Tis the season for come backs. Or at least attempts at one. First Kmart released Ship Your Pants and now JCPenney, or just JCP these days, has come out in a new ad titled It’s No Secret saying, “We’ve made some mistakes, but we’ve also listened to you. Please come back. Pretty please.”
But is this commercial going to be enough? Or where does Penney’s need to go from here?
So am I supposed to ship or shi* my pants. I’m not completely clear. Either way, this ad is hilarious. And going viral. For example, I’ve had two different people text it to me in the last hour in addition to all of the online shares I’ve seen.
But despite the hype, is Ship Your Pants a one time headline grabber or a game changer like what Old Spice experienced a few years ago?
Recently, I’ve been studying the The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. He talks about various growth engines and I love how it describes viral businesses. So I’m borrowing his concept and adding some thoughts of my own.
For the purposes of this post, I am not discussing creating one viral campaign. I am instead focusing on products or services that are inherently viral themselves. In other words, they don’t use sticky growth (subscriptions) or paid growth (print, TV, radio ads, etc).
Brands that identify large-scale social disruptions and then position themselves within the disruption as the brand of choice reap great financial rewards.
For example, brands such as Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Apple and Ben & Jerry’s have all exploited some disruption.
I will spend the next few minutes outlining several current disruptions and then how you might approach them.
Recently at a white elephant party, someone brought an old but functioning Game Boy (pictured above). As soon as it was opened, every guy in the room started salivating.
Through some maneuvering, I walked out with the prize and a big grin on my face.
Now let’s be honest, I won’t actually use it much. The games on my phone are much better. But still. I had to have it.
Why?
In early October, I wrote a post on framing your competition. I used Obama and Romney as an example. Obama framed Romney as an out-of-touch, millionaire who can’t relate to the common man.
With the election now over, I want to show you just how important and powerful the rich-man-Romney-frame was.
You may recall a few months ago that Apple pulled its new Genius ad campaign. I will briefly use this campaign as an example of a company who momentarily forgot who they are.
One of the core messages that Apple has used in its advertising is just how simple a Mac is to use. The below commercial, titled Choose a Vista, exemplifies the Apple is easy message.