Whether to draw the masses or woo the upscale shopper, retailers are pulling out all the stops — and stunts — to snag customers for the post-Thanksgiving start of holiday shopping.
More competition and less distinctiveness are driving gimmicks.
Of course, the time to work on being distinctive was much earlier than the day before Thanksgiving. Distinctiveness must be part of your company's DNA. And every employee must be able to articulate it and live it. (See earlier post about the employee's role in branding.)
Sure, we all like a good bargain. But what reason will we have to revisit their store the other 11 months of the year? Target gives us cheap chic, moosejaw.com gives us great stories and humor along with their products, Nordstrom's gives us great service. Unfortunately, the list of those who have distinguished themselves is much smaller than those who haven't.
If all you have going for you this season is a gimmick and a cheap price, it's going to be a long year until next Thanksgiving.
To add to this point, have you seen Brand Autopsy's post on Brand Irrelevance? John talks about RadioShacks irrelevance the other 330 days of the year. http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2005/11/radioshacks_hol.html
Happy holidays...
Posted by: Patrick | November 23, 2005 at 06:36 PM
Yep. Absolutely. And brilliant title, to boot.
Posted by: olivier blanchard | November 27, 2005 at 01:31 PM