When I was in middle school, the 8th Grade
class took a Tour of Georgia field trip. Three nights away with the entire class seeing the historic landmarks of our great state. It was a rite of passage, and I had been looking forward to this for
three years.
And then, the day before I was going to leave, I got dumped. My boyfriend of a whole month broke up with me. I was devastated. Crushed. Beyond emotional
repair. There was no way I was getting on that bus the next morning; I was going to stay in my room and die. End of story.
My mother did not fight me on this. She
did not lecture me. She did not point out that this trip was already paid for, and that my butt was getting on that bus even if she had to glue it there herself. What my mother did was take me
shopping at Nordstrom Rack.
advertisement
advertisement
A couple of hours of retail therapy later, I forgot all about my ex boyfriend. I got on that bus the next morning, and I had a great
trip. I don’t know if Nordstrom Rack was always her plan or if it was just the closest plan, but it was everything I needed. It was warm, a little aspirational and full of possibility. It was a
place where nothing outside really mattered for a couple of hours.
I am not the only one with a story like that. Nordstrom has been collecting them for 125 years.
Stories from customers about the shoes they wore down the aisle, the suit that started a career, the tomato soup that turned a hard day around. And this year, they’re putting those stories on
screen.
Their “Based on a True Story” campaign is the opposite of every three-second scroll-stopper we’ve been told marketing has to be right now.
It’s long-form. It’s emotional. It’s a child narrator that perfectly captures that wide-eyed sense of discovery.
At a moment when we’re
optimizing everything down to the millisecond, Nordstrom bet on a story. On the idea that people still want to feel something. We sat down with Olivia Kim, SVP of Brand and Creative to hear how they
pulled it off.
Listen to the full episode here.