Macy’s has an amazing commercial running on TV right now. It utilizes their rich 150 year history for material by tapping foregone stars who have mentioned their brand on film.
I instantly felt connected to this commercial because it rang true with me. Aggregating different mentions by famous people throughout the ages is not just classy, it feels familiar. It speaks to me where I function the most- in media. Taking all this into consideration I was more than excited to share it with my friends, except… I couldn’t. Not officially anyway. Here’s how Macy’s failed after they flew.
The most obvious move that a consumer would make to interact further online would be to search for your video that you just aired on TV by typing into a search engine (most likely Google) Macy’s Commercial as I did. The first result led me to a video from Macy’s holiday campaign featuring stars of today, not yesterday which is what I was looking for. I was willing to accept this result because it took me to Macy’s official ShopMacys Youtube page. From there I would be able to find the video that I wanted, right? Wrong.
According to their Youtube page, their stats are as follows:
If you last signed in over a year ago then clearly your new commercial will not be uploaded to this account. Upon going to their company website there was no “media” section to speak of that would have current advertising campaigns which would include videos.
Now I have just gone from being a huge fan that wants to shout from the rooftops about your current campaign sharing it with my friends on every social site I am on to being duly and utterly pissed off that your incompetence and non-foresight has wasted my time searching for something that does not exist officially anywhere. After digging onto page 2 of my original search I found it hosted on a random video hosting site:
The outcome: Even though I love this commercial and think it’s branding genius I have a different association with it now. Macy’s has turned what could have been viral genius into a marketing blunder. Here’s are some things to be taken into consideration to prevent unforeseen circumstances:
Creating a campaign of any kind means followthrough
If you create a commercial people are going to assume it lives officially online somewhere. People are used to watching commercials for entertainment on YouTube and commercials as filler on Hulu. Make sure that your current campaigns have official presence on the default popular content sharing websites.
Make sure your content is search engine optimized
The one thing that Macy’s has going for them here is that the search term “Macy’s Commercial” gave me a commercial of theirs on their YouTube site. You want to make sure that when someone searches for you that you come up at the top of page 1 as well as above your competitors and detractors.
Your official social networking pages should be branded
What Macy’s gains in SEO they lack in social media branding.
Youtube: The background color is a cornflower blue. That’s it. No Macy’s logo. No ubiquitous red star. I had to do a little searching to figure out if this was an official page or a fan page. When a consumer doubts the veracity of your presence that is an instant brand fail.
Facebook: Even less of a presence than their YouTube site. At least that has videos. Their main Facebook page has a partially obscured logo that shows me their red star logo and the ‘m’. They have 6729 fans which are all doing nothing apparently because their page has no info and some images- historical pictures?and present day photos. There is one official looking post about a video contest posted?on February 26, 2009 at 8:57pm. This is how I came to find out that Macy’s kind of has a social aspect to their official website home. More on that later.
Flickr: I can only assume that this is Macy’s official page because of the contact info: rlavu [at] fds.com. FDS.com happens to point to Federated’s official site, which is the parent company of Macy’s. I say assume because besides this, there is nothing else on this page. No photos. No avatar photo. Nothing.
Twitter: The same goes here except there isn’t even any indication that this account is official because there are no updates and they aren’t following anyone. For all we know it could be someone squatting on their name.
Myspace: I personally am not a proponent of Myspace, but as far as targeting your consumers this social network should be at the top of any company’s list, especially for a younger demographic. Searching for Macy’s here proved trying, as the only official result that came up besides jobs was for Macy’s West. This site is a great guidepost for how to begin to customize and brand an official company site, yet it falls woefully short. The star theme is followed through but it’s heavy with grey- both visually AND verbally. The consumers that will be encountered here need excitement and invigoration, not a doctoral thesis in monotone colors. Besides the company being represented fragmented here, the website points to their job site www.macysjobs.com
LinkedIn: Not there. This is BY FAR, the biggest failure yet. A search for ‘macys’ under companies showed zero results. This community may not be widely used but changes are being implemented that are allowing users to interact more intuitively. This is where Macy’s can connect with businesses, potential job candidates and talk to a clientele that is far more sophisticated than any other social networking site (considering that they’re here for the primary reason of job networking). These are the people that have a disproportionate higher amount of spending money. These are the people you want to embrace.
Having an internal social network does you no good if no one can find it
Upon searching through all of the above sites, I came across a link to a video contest on Macy’s Facebook fan page. I immediately tried to parse the main subdomain social.macys.com? to no avail. Apparently the social.macys.com/keepitcooking/ link is their main area that adds different area links on to the end of it. That is a MAJOR mistake. Not their first mistake here, but a major one.
Their first mistake is not listing it on their main page. But wait, they actually do, in a roundabout way. They list it if you click on their contest web banner:
Macy's Clinton Kelly Contest Banner
Your brand is only as strong as the weakest link
What is your weakest link? Everything about? you, from your employees to your lack of involvement, is communicating your brand loud and clear. Whatever isn’t conveying your highest vision of yourself needs to go. Taking the easy road isn’t so easy when it costs you money in the long run. Saving some money in the short term just makes things harder over time. A proper well thought out brand communications strategy will address your engagement and possible outcomes in all areas that your customers will be in.
Teamwork works only if the team works
Ignorance may be bliss, but for your brand it’s an instant death knell. You will definitely have consumers that are more tech savvy than you personally could ever be. That does not mean you stop in your tracks from fear of the unknown. You hire a person that is knowledgeable and competent in the areas that you lack.
You may have a brilliant advertising agency that crafts a critically acclaimed television and print campaign. If you don’t have an equally brilliant matching digital social media campaign to match you’re dead in the water. A lie of omission is the same as a lie of commission.
Your consumers will either be invigorated to spread the word about you or incensed that they can’t. Are you making it easy for them to do so?
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Damien!
Dude, you’re thinking like a marketer… not a person, LOL. What do I mean!? Go ask 5 (or 10) of your NON-marketer friends what THEY thought and did when THEY saw the commercial.
Betcha $ they didn’t go online to search for the commercial.
Why did Macy’s even do the add!?
IMHO it was to aggregate the good feeling of the past 50 (100?) years into the prospective consumer’s mind, now. This (again, IMHO) was not a “go take action” commercial. This was a “feel good about us” commercial so that the NEXT time the consumer DID take action… they’d think of Macy’s.
Go search the Web for the commercial? Nah. Not 99% of the consumers out there. Just the marketers…. ;-)
Wow. Just wow.
Now you know the ad had to be produced by an agency, no?
And they haven’t yet pitched Macy’s on the reasons why their campaigns need to be unified across all media?
And if that pitch failed, they didn’t at least ask for the social media contacts at Macy’s to get their work posted on the official, YouTube and Facebook pages?
Shameful.
My initial reaction to search for it wasn’t because I was thinking like a marketer. I enjoyed the commercial so much that I wanted to share it with my friends. I function online as I know a big chunk of Macy’s customers do as well. It’s definitely not too much to ask that I be able to show my friends something I enjoy and think is really cool.
It was only after I wasn’t able to watch it again online or share it with my friends that I started thinking like a marketer. All I want to do is extend that good feeling that you gave to me with the commercial. When you disrupt my experience you step into a very dangerous zone that gets me thinking about your brand instead of feeling your brand. I felt good about Macy’s until I couldn’t share my feeling with my friends.
Saying that 99% of their consumers out there wouldn’t search the web for their commercial is a gross overgeneralization. If THAT was true they would have no need for a website at all. Yet Macy’s does have a website and is promoting a make a VIDEO contest on their site. They obviously think their consumers are savvy enough to create a digital video and upload it. That’s savvier than a lot of people who just use the web for email and search.
Good marketing is invisible. Bad marketing makes me work. Good marketing creates fans. Bad marketing destroys relationships.
I wasn’t the biggest Macy’s fan before but because of this commercial I wanted to be. I wanted to tell all my friends about my new found respect for them by sharing the cool thing I saw, which in turn may have made fans & customers out of them as well. I might have been so cool that I would have shown my friends their commercial on my iPhone while I was with them in person. None of that happened.
In the end all that matters is the bottom line. I was driven enough to devote my time to write an article about it when I could’ve used that time to promote Macy’s by sharing the video with my friends. I won’t do that now so Macy’s has ultimately lost out on potential customers and that’s the bottom line- making money.
Mark, I have to disagree. Even if that was the case, it still doesn’t explain all the other lapses Damien points out across their media channels. At the very least, someone from Macy’s couldn’t have at easily posted the spot on YouTube. Especially given how people search for anything there now. Would’ve cost nothing. (Unless they had nothing left in the budget. ;-p Doubtful though.)
If that‘s the case however and they could care less about extending a feelgood vibe to the net, then it shows how elitist a brand it is and how irrelevant it will become unless it adapts. (And there are plenty of ways to extend that piece online, from stories of each historical mention to consumer contests, to linking up with the Coke spot with the parade ballons from last year. Basically, stuff to get people interested and engage them more. This isn’t hard to do, yet too many brands are clueless about it.)
It’s amazing that people still put all their money into a :30 to get major talent like Macy’s did only to leave huge gaps in the online execution. There are functional lapses like this on a lot of brand sites though, not just Macy’s.
(Most recent example is the Pepsi sxsw site. Nice attempt, but their Twitter stream/aggregator flew by and only allowed you to read updates and not have any way to search, favorite or share something you saw. The whole point of this stuff is conversation and exchange of ideas, right? In addition, none of the interviews with people were streamed live [Ustream, etc.,] or even archived to live on their site after it was over, unless you caught the Blogtalk radio bits. Forget marketing, that’s just basic UX. ;-p
It’s interesting how companies with large ad budgets are still missing the relatively inexpensive opportunities to go viral.
Thank you for sharing this study Damien.
It’s unfortunate Macy’s has not only abandoned their YouTube Channel, but that they would let it rest online in such a poor state. It’s very hard for me to accept this as Macy’s official YouTube Channel. Surely this wasn’t their effort?
If that YouTube Channel does indeed belong to Macy’s, it is simply fascinating to me that a big brand (one that wouldn’t dare send out a print ad that doesn’t perfectly resonate with their image) would put so little effort into their YouTube presence. It’s inconceivable.
“When a consumer doubts the veracity of your presence that is an instant brand fail.” – Exactly!
And when you get the branding presence just right, you can achieve great results (even if you aren’t officially backed by the company – http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=135238).
Asma’s last blog post..Is Behavorial Advertising Ethical?
It is amazing to think how much money and effort and manhours Macy’s must have spent to produce such a commercial and yet they couldn’t spend an extra hour or two to get it online? That seems like such a huge waste of resources on top of being shortsighted. As far as whether people would search for it or not: my feeling is, of course they would. It has some of the key components of a successful viral campaign — it is not a hard sell, it tells a story people can relate to, and it associates itself with key moments in popular culture. A bit unfathomable that Macy’s wouldn’t see the benefit to an online presence. To not see the benefits of ANY online presence. Especially given this economy. When clients even mention ROI with regards to social media I want to say: “How about *survival*? How would that be for a good ROI?”
Thank you Damien, for such a detailed analysis.
Still wondering if anyone asked 10 of their non-marketer friends that have seen the commercial what THEY did when they saw it ;)
Damien, LOVED this quote: “Good marketing is invisible. Bad marketing makes me work. Good marketing creates fans. Bad marketing destroys relationships.” (RT’d it on my twitter account actually.)
The thing I do agree with it that the campaign wasn’t congruent AND it wasn’t set up to go viral. Potential Macy’s evangalists, such as Damien, didn’t have that THEY needed to pass on the feel-good meme.
We’ll never have such good marketing as the fans of our business provide. Serve them and they’ll serve your business.
~ Mark
Thank you for furthering the discourse on this Mark.
Of course a part of your constituency will be made up of people that don’t go online at all. As a company your actions need to be as inclusive as they can be otherwise you run the risk of disenfranchising some of your customers.
Adding media and maintaining interactions in social networks is relatively easy. If we can do it on an individual level then a company should be able to in the very least update a YouTube account by uploading a video. It’s pretty much one click of a button. Their agency should have given them the optimized small version of the commercial just for that reason.
That’s my main gripe. Uploading is as easy as clicking a button. There’s no excuse not to have it up on the default video website.
Maybe some of my friends didn’t think to look it up online right away, but they soon will. Digital and social media interactions will become more and more apart of more people’s lives as things become easier and more ubiquitous. NOW is the time to prepare oneself for when going to online becomes a part of all of what we do.
Damien Basile’s last blog post..Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-29
there’s alink on the macys homepage “macys tv” that has the commercial you’re looking for
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