Click play >> to view the 40 second welcome video for this month.

BECOME A BRAND CHAMPION! START HERE ON APRIL 10-12.

I am inspired after being in Chicago for 3 days and am more convinced than ever that successful brands have to work consistently and passionately to make sure their brands come alive within the organization and within the customers – we have to “Make it Stick”.

One of the first critical steps in developing a brand strategy that “sticks’ is to establish a “brand strategy committee” within your organization. It is crucial to have every area represented if it’s going to work – aka “stick”. Pull someone from R&D, HR, Operations, Merchandising as well as the good ‘ol marketing dept, etc.. This committee will require strong leadership and a “brand champion”—to make sure that everyone participates and buys into the strategy and to insure its implementation.

That’s why I am so excited that this spring’s Global Retail Marketing’s Global Retail Marketing Executive Leadership Summit which will be held just down the water from my office in St. Pete Beach. Chief Executive Offer Stephanie Fischer and the GRM team have put together a program that looks at leadership from every perspective and brings to the stage some outstanding experts that will surely enlighten even the most senior marketing executive. To encourage you and your organization to participate, here are some highlights: (OK, yes, I’m a special advisor to GRM, but this program really excites me and I am devoting this article to it!)t

• Start off with Carter Drew who brings his experience at McDonald’s (not a bad brand!) He will share his views on “Authentic Leadership” which will dive into what it takes to develop a vision that’s essential to a strong brand. 
§ Next, we have all heard about “Blue Ocean Strategy” and Gabor Burt. Gabor, the foremost expert on this hot process, will help any marketer who wants to get a leg up on the competition see how its done in today’s marketplace. His examples will demonstrate how to get the strategy into action.
§ The next day will keep the attendees focused on making the strategy work with presentations by experts like Gary Hamel, who Fortune calls the world’s leading expert on business strategy. Gary looks at leadership a being the head of a revolution and we certainly need some revolutionary thinking to get our brands to stand out. 
§ Following Gary is Peter McLaughlin who will bring this whole idea to heart by talking about how we can ignite the energy of our marketing internally and make us better champions of our brand. It’s not all strategy as you know and the bottom line is always a prevailing consideration. 
§ That’s why Joel Makower will show how the new “greening of our business and marketing” can be profitable if you do it right. Nobody can talk about the right way to make “Green” exciting and profitable for a brand like Joel, He has written more than a dozen books and several articles that make a difference to who?.
• Finally, I am glad to see Dan Burrus is bringing his futuristic, yet common sense, approach to technology trends back to this summit. Last year, I was truly inspired by his ideas and concepts that got everyone involved and excited about the future—if you do it right and look at the marketplace. Even after seeing Dan again at the NSA Convention in July, I am amazed at his wealth of knowledge and ability to cut through the confusion in technology to inspire us to think differently about our brands and our customers.

Top all this off with ample opportunities to network with our marketing counterparts from other retailers and key marketers from some of best partner companies out there, it will be an extraordinary event. GRM has a long history of bring people together to share ideas and build new relationships that pay off back at the office and this year looks like it will be even better.

The setting ain’t so bad either with the beautiful and historic Don CeSar Hotel providing the meeting location and amenities. Golf and boat cruises in the Gulf are a great way to enjoy the time away while you stimulate your thinking and become a true brand champion for your company.

I know this sounds like a sales pitch—and it is. I believe so strongly in the need for strategy leadership in in order to bring brands to life. I am convinced that this is a great opportunity that warrants your time and effort to attend. On top of that, if you’re a retail marketing executive, there’s no charge for the summit. Just take the time to get on a plane (or boat in my case) to Tampa Bay then spend some of the best 3 days in your branding quest. It’s April 10 thru April 12, and spend the weekend if you can. I guarantee it will be sunny and warm!

Just click on the link to the right, or go to www.globalretailmarketing.com. See you there.
Ken

Click play >> to view this month’s video welcome(47 seconds) from NYC
The annual NRF convention at the Javitz Center was abuzz with new technology that will make running a retail organization more efficient with state-of-the-art systems and programs. The exhibits floor was full of representatives and retailers and as many high tech sounding names. Hopefully, these innovations will save the companies enough money to offset the loss of revenue most stores experienced in the past couple months of holiday sales.. With a lousy December (-0.4%) and an overall disappointing two-month holiday period (3% vs. a prediction of +4%), there were many reasons given for the poor performance in the trade articles that followed today’s release of December figures. The old stand-by “bad weather” and over-used “tentative consumer” were cited most often. Nobody, however, said that their marketing efforts were off the mark.

I won’t dwell on that again in fear of sounding redundant from last month’s article. However, it was interesting that most of the program at this year’s convention failed to address the key issues of marketing and branding. About the only sign of the “B-Word” was on one of the displays at the NRF bookstore where 4-5 books promised the key to better branding. (Unfortunately, my book isn’t quite finished in time to hit the shelves!) In talking with several of my retail counterparts at the convention, we all were in agreement that this year’s holiday marketing efforts were about as exciting as the 30 re-runs of the clay-mation version of “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer”. It just seemed that those who did advertise had nothing to say other than another “lowest prices” sale in ads that looked so similar; one had to yawn whenever we opened the daily newspaper (those of us who still get the paper, that is.),

Looking for answers, maybe these disappointed retailers should have been sitting in church with me when our pastor used a quote that seemed to “hit the nail on the head” –
“The bitterness of poor quality lingers on long after the sweetness of a cheap price fades away.” Sure, we all have to have a great price image to survive in today’s marketplace. However, whatever happened to giving customers a really great shopping experience (especially at the holidays)? With lousy service, jam-packed clearance round racks, and with advertising that seemed dull and redundant, retailers have lost the value part of the proposition. It’s interesting to look at the December comp’s, that the ones with the worst performance were also the ones with the dullest advertising and store presentation. I won’t list them here, but the December results are available online so you’ll know who I mean.

It’s interesting that Wal-Mart broke with some really good ads that communicated their value statement while at the same time they broke with blockbuster pricing. The turnaround in sales also reflected a much better shopping experience in the remodeled stores that I visited. Costco’s results continue to be amazing in view of their lack of any advertising. The store experience says it all. Flat screen TV’s were the hot items and these stores had displays that rivaled the big electronics stores and were a lot less confusing to shop.

Macy’s announced that while it now had its logo on hundreds of stores in every market (which produce lousy sales), they were expanding their San Francisco web offices due to increases in their online business. The amount of gift card sales only punctuates our customers’ lack of enthusiasm to shop for actual gifts and other traditional holiday items.

The time to start building Holiday 2008 sales is now. Stores need to take a look at their marketing efforts and research their brand position and start NOW to provide a reason for customers to shop them now and on an ongoing basis. It’s the only way to build a better business all year.

RAC CHICAGO—A GOOD PLACE TO START.
To get inspired and re-energize your branding efforts, start out by attending this year’s Retail Advertising Conference in Chicago on February 6-8. The program promises to be one of the best in helping you make your marketing message “stick” with your customers. Click this link to get all the information about this year’s program and registration.

Left..Visit to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
I was just listening to some old Christmas carols when I heard a song by Bing Crosby (that shows how long ago I recorded these songs!) called “It’s not the things you do at Christmas time, it’s the Christmas things you do all year long!” I had just seen a business news report that retailers were again struggling with their holiday (politically correct of course) sales this year. How appropriate are old Bing’s lyrics for those retailers who hold up doing any signficant marketing and branding all year and then shoot their marketing wad in December expecting the customer to select their store over the others with the same items and much the same prices. I always used to tell our fragrance buyers that they should build a preference all year as the right store for that purchase and then they wouldn’t have to scramble and overspend from Thanksgiving on tryingto get that last minute gift sale. Branding is not just a blitz campaign. It takes time and it take meaningful messages (no, a preprint a day does not keep the sales slump away). The customers are all as busy as I am at this time of year and they are going to go to the stores that they prefer in March and July first to get their Christmas shopping done because they don’t have time to stroll the mall anymore. I just heard that Macy’s was going to be open 24 hours this weekend. Hooray. I always wanted to go to Herald Square at 3am to get my wife’s gift!
Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all through 2008.

Ken

Click on PLAY arrow to view this month’ 90 second video welcome.

So, another Thanksgiving weekend has come and gone (quickly I might add). I remember my department store days when working the day after was as challenging as my first day of Army basic training…only a lot more exciting. Now that Black Friday has become such a media event, it’s hard t believe that anyone wants to shop that day—especially at 4am or 5am. I was surprised to see that there were people camped out in front of my local Best Buy on WEDNESDAY afternoon just to be first in line for the bargains two days later. So much for a nice family holiday on Thanksgiving Day! The advertising in general over the weekend was non-descript. The two department store competitors (successful ones, that is) Kohl’s and JCPenney literally bombarded the media with more preprint pages and spots than I can remember. More surprising was how identical their print ads were. Almost like they knew what the other was going to do not only the vehicles and style, but also the merchandise and prices. It reminded me of Doner CEO Alan Kalter’s description of the disease plaguing today’s retailers—“emulitis”. Of course, he said this over a decade ago but the copycat strategy is alive and well. Overall, there were more bargain shoppers this past weekend, but they spent less thanks to the continuing decline in prices on flat screen TV’s, mp3 players, and laptops. It will be difficult indeed to achieve even the predicted 2% growth for the holiday selling season.

Now, we are infatuated by Cyber Monday. So all of us who have something better to do than stand in line on Friday (or Wednesday night) can wait and get bargains online by just loggin in on Monday morning. And it seems to work there as well, with significant increases even with retailers who are in a slump (like Circuit City and Sears). The growth on line continues to amaze analysts. Yet, it should be no surprise given the over 80% of consumers who go online prior to visiting a store to make a purchase these days. The integration of the store and online marketing efforts is more critical today than ever. By the way, I “elfed” myself on Office Max’s site (http://elfyourself.com/) and it was as much fun as watching Bob Thacker’s examples of last year’s big success stories. The whole extended family is now dancing in their green costumes this year online.

Now it’s back to reality. With all the effort and spending toward getting the bargain hunters this weekend so we can clear inventory and reduce our margins, isn’t it time for stores to devote a day to making sure that there brand is alive and well…or at least existing? With the exception of Zale’s and Kay Jewelers, I have not seen much effort to do great advertising and give customers a reason to choose your store for any reason other than super values and 75% discounts. What happened to giving the customer a reason to be loyal and have a preference for your store so that you don’t have to wait for the next big sale to give a reason to shop. The print ads that I received from Sam’s Club were the closest thing to holiday advertising that makes you want to visit the store for the merchandise and not just the discount. Great photography, great design and great prices make the store look better than any conventional department store advertising that I reviewed.

In broadcast, it’s pretty much the same. Seldom is there a brand message that positions the retailers as a preferred choice for the holidays. Sure, with the economy, price is as important as ever. But with the amount of competition and the growing lack of shopping time or interest, wouldn’t one want to be the preferred store going in to the weekend and make holiday shopping a special occasion like it once was. I was in Saks a couple days after the Thanksgiving holiday and it seemed like it was no more exciting than a random weekend in July. We blame it on the Internet, or the economy, but we ought to look into the mirror and pick a day to promote our brand to our customers and to our employees so that there is a reason beyond price to come to our stores all year round.

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Press Play >> now for a 45 second video message from Ken.

It seems like it’s the same old story when the monthly retail sales reports come out. The chains that have been doing well (like the new Kohl’s that I just visited) continue to maintain their comp sales growth and the others (like most department stores) can’t figure out what’s happening in the marketplace.

A couple of reports this month pointed out what’s wrong with these stores. It’s the brand, stupid! An article in the New York Times talked about Macy’s strategy backfiring and that the new consolidated brand had forgotten about what made May Co. and Marshall Field’s so successful. It went on to say that the reason customers weren’t going to the stores as much was because there weren’t enough “deals” (as in coupons and promotions) and therefore the customers were opting for other chains (like Kohl’s and Target). CEO Terry Lundgren stated that Macy’s moved “too far, too fast” from the promotions and basic merchandise (like Dockers) that the previous chains built their volume on and that they would have to “backtrack” to get some of those customers back. I don’t think that’s the problem and those customers that only shopped because of a coupon only accelerated the downfall of the previous department stores. Wouldn’t it be much better to give people a reason to shop at your stores other than the “stars” (like Martha Stewart and P Diddy?) have stuff there to sell? The new campaign for the “global Macy’s brand” really fell short in creating any reason to shop there or to expect a better experience than the specialty and discount chains have been offering. Department stores, when they were the heart of retailing, made shopping an exciting experience or at the very least a place for special purchases. As they have expanded and consolidated, there simply is nothing special about the stores. And a discount coupon or loads of 50% off Dockers or Liz Claiborne isn’t really special, particularly when they are always on sale. Who shops for regular price at a department store anyway? I happen to agree with the consolidation of all the former store names under the Macy’s logo. It is a legendary brand with a lot going for it. But all of these stores aren’t on Herald Square and the experience is nothing special. What Macy’s needs to figure out is what the brand should be so that it can have a special relationship (aka a brand) with its new and future customers. Until they define the brand better, all the coupons in the world won’t reverse the downward trend and the disgruntled customers of the former stores.

Another report came out that after 20 years, the Bombay Company’s new owners were abandoning the US and were just going to operate the Canadian stores. I knew the dollar in Canada had grown in value, but not that much! The articles generally stated that Bombay’s demise was due to its (and many other smaller stores’) failure to compete with the big box and larger specialty chains. That may be true but it’s not all a matter of size that matters. For the 20 years, I could never really figure out what Bombay’s reason for being (a key element to a successful brand) was and why anyone would shop there. Sure the stores were neat and the merchandise was nice, but why should I go there? They never developed a brand that was based on the customer and the result was that the chain was always “just there”. Maybe they will do better in Canada, but I am surprised that they lasted as long as they did. There are plenty of smaller sized chains (like Coach, Christopher and Banks, Hollister) that do very well because they have a great brand strategy and they execute it very well in the store, everyday.

Without a great brand strategy, a retailer can blame poor performance on a lot of other reasons (like the weather) but what they really need to do is take a good look inside and find out what they really stand for with the customer and then communicate that more effectively.