Clearly, we are in the midst of exciting and challenging change all around us. Lately, I have been doing a lot of thinking about the Best Buy Brand and how we best compete in this economic time. In addition, I know that the ways in which to understand consumer behavior and how consumers learn about Brands is much different today than it was even a year ago. As evidence of how fast this change is coming I can make it personal. I had never even heard of Twitter and a blog was the furthest thing from my mind, trust me. Anyway, as a means to collect my thoughts and communicate them primarily to my team, earlier this week, Chris Barry (Tremendously talented Yellow Tag producer) and I had a video conversation about my take on the future of Best Buy marketing. The 4 minute video follows this piece and I would very much like you to share your feedback. Thanks for the time if you do.
Barry Judge // Updates from the CMO of Best Buy
Insignia Brand – Seeking Input Using Open Principles
Here at Best Buy, we encourage open and transparent engagement with our employees, customers and business partners. We call it our Open Principles. It essentially means that great ideas can come from anywhere and that if you listen to your customers intently and engage with them in what is meaningful, then you can create greater mutual benefit for both you and your customers.
We are embracing this approach in many parts of our business. Over the last 6 months, we have been working to deliver a new web experience at Insignia, one of our private label brands. When we set out to refresh Insignia’s web presence, we engaged directly with our customers and employees through the use of social tools. This enabled us to reach brand and Internet advocates with a passionate point of view, engage with their ideas, and rapidly iterate the web site based on how the community wanted to experience the brand.
Ever Wanted to Be A Creative Director? Read on…
I am very curious about the potential for new / social media marketing applications, and more specifically the interaction it enables between people in companies and individual customers. This is new territory for us at Best Buy, and so we are trying lots of new things to learn and shape our point of view. To that end, Best Buy is one of 12 global brands involved in the MOFILM consumer-generated advertising competition (www.mofilm.com).
We’ve made creative assets such as our “True Stories” Blue Shirt videos available for people to use to create their own vision of how Best Buy can support people realizing their dreams through technology and entertainment. Deadline for entries is June 8, 2009. I’m excited about our participation and hope you’ll check it out on the MOFILM web site. On twitter you can search “MOFILM” for related posts.
True Stories
Its know its been a little while since I last posted but I am starting to feel it again so here goes. As I have stated in the past, the intent of our communication messaging is to convey three important ideas. One, you can trust us to always have your best interests in mind. Two, we have a unique take on how technology and entertainment can make your life better and finally, you can always expect to find great prices. Ultimately our expectation is that, you walk out of the store happier, than when you came in.
Spring TV Rough Cuts
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 Spring. 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.
“A Bigger World”
As a company, we have a long history of adding new products to our assortment, dating back over 40 years to the evolution of “Sound of Music” into what is now Best Buy. We used to sell mainly stereo speakers if you can believe it and now we obviously sell a whole lot more stuff. Most great retailers expand product assortments over time, I think because as they get good at filling customer needs, satisfied customers want more from their favorite retailers. I like Apple and as they enter new categories, I try them out and happily wait for the next new launch.
Secondary Markets- A New Growth Opportunity For Best Buy
We have a new team at Best Buy called the Secondary Market Team. Most people don’t have a clear idea of our vision in this area or what the team is doing. This is a team that gets me very excited about the future at Best Buy, let me tell you why.
Secondary markets refers to all the buying and selling involved in “non fresh” product. Things like vendor overstock, consumer returns, refurbished, used, etc. that are often sold through alternative channels like auction sites, clearance centers, overstock stores, etc. You might be shocked to learn that secondary market electronics sales represent an estimated $15B market in the United State. This is a space where Best Buy has only just touched the surface of all the opportunity. Getting our “fair share” of sales in this market is easily a $1B revenue opportunity for us.
Feb Final TV Spots
I have posted final versions of the three “True Story,” ads that we have produced for February. Copy test results for this campaign have been very strong. Our January TV ads (see January ad post to view them) were the highest scoring ads we have ever received on key metrics like “Persuasion,” and “Clutter Breakthrough” to name a few. They also landed effectively landed our key message of our people as Best Buy’s competitive differentiator.
These February ads also scored very well in copy testing on these metrics. I am interested to hear what you think.
Web Version
January Final TV Spots
Attached are our final TV January spots. For those who are interested you can see the impact music and backgrounds make by comparing the “rough cuts” in my most recent post titled “January and February Advertising.”
These run until Superbowl on TV and the web. Let me know what you think.
January and February Best Buy Advertising
As is my new custom, the following are a range of rough cuts from close to final to more rough versions of TV spots planned to run in January and February. Our first spot actually began running yesterday as I saw it while watching Desperate Housewives. This campaign is titled, “True Stories,” and began running in November as part of our holiday advertising campaign. The intent for our communication messaging is to convey three important ideas. One, you can trust us to always have your best interests in mind. Two, we have a unique take on how technology and entertainment can make your life better and finally, you can always expect to find great prices. Ultimately our expectation is that, you walk out of the store happier, than when you came in.