Barry Judge // Updates from the CMO of Best Buy

Last Sunday we launched “Twelpforce,” a new service that enlists the passion and knowledge of Best Buy’s vast employee base to bring assistance directly to customer computer screens via the micro blogging site, Twitter. Staffed by Best Buy employees from across all operations, including BlueShirts and Geek Squad, Twelpforce^™ will answer product questions, troubleshoot technology challenges and solve customer service issues, all from the comfort of the users’ keyboard or mobile phone. Twelpforce has gotten a fair amount of awareness as evidenced by blog posts by both TechCrunch and Twitter themselves.

Twelpforce is obviously an experiment. A very public one. And with this publicity comes a certain amount of risk. In my view, it is a risk well worth taking for many reasons.  Read more...

So the idea submission and voting part of our crowd-sourcing experiment has been over for a few days. We have a few more stages to get through before we’re done, (re-posting the Emerging Media job, interviewing and hiring among other things) but wanted to get an update out especially for those who participated in submitting ideas, or participated in the conversation. There will yet be more updates to be posted here on this topic and more opportunity for commentary and conversation. My team helped me put this together as there was a lot of time involved in gathering up the links and getting them placed in the post.

Bob Roth (blogging at bigbadbobby.blogspot or @Zamees on Twitter) was officially the top vote getter as of the time voting was officially closed last Thursday. He was the winner with 18 votes at the time. Here is Bob’s Idea on our IdeaX site, and here is Bob’s blog post about that same idea. Also worth mentioning is that last week, according to our analytics, Bob’s idea had the most views of any idea on IdeaX.  Read more...

In marketing, we’re doing our job when we reach people at the right time in the right place with the right experience and message. As I talk about in my The Future is Digital blog and video, digital enables people to get information on their own terms: when, where, how, and what they want. It’s no longer enough to just say something; you have to let people experience it and share it with the people that they trust.

Our Musical Instruments department (in about 100 stores nationwide) is all about Experience. Everything is plugged in and ready to play. The staff is friendly, knowledgeable, and approachable. We carry professional grade gear from brands like Fender, Marshall, Roland, Yamaha, and Drum Workshop.  We are working on building awareness of our Musical Instruments department, but more importantly, building credibility and authenticity. We hope to inspire people. But how do you take that feeling and translate it to a digital landscape?  Read more...

My team brought me this idea in response to a post about Best Buy employees on Gizmodo yesterday. Frankly, I didn’t think it was that funny and wasn’t sure it aligned with my core values. I was excited though that the team was thinking about new ways to use new media so I have decided to support their thinking and publish it. So I will be curious to hear your feedback.

We are not sure how many of you read  Gizmodo, the uber gear and tech blog, but those of you who do read it likely noticed this post yesterday. While we would argue that the employees of Best Buy are far too diverse to fit into one of 7 categories (aspiring musicians, perhaps?), it was a pretty funny post. We couldn’t resist taking a stab at classifying the seven types of Gizmodo bloggers, but then we realized there’s really only one type of Gizmodo blogger. Here’s that description:  Read more...

Thank you.

Thank you for participating, commenting, re-tweeting, blogging about and contributing your thoughts to the discussion regarding the Emerging Media job description crowdsourcing effort so far. We’re only a couple of days into it and the response has been phenomenal. So again, thank you.

Although we’re asking for ideas related to our job description, we’re discovering that the issue of how to identify talent in this space may be a sore point for other companies as well. Hopefully at the end of the day the discussion resulting from this will also contribute to the larger discussion beyond our Emerging Media role.

We’ve gotten some great ideas submitted so far to the IdeaX site. There’s been a couple bumps in the road however.

The IdeaX team is seeing more ideas on the back end that aren’t getting published to the public site. If you’ve submitted your idea and don’t see it on the site yet please follow the advice given on the IdeaX blog post from yesterday  Read more...

Since we launched our “True Stories” communication platform in November, it has become my custom to post the “rough cut” TV execution options prior to us making the final decision. In prior posts, we have gotten excellent feedback – comments that have made our messaging clearer as well as input in helping us choose the actual spots to run. So in keeping with this new way (for me) in getting feedback, the following are TV rough cut executions we are considering for the Back To School. These ads are indeed rough – we have not included the music or background images as we do not have clearance yet for these pieces. I learned this lesson the hard way in November (see November posts). Thus, please react primarily to the story and the story teller as the music and the images will make the ads significantaly more interesting.  Read more...

As you all know, the internet continues to profoundly change how people connect and engage with the world. Recent years have seen the rise of many types of “personal” user-generated content, from videos (YouTube) to photos (Flickr) to status updates (Facebook and Twitter). At the same time, these innovations are causing profound disruption to traditional media outlets like Television and Newspapers.

While no one “killer” model has yet emerged for how brands and businesses show up in the new media environment, we cannot sit still. I am proud of the innovation we are leading at Best Buy, from employees on Twitter to company blogs, forums, and more. Only through constant experimentation and innovation will we ensure we lead the change, rather than merely follow.  Read more...

As we continue to explore new ways to make our customers happy, Best Buy is moving into the used games market. This week, several of our Dallas and Austin stores will test a kiosk-based model that allows customers to insert their used games into a kiosk that will scan it for functionality, and immediately issue a voucher that is instantly redeemable for a Best Buy gift card. It’s a pretty slick system and one of the few trade-in programs to provide instant gratification; you get the gift card on the spot and can redeem it on anything in the store – not just another game. We’ll also be testing the sale of used games in those stores, and some of the kiosks will even rent games and movies. We’re excited about this test, especially because we know how deeply passionate our customers and our employees are about gaming, movies and entertainment overall. And the trade-in and used value propositions will give those passionate customers even more choice and value at Best Buy.  Read more...

Today Best Buy reported its first quarter earnings. Despite the general softness in demand that our industry is seeing, we have achieved very strong results that every Best Buy employee can be proud of. It’s especially exciting to see that we continued to grow our market share. In fact, we had a gain of 200 basis points from February to April, and we are seeing that share gain continue.

Arguably, some of that pick-up came from Circuit City shuttering its doors, but only some. People have choices when they shop for consumer electronics, so it’s encouraging to see that our blend of service, selection, value and price is drawing a growing number of them to Best Buy and our brand promise. Over the weekend I blogged about bringing “Dream Support” to life. I believe it is the promise of “Dream Support” that will fulfill an increasingly unmet need in the market. One reason goes back to the numbers. Some of our biggest share gains over the past quarter were in big-screen TVs, computers and mobile phones – all products where customers have a lot of questions and often a little anxiety, which our Blue Shirts can handle better than any competitor can. Overall, our numbers say that our strategy is on track as we continue to keep fighting for every customer in a challenging and competitive market.