A model marketing plan
As reported in the June Springwise e-newsletter (www.springwise.com), Dutch temp agency Models at Work has 150 aspiring/beginning models on file for hire to spice up corporate events, parties and dinners. Some of them will actually work, serving drinks at the bar or checking coats, though others are just eye candy, mingling with guests, or injecting the dance floor with a dose of it-ism.
Scoff if you must, but the collapse of traditional advertising and the subsequent shift towards real-time, in-the-flesh promotional events and branding experiences has created a need for model-like bodies to fill galleries, tents, ballrooms, bars and lounges, in virtually every city around the world. Just ask corporate clients like Martini, Bacardi, Moët & Chandon, Coca-Cola, Puma, G-star, Cartier, MTV, Elle, Esquire, and T-Mobile, who have used the agency to spice up their corporate and marketing events.
Springwise has this bit of advice for the not-so-beautiful people: Start your own Models At Work and taste sweet revenge by making the pretty people work for you.
Wal-Mart does some Target shooting
It seems wrong to place the words Wal-Mart and upscale in the same sentence but if the Bentonville behemoth has its way, it won’t seem wrong for long. In the September debut of its fab new Saturday edition, The Wall Street Journal had a page-one article on Wal-Mart’s attempts to class up its stores, with the unstated but likely aim of attracting rival Target’s customers.
As the Journal article pointed out, sales at stores open at least a year - a key measure of retail performance - rose twice as fast at Target over the past year as at Wal-Mart. And Wal-Mart’s share price is down 17 percent in the past year while Target’s is up 18 percent.
One indication that change was afoot came in a June quote from Wal-Mart’s Chief Executive Lee Scott, who was reacting to the disappointing sales figures following the company’s efforts to appeal to cash-strapped holiday shoppers last year: “You just can’t spend all your time chasing a customer who is going through that economic cycle.”
That may be, but consumers already hit by months of record gas prices are now facing a winter of soaring heating oil and natural gas bills, so “that economic cycle” shows no sign of ending soon. Does Wal-Mart really want to price itself out of its core market’s range?
Make no mistake: Wal-Mart is still Wal-Mart. “Always low prices” remains the mantra. Not every store will undergo a changeover and most will likely stay very much the same. But in response to its research, which uncovered a customer that Wal-Mart isn’t reaching, the retailer is trying to introduce more flair and fashion into its clothing sections. The overlooked customer, which Wal-Mart calls Gracie, is 25 or older and spends a large share of her disposable income on clothes. To capture her interest, Wal-Mart has opened a trend-spotting office in New York, staged fashion shows, and taken out ads in Vogue touting its new sense of style.
To its credit, Wal-Mart does seem to realize that attracting Gracie and her ilk to the store is only half the battle. You need to make her shopping experience fun and enjoyable, which is hard to do when display and merchandising acumen seem non-existent. (The Journal article quotes Wal-Mart’s executive Claire Watts: “We did focus groups with thousands of women and their biggest dislike was the mess on the floor” of the apparel sections.) To spiff things up, the company has dispatched a 340-person team to enforce better merchandising habits.
In the end, that may be all the retailing giant needs: a good dose of cleaning and organizing. Shopping at Wal-Mart has never been known as an enjoyable experience - the stores are often too dirty and noisy for that. The foundation for Target’s success is its understanding that many shoppers want the best of both worlds: low prices and a fun, clean place to shop. Don’t Wal-Mart’s customers deserve the same?
(“Looking Upscale, Wal-Mart Begins a Big Makeover,” Wall Street Journal, September 17-18, 2005)
I just saved a bundle on my ad budget
MediaPost Publications’ Online Media Daily reported in September that GEICO, the company known for its humorous commercials about people saving money on car insurance, launched what may be the first marketer-generated effort to create a large-scale consumer-generated media campaign promoting a brand.
Working with agency CDG Solutions, GEICO unveiled a Web site inviting amateur filmmakers to create 15-second spots based on its TV ad campaign featuring the GEICO gecko. GEICO didn’t call entries in the competition ads. Instead, it referred to the spots as “15-second conceptual movie trailers,” which ran on the dedicated campaign site, goldengecko.com. Visitors to the site have to watch a brief commercial (for GEICO or one of the site partners, which include Hilton and Renaissance hotels) prior to viewing their chosen spot.
The initiative was aimed at the 18-to-34-year-old crowd, and was as much an interactive, viral campaign as it was about creating new commercials. It also comes at a time when consumers have begun creating their own versions of commercials for major brands and posting them directly on the Internet. Adcandy.com, an online community based around users who create their own ads, slogans and jingles, announced a site-based competition to create ads to compete for Coca-Cola Co.’s worldwide advertising account.
Prior to posting on the goldengecko.com site the spots were vetted by a technical and a legal team to make sure each was formatted correctly and did not contain copyrighted content.
Jack Johnson, a GEICO business analyst, said the online initiative marked a new twist for the firm, which traditionally relied on TV and radio buys. “We’ve never done anything like this before, but we were looking for new possibilities to reach a young demographic,” he said.
The “Golden Gecko” competition, which ran through October, offered participants the chance to win prizes in five different categories - drama, comedy, animation, action, and “other.” Prizes included LCD TVs and trips to Waikiki. Winning video spots will be announced on November 15.
And what exactly does filmmaking have to do with selling car insurance? “About as much as GEICO’s TV commercials have to do with selling car insurance,” CDG CEO Scott Adams joked.
Johnson agreed. “We’re big on the soft sell,” he said. “We’re not about just telling people to buy something.”
(“GEICO Hosts Amateur Film Contest,” Online Media Daily, September 20, 2005)