out. “As we start to roll out new service initiatives, we’ll start to have one for each of them,” Hirsch says.
In spite of the factors that make holiday travel unappealing, Americans are increasingly optimistic about traveling, according to an IBM analysis of social media sentiment. In particular, the "Desire Ratio" -- the proportion of positive versus negative comments -- indicates that people are "looking forward" to holiday travel by a factor of 26 to one. This represents a spike in positive sentiment nearly 12 times greater in 2012 versus 2011. Measuring public sentiment can help travel industry chief marketing officers customize incentives and services to be more in tune with what customers are asking for, using data to tailor their offerings to address trends and customer needs. The analysis shows an increase in the volume of positive conversations about flying, driving and spending time with family and friends, among others. For example, the IBM "Desire Ratio" for flying indicated that comments are roughly 2.5 times more positive about travel in the 2012 holiday season. This increase could be attributed to the Cyber Monday deals that airlines ran this year. Positive sentiment associated with driving also increased 13%. Negative sentiment related to gas prices is on a downward trend, which will likely contribute to the number of people traveling. "Measuring social sentiment has the potential to enable the travel industry to literally design travel offers and services tailored to what travelers are telling us," said Raul Arce, IBM vice president, travel & transportation, in a release. "Big data has the power to transform the travel industry for the airlines, hotels and other travel providers that can translate customer desires into irresistible offers that they will welcome." The IBM Social Sentiment Index combines analytics and natural language processing technologies to gauge consumer public opinions from Twitter, blogs, message boards and other social media. In this instance, the Index was used to measure and understand consumer views around the holiday travel season in the U.S. between Dec. 1 and Dec. 10 in 2012 and 2011. The volume of conversation about flying as the holidays approach is up 10 percent in comparison to last year (38% in 2012 vs. 28% in 2011). This enthusiasm is not limited to those who have confirmed travel plans. A possible window of opportunity exists for businesses to influence last-minute customer travel-related decisions. Anecdotally, around one-quarter of online holiday travel conversations suggested that an itinerary had not been finalized. The analysis also surfaced insight into trends and topics related to flying this holiday season. Top of mind for travelers are airline loyalty programs and best ways to convert miles, possible fuel surcharges likely related to the price of fuel, and what to do with pets while on vacation. While it might seem like "noise" that there is a cluster of social conversation around potential travelers and their animals, it could signal an emerging trend -- or niche demographic -- that pet-friendly hotels or airlines could capitalize on through additional promotional activities or special offers directly tied to the holiday season for pet owners. "Airport Luggage Belt photo from Shutterstock"
J.D. Power and its LMC Automotive division say December is going to cap the year nicely, meaning, apparently, that shoppers aren't too worried about driving -- “Thelma and Louise”-style -- off the economic cliff. Based on how the month looks now, the market research company thinks December will be even better, with 1,152,500 new vehicles delivered to owners. The current selling rate -- seasonally adjusted and extrapolated to the year -- represents 500,000 units higher than the expected 2012 full-year rate. Luxury sales, which tend to do well in December as automakers offer deals and boost advertising (think cars with bow ties), are likely to end up as 16% of all retail vehicles sold this month, per the firm. That would be 1.2% over the month last year. It is also the best month for luxury this year, as well as the best since the month in 2009, when luxury was 16.2% of the market. Said John Humphrey, SVP of global automotive operations at J.D. Power & Associates: “New and redesigned vehicle introductions, along with enhanced incentive activity, have been key drivers of the recovery in the luxury market.” Because of last month and this month's sales, LMC Automotive is upping the numbers for the full-year prediction: 14.5 million units from 14.4 million units, with retail (fleet sales cut out of the equation) being around 11.7 million units. Next year, per LMC, sales will continue up the ladder. The firm is betting 2013 will see delivery of around 15 million new vehicles, with 12.2 million of those going into people's garages. “The U.S. light-vehicle sales market continues to be a bright spot in the tremulous global environment,” said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting at LMC Automotive. “The only major roadblock ahead for the U.S. market is the fiscal cliff. Assuming that hurdle is cleared, 2013 is one step closer to a stable and sustainable growth rate for autos, with volume above the 15 million unit mark.”
It's that time of year again. Digital prognosticators beg their data scientists to run predictive algorithms to determine the likelihood of the coming year's events. With almost zero accountability and no proclivity toward self-serving predictions (wink), I offer my look at the headlines from the year ahead. 1. Programmatic buying eclipses the 50% mark. Audience buying, BT and RTB have already gone mainstream for marketers. You don't need a Magic 8 Ball to see that 2013 will be the year that the machines take over for good. The last of the premium publisher holdouts (Turner, ESPN, etc.) will join the fray by creating their own "private markets" and will become exchanges by another name. Fewer lunches at The Breslin, more high-speed media-trading servers! 2. Mobile online video consumption tops PC viewing (and approaches TV). Tablets, smartphones and E-readers are rapidly becoming the go-to devices for streaming video. Faster wiFi, cheaper 4G services and better video-compression solutions are helping drive the "video anywhere" explosion -- eliminating the "lean in" experience of a laptop. A recent Nielsen study saw mobile video consumption increase by 25.9% year-over-year, while TV viewing dropped 1.8%, albeit from different bases (TV still has a 1.5x lead). This device gap will erode over the year and we will enter 2014 with a new video champion across the board. 3. Marketers get serious about leveraging their data. First-party data has never had more potential in the digital marketing world. With CRM on board, advanced retargeting and first-party data modeling will all gain steam as marketers look to differentiate their consumer outreach by employing their vast amount of owned data. Offline data companies, which have performed "list modeling" for direct marketers for decades, will scramble to keep up with the rapid pace of data-driven digital marketing advancements. M&A will be their answer. 4. A major magazine publisher goes digital only -- with a twist. After years of declining revenue and readership, a top consumer publisher group stops the presses and goes tablet only. Google underwrites the whole endeavor by distributing tablets to current subscribers (filled with Google ads, of course) and finally gets knee-deep in the content business. Shouts of "revolutionary" and "traitor" are bandied about in equal measure by the publisher's rivals as they secretly wish they were extended the lifeline. Fashion editors are suddenly seen in great numbers descending on SFO and looking for black sedans to take them to Mountain View. 5. The advertising battle lines are redrawn. The digital marketing war among Google-MSN-Yahoo-AOL will seem quaint as "rogue" ad warriors create chaos with new offerings. That little online bookstore, Amazon, along with a rapidly evolving Facebook, will shake up the balance of ad power in a serious way. Ownership of the consumers' shopping and social life will trump any connection that content can create, while "traditional" digital media scrambles to catch up. 6. The industry determines "Big Data" isn't Big Enough. After much confusion over how much data is actually "Big," and who really has enough to be part of the club, a consortium of leading data companies agree that the term has been overused and must be revised. The group agrees the buzzword of 2013 will be "Ginormous Data" after turning down "F'ing Huge," "Much Bigger than A Breadbox" and "My Brain Hurts" Data. IBM claims that it trademarked "Ginormous Data" in 1968 after a carpool of scientists missed the turn for Armonk and ended up in Woodstock. Lawsuits are settled amicably. 2013 will be a VC-fueled, M&A-frenzied, non-Facebook-IPO kind of year, where at least two new LumaScapes will be introduced (digital fast food delivery companies and the cosmetic surgery app ecosystem are rumored to be on tap) and numerous new conferences will be launched (The Digital Ad Targeting Tech Behavioral Mobile Social Summit in Malibu looks promising). I look forward to a fun-filled year working with you all!
Raise your hand if you’re sick to death of all of the privacy misinformation and fear-mongering in the press lately. We all are. There’s so much hype around the topic, it makes the recent political campaigns seem tame by comparison. The truth as we see it is that there’s a lot of consumer benefit to tracking. Wouldn’t it be great if someone shared these benefits with consumers? I would love to see a letter written to The New York Times by a consumer -- in defense of tracking: Dear Editor: I want to be tracked in 2013. I realize that sounds crazy, but based on my understanding of the conversations regarding the Do Not Track initiative, I want to be tracked. And with a proper understanding of what this actually means, I believe other consumers will want to be tracked too. Here’s why:
It was a year of amazing work, and unsurpassed video consumption, with consumers snacking on video via phone, tablet and laptop. Not all are stellar. Here are 10 the universe should spit out. You'd think that brand mavens and marketers would have realized by now that every piece of content is, or will soon be, viral. With the exception of those who have taken a monastic vow to avoid all online video, most of us are seeing as many brand videos and ads online as we are off. There are exceptions — those ubiquitous holiday-time auto ads remain more or less native to the tv set — but beyond that, it's all viral, all the time. As a result, brands risk self-inflicting deep wounds if they fail to understand how their content moves through the world.Fortunately for me — I write MediaPost's twice-weekly Video Critique newsletter, which is everything its name suggests and yet so, so, so much more — most brands continue to drop mockable video turds on our e-doorstep with abandon. Here, then, in no particular order, are my picks for the ten dopiest, dumbest, least coherent and/or most wackadoodle brand and marketing videos of 2012. Lord knows there wasn't any shortage of candidates. GilletteActual Video Name: “Masters of Style”Should-be Video Name: ”Masters of Inarticulate Expression of Style”The ads for the ProGlide styler, Gillette’s up-market electro-shaving doohickey, feature actors Adrien Brody and Gael Garcia Bernal wandering about in some vaguely hipster-urban setting. There, they convene with musician/actor/hyphenate André “André 3000” Benjamin and do their part to raise awareness of… I guess one would call it “matters relating to precision-honed facial hair.” For the Web, however, Gillette loosed each of the three to weigh in on matters relating to personal style. Actor/entertainer types working without a script? Bad idea.Brody’s is the most shallow of the monologues, which is no small feat. Answering questions nobody asked (“What does authenticity mean to you?”), he responds with true him-bo vigor, in the process restoring stereotypes about entertainer intelligence erased years ago by cerebral thinkers like Burt Reynolds and Charo. According to Brody, authenticity “really refers to being sincere and honest with yourself… not necessarily being swayed by everyone’s opinion.” In other words, authenticity refers to the state and/or act of being authentic. Who needs a thesaurus when you’ve got a thespian? Macy'sActual: "Another Miracle on 34th Street"Should-be: "Another Bastardization of a Cinematic Touchstone"You can't blame Macy's for latching itself, barnacle-style, onto Miracle on 34th Street every holiday season. After all these years, the movie remains blithe and as uplifting as a neoprene sports bra, the single most effective retail product placement (unpaid, I presume) in the history of celluloid. Macy's has coasted on its tails for years.But using the megamagic of supertechnology to turbosplice clips from the flick into a modern-day setting, then cyberramming its Kringle into pithy conversations with overexposed celebrities (Justin Bieber, Martha Stewart and Taylor Swift, among others), is precisely the wrong way to extend its legacy. Also, the clip officially hit the Web in October, a few weeks before one of its not-as-self-aware-as-he-thinks stars, Donald Trump, officially became odious to a significant slice of the population. Lesson learned: four weeks is a long time in the everything-is-somehow-viral era.Meanwhile, at the clip's denouement, Carlos Santana shows up with a guitar. He does not appear to know where he is or what he's doing there. Somebody should lead him to shelter and fetch him a warm bowl of soup.VisaActual: "Join Our Global Cheer"Should-be: "Scenes of People Cheering, Accompanied by Narration About How People Like to Cheer and How Cheering Through Social Media Is Like Octuple-Cheering"Visa's "Global Cheer" Olympics campaign starts with a flawed premise — that enjoyment of the Summer Olympic games will be amplified by simultaneous enjoyment of the social media swirling over, under and around it — and sinks from there. It may have gravitas, courtesy of Morgan Freeman's ever-solemn narration, but the clips designed to familiarize with already familiar athletes (Michael Phelps) reek of desperation, à la "we hitched our wagon to these guys/gals. If we're going down, you're coming with us."The "Join Our Global Cheer" spot may or may not have been an official Visa production, but its gauzy PR-speak about "harnessing the Olympic spirit into a global movement" makes it feel lighter than air. It takes a full 90 seconds to convey a simple concept that I can get across in eight seconds — hell, time me. "Please go to our Facebook page, please, and create content, so that we don't have to." Meanwhile, to hear the campaign tell it, remotely cyber-cheering for Malaysian track cyclist/dreamy dreamboat Azizul Awang is the next best thing to serving as Best Man at his wedding. Good to know. Chanel No. 5Actual: "There You Are"Should-be: "Brad Pitt Recites Marlon Brando's Apocalypse Now Outtakes"In his viral-bait spots for Chanel No. 5, Brad Pitt gazes vacantly towards the camera and talks. He talks about journeys and dreams. He talks about fortune and inevitability. Then the camera pulls back and we learn that we're supposed to be buying/feeling good about… perfume? Really? Smart money was on an exotic vacation locale or some kind of celebrity quasi-religion. Perfume. Huh.The problem with "There You Are" isn't Chanel's approach; the brand has long trafficked in the kind of mumbo jumbo that, according to no focus groups, enhances its allure and mystique. The problem is that by choosing Brad Pitt as its first-ever spokesdude, Chanel calls attention to itself in a way that can't be ignored. But Pitt's presence ensures that we'll all pay attention — in this case, not a desired outcome. FacebookActual: "The Things That Connect Us"Should-be: "Chairs Are People, Too!"I don't think anybody had any idea what to expect from Facebook's first-ever superclip, envisioned as yet another front in the Grand Exalted Social-Media Overlord's battle to humanize itself. It could have featured an all-oboe orchestra or animated stop-motion chipmunks or children holding hands and dancing and going la la la. It could have featured Bono talking about technology infrastructure in Africa. Nothing would have surprised me.And then I heard the following phrase, which prompted me to scroll back to the start of the clip and make sure I'd heard it correctly: "Chairs are for people — and that is why chairs are like Facebook." Apparently the thing that connects us, as much as technology or transportation or yenta relatives, is chairs. Recliners, thrones, fauteuils, beanbags, you name it — only through, on, across or alongside chairs can we find common emotional ground. But, the video adds, dance floors and doorbells are a little like chairs, and thus Facebook, because they too have connective properties.I hate my job. CartierActual: "Painted Love"Should-be: "Tortured Bearded Artist Guy Falls In Love With Girl In His Painting, Who Comes To Life In an Animated-Sprite Kind of Way; and Then, In the World's Most Transparent 'Muse" Metaphor, He Chases Her/It Around Town and, Finally, Back Home, Where-upon He Is Pulled Into the Painting and Goes Smoochy-Swimming With the Animated-Sprite Painting Girl"It's a brand video, people. It's not Fellini Satyricon. The New YorkerActual: "Lena Dunham Introduces the New Yorker iPhone App"Should-be: "Lena Dunham Introduces the New Yorker iPhone App" (nailed it!)For the most part, brand videos go the big-tent route: all comers are welcome, so long as you've got cash to spend or an itchy "like" trigger finger on Facebook. But Dunham's efforts on behalf of the New Yorker iPhone app, in which she jousts with uninterested talk-show host Jon Hamm and debuts a clip from her "new movie" (which features more straightforward discussion of the New Yorker app than does, say, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), seems designed to alienate, annoy or otherwise baffle a huge chunk of its potential audience.It's a strategy that makes no sense in the real world, but even less sense on the everyone-everywhere-everything web. Yes, we get that the clip is a meta-commentary on the type of clips usually employed to introduce such products. But do we really need to bury the wit beneath a heap of smirks and air quotes? Would an easy, airy punchline do profound danger to the brand? Lighten up, missy.Separately, has anyone told Jon Hamm that he's allowed to say no every so often? Eight O'Clock CoffeeActual: "The Cupping Room"Should-be: "Grandpa Brand Tries to Act Young, Breaks Hip"I believe in kindness, charity and decency towards my fellow man and woman, especially those in need. That's why I refuse to say anything critical about Eight O'Clock Coffee's attempt to join the 21st century via one of those "Internet videos" its musty brand people had been hearing so much about.I won't rip the one-note bit drawn out over five minutes (competitive eater visits coffee brand's "cupping room" and — get this — starts drinking all the coffee and eating all the coffee beans!) I won't scold the creators for failing to arm the actors with a script or anything beyond minimalist props. I won't mock the lighting director for keeping his charges in the shadows, literally.I won't go there. That's not how I roll. PerrierActual: "The Drop"Should-be: "Lone Bead of Fluid Defies Physics and Saves Universe"Whenever a brand manager proclaims, "I want something… cinematic! Yes, cinematic!," unintentional hilarity is soon to follow. And so it goes with Perrier's "The Drop," a high-concept nugget o' brand goodness in which Perrier's refreshervescenceness saves the world.How, you ask? Well, see, there's this supersonic heat wave that's totally melting everybody's wax. So the Powers That Be combat it the only way they know how: By belting a supermodel cosmonaut into a pod and launching her into space, with a Perrier as her only cargo. The idea is that she'll bend the laws of chemistry and not burst into flames upon reaching her destination, then destroy the sun by pouring Perrier on it.But wait — she's thirsty! And so, as the sweaty denizens of Planet Earth watch aghast (via webcam? This part isn't entirely clear), she chugs the entire bottle. Fortunately for everyone's sake, the model is a drooler, and a single drop of Perrier tumbles off her oh-so-pert lower lip and extinguishes the threat. The end.Now, what was it that I was supposed to buy, and what are its brand attributes? H&M/Anna Dello RussoActual: "Fashion Shower"Should-be: "Campy Fashion Lady Makes Me Fear For My Safety and the Safety of Those I Love"The clips I watch as part of my "Video Critique" duties sometimes delight me. More often, they bemuse or sadden me. But only once did a clip outright terrify me — and that once was when I screened H&M's "Fashion Shower," starring designer Anna Dello Russo as a fashion guru-cum-provocateur-cum-overcaffeinated loon.In it, she announces that the viewer needs a fashion shower, which is less about hygiene than it is about the donning of/cavorting with accessories like oversized novelty scissors. As she prances, she ticks off her list of fashion lessons, among them that "wearing night clothes in the daytime is unexpected."I happen to agree, but that's not the point. There are many, many reasons to create a viral-minded clip, among them awareness and brand definition and blah blah. But something this over the top only appeals to true believers. If that happened to be Dello Russo's only goal, mission accomplished. Really, all she did here was affirm her nutjob bona fides. She could've done that without blowing thousands of dollars on that mountain of a straddleable gold shoe.