Podcast Summary

The Opinionated Marketers discussed current marketing trends, using the newly released John Lewis Christmas advert as a starting point. [00:04] They explored the concept of "retro marketing," citing the advert's use of a record player and the effectiveness of physical mail-order catalogs in a digital age. [01:48] The conversation then shifted to customer loyalty, analyzing John Lewis's new in-store members' lounge and the missed opportunity of not merging its loyalty scheme with Waitrose's. [06:26] Finally, they contrasted traditional sales events like Black Friday with a purpose-driven approach from a sustainable company, and speculated on how the cost of living crisis might change consumer behavior during the upcoming sales. [10:53]

 

Key Points

  • Introduced the new John Lewis advert, highlighting its "shop the ad" feature which gamified the viewing experience by encouraging viewers to find hidden products. [00:04]
  • Pointed out that retailers like John Lewis were creating new in-store experiences, such as a members-only lounge, to drive footfall and build customer loyalty in the face of declining in-store sales. [03:55]
  • Argued that "retro" marketing techniques, like physical catalogs, were becoming innovative again because they stand out from digital clutter and provide a tactile experience. [01:47]
  • Emphasized that loyalty schemes are one of the most powerful tools for retailers today and criticized the failure of John Lewis and Waitrose to merge their separate programs, creating a disjointed customer experience. [06:26]
  • Praised the sustainable brand Elvis and Cress for its alternative approach to Black Friday, where they made donations instead of offering discounts, which reinforced their brand identity. [07:11]
  • Expressed skepticism about Black Friday, suggesting it encouraged unnecessary consumption, but agreed that the cost of living crisis might lead to more planned, necessity-based purchasing rather than impulse buys this year. [09:16]

 

Podcast Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

Kiran Kapur (00:04):
Right. Let's start because retro marketing, we've got to talk about the John Lewis advert landed this morning.

Charles Nixon (00:10):
I haven't seen it.

Kiran Kapur (00:12):
Oh right, you're in for a treat.

Charles Nixon (00:15):
Okey doe.

Kiran Kapur (00:16):
So I was a bit miffed because in my inbox this morning it said "As a subscriber to the John Lewis card app membership, whatever it is I've got, I could have a preview of that advert "and I was very excited. 'Preview, I'm very special'. And then I discovered it was also on the front page of the Guardian. So I decided maybe I wasn't special after all. Oh, right. Okey.

Charles Nixon (00:36):
I didn't see it on the front page of the Guardian this morning.

Kiran Kapur (00:39):
You're not a Guardian reader, Charles.

Charles Nixon (00:41):
No, but I deliver a Guardian.

Kiran Kapur (00:42):
Anyway, the John Lewis advert is, it's all about when you haven't got words, find the right gifts. It's the usual tear jerker, but it's a bit different. It's a teenage son, at that awkward teenage stage, giving a gift of an LP, a 12 inch LP to his father

Charles Nixon (01:03):
Right

Kiran Kapur (01:03):
Who then puts it on a record player, which you can buy from John Lewis. The bit that always fascinates me about the John Lewis adverts is obviously you've got these sort of standard tear jacket element. So it is quite an upbeat song this year, which is quite nice. But you've also got the 'shop the ad'

(01:21):
So you can then look for all the things that are in the advert, realise that you've missed nearly all of them. So there's a Christmas tree in the background. I missed nearly all the decorations on Christmas tree. I'm still very fascinated because it's said that there's a kitten heel shoe in there and, you all know that I love my shoes. I cannot see that in the advert. I have watched the advert three times now, first time out of curiosity and the next two times just trying to find these kitten heeled shoes. And I failed on each occasion, but it made me watch the advert.

Charles Nixon (01:47):
It's an interesting one, isn't it? Because the nature of trying to be innovative these days tends to mean that you've either got to have a very creative brain because so much of it's all been done or you bring out something from the past and the retro approach works and certainly from my perspective this weekend brought the delivery of the first Christmas catalogue from a department store. Now that is retro if you like, but it was absolutely wonderful to be able to sit, browse through it. I may or may not buy much from it, but it was very, very pleasant. It was a very good reminder that department store exists. There are lots of things to go for and it's a very pleasant way of actually shopping rather than the constant mayhem as it is either of the high street or indeed sometimes online. So I'm a great proponent of bringing back the idea if you have it, then create a catalogue or a prospectus or whatever it happens to be and send it out to your hot prospects. Because I think that element is missing in today's marketing mix.

Kiran Kapur (02:57):
It's the tactile side. It's that tactile element to being able to, and as you say, it's the difference between reading a Kindle and reading an old fashioned book made of paper. There is a different experience. And I think you're right. It's clicking back into that slightly different experience.

Charles Nixon (03:15):
Because it's delivered these days through the post, which you probably don't get a great deal of. Then it stands out again because if you do the envelope right, then people are intrigued and want to open it. So now the full marketing issues come to light and it is a way of innovating even if it happens to be using an old method

Kiran Kapur (03:35):
And another old fashioned method. And again, it's John Lewis again, I'm not obsessed by John Lewis. I just happened to have been in my inbox a lot this week. They are opening up a lounge in their Oxford Street store to encourage people who are loyalty card members or whatever the membership scheme is called to come along. And you can have a massage, you can have a hot drink, you can have a break from the mayhem of Christmas shopping. And the whole point is to ensure to encourage people back into the store because John Lewis' sales, it's open that the John Lewis' sales are going down, particularly their store sales because people aren't going to the stores as much though they always seems to be manic in my local one. So that I thought was quite interesting. It's a different way of generating a feeling of customer loyalty. They've tried things like this before when you used to be able to get a free cup of coffee or a free, I think you used to get a free newspaper at one stage if you were a member, you went to the store

Charles Nixon (04:34):
Yes, that was a Waitrose.

Kiran Kapur (04:34):
So it's a different way of playing on the loyalty to get you into the store.

Charles Nixon (04:39):
It's an interesting one. It'll have to be managed very well otherwise it's doomed to closure because the biggest problem you're going to have is a lot of cost for no tangible benefit other than potential loyalty. So you are going to have to monitor it very, very carefully. Other places, whether it happens to be Virgin or it was HSBC have gone down this route before. And the question really becomes: is it worthwhile and is it the one to go when the cutbacks come from the customer's perspective, it's ideal if the image of going to find a tranquil space in the middle of the mayhem of shopping is available to you. My immediate concern on reading the article was that it seemed to be that you had to book the space, therefore the likelihood it was going to be busy you could end up queuing. And that in itself is going to just add to the stress, the idea of loyalty, loyalty cards, loyalty rewards is probably one of the major powerful ways these days that department stores and others can retain customers.

(05:49):
There's a small town near me, nearly every shop has a loyalty scheme. The benefit of that is that the town is always got a good number of customers going around, which encourages other people to go and have a look, even if it happens to be the bread store, giving you stickers for the number of loaves that you buy. It is a simple way of returning value to the customer. And I would encourage, again, given the problems which we have with a rising prices and the economic situation, people to think about the loyalty scheme. If you have repeat purchase ability, John Lewis is an interesting situation at the moment. They are seems going to make an obvious choice, which is to merge the loyalty schemes of Waitrose and John Lewis's. Every time I go into John Lewis's, I'm asked if I'm a member and the answer is, "No, but I have a Waitrose card". "Oh, terribly sorry, sir". And yet the two are the same in terms of companies and they just need to get their systems together. And I think they have done well in increasing the number of their loyalty cards for John Lewis's, but they couldn't do a great deal better by making the whole thing a bit more seamless.

Kiran Kapur (07:02):
And then the other one that caught my eye this week was just a bit different. So we are coming up to Black Friday. There's always a big fuss about Black Friday. Lots of companies are obviously getting in on it and I think customers do expect a lot of companies now to offer a Black Friday deal. So I was very intrigued by a company that I like very much called Elvis and Kresse I'm not certain how you pronounce it. They are very much a sustainability company. They sell bags of all types from laptop bags, to handbags, to document cases, every type of bag you can imagine. But the two ways that they, everything is made either with recycled fire hoses,

(07:48):
Which obviously makes them very endurable and they're great sponge bags. Full disclosure, I do have several of their items. And they also rescue leather that is used by Burberry but would otherwise be offcuts and they stitch it together to make leather, leather goods as well. And quite often the two things are combined. They're very proudly sustainable. Obviously they're reusing things. They support the firefighters charity. They support what's called the Barefoot College, which is again another charity that provides employment. And they sent out an email that said, "we don't do discounts, we make donations". And I thought it was a lovely way of making them stand out that this is who they are, this is what they do. Their products are not cheap. We are not talking about cheap end of sustainability here. They're good quality, high end products that involve donations. And I thought that was a really interesting way of making themselves stand out.

Charles Nixon (08:49):
Yes, I like that. That again is, that's something that is if you like rewarding in terms of if they understand your marketplace correctly, then you're doing the thing that your marketplace would like and that to some degree therefore is rewarding your customers in terms of we will give something on your behalf. And yes, the Black Friday aspect is an interesting one. I suspect this year it probably will be very successful because of the cost of living crisis. But the biggest downside to it of course, is it just stimulating people to buy things that they don't necessarily really need, if you like, is a sort of 'bar humbug' approach. At my particular age of life, I'm quite happy to take it. I'm not quite sure everybody needs all the things that people are offering ridiculous amounts of discount for. No, don't like Black Friday.

Kiran Kapur (09:43):
I think this year I am getting a sense, and this is not based on market research, this is just purely subjective and I make no apology for that. My impression is that more people are expecting Black Friday discounts and are therefore things that they were planning to buy (chocolate for Christmas, which is massively expensive this year) there is much more emphasis on, 'I'm going to buy this because it's chocolate for Christmas, but I'm going to wait to see what the Black Friday discounts are'. As opposed to, 'Oh look, that's got a discount, I'll buy it anyway'. Because it's a cost of living crisis, because people are having to budget more, so my impression is that it is more of a planned expenditure this year, but that obviously, like all impressions, that is purely subjective.

Charles Nixon (10:31):
Well, I hope that would be the case. You're absolutely right. I think one of the universities did an analysis, that it's about four items that have caused the vast majority of inflation, chocolate or cocoa beans being one, coffee and dairy products being a major constituent and whether or not they produce some sort of bargains on that subject. Yes, fine. It'd be interesting to see some sort of analysis at the end of the day as to what is sold on Black Friday. It has become almost like the sales, I mean what's happened is we used to have New Year's sales, people queued up outside stores and then rushed in the old days. And same thing, we had end of season sales, now we have Black Friday and what all the other terminologies are. And so in one respect it's the same technique, but it's just using a different time zone and a different way. So yes, it will be interesting to see the different types of marketing I think that are used and what innovation is given. I mean, one could almost say that it's looking for the April Fools adverts to see the ones that make you laugh, the ones that make you think about it, which is what we actually want out of Black Friday at this time, rather than just being beaten over the head with 80% discounts.

Kiran Kapur (11:51):
And I think in fact the of innovation in advertising is going up in Black Friday because, as you say it used to just be a banner advert - 'I've got so much money off' and it would be usually in black and white. But I suspect this year we are going to see, I'm already seeing in fact, people telling me that they're going to do Black Friday deals and that the way that it is being discussed, it appears to be changing.

Charles Nixon (12:14):
Well, we got a little bit of time before we actually see all these sorts of things coming out, so we'll keep an eye on it and we'll talk to you next time about what we see in the next week. Goodbye.