Great Advertising during the Coronavirus Crisis: Sam’s Club

This is a GREAT ad. It resonates at a time like this and sends the right message – thanking its workers. Bravo to @samsclub and their agency. Instead of promoting products in their stores, they used their video and television placements to connect with customers and show appreciation to their employees. This is an excellent example of a company that understands its customer and is able to execute strategic brand work at its best.

Brands once put consumers at the heart of it all. Today, many of them fail to connect.

I find that in today’s world, many brands have forgotten how to truly connect with consumers. Pre-Internet and early Internet, I worked in advertising at a creatively-driven agency known for its breakthrough creative work for some of the biggest brands in the world. Then in another job, I led relationship marketing and digital initiatives for a key brand at a leading beverage company. At each of these companies, we first asked ourselves who our core consumer was — We went beyond demographics, segments, and psychographics, and asked what was important to them, what motivated them, what challenges were they facing – what was our key insight about this consumer at this moment in time? How might we connect with that consumer and bring our brand into their world?

Start with the consumer, then choose your channel and tactics .

At both the companies that I worked at, we put the consumer at the center of our thinking. The consumer was always first. Second was developing a disruptive strategic positioning, and last was deciding which channel we should use to tell our story.

Growth hacking is a tactic, not a strategy!

I find that today’s companies jump straight to the tactics, channels, and data. Marketing runs from a spreadsheet, and we have lost some of the magic and humanity in advertising and communicating with others. Companies have been hiring for quick hits, rather than investing in marketing leaders that know how to develop the plans and  campaigns that connect with consumers. They want a data-driven, ROI-focused leader – “a growth hacker!” “someone who lives and breathes social media!.” These are not the skills that will build a sustainable brand.

Today’s advertising is missing the thoughtful consumer connection.

Think about the advertising that has most recently flooded your inbox and social media feed.  What ads have you seen during this crisis? I will tell you what I have seen — on Facebook, Instagram, and in email, all I have seen is programmatic ads and retargeted creative. I have seen tons of ads, but nothing thoughtful or relevant.

Since the crisis, I have been barraged with “business as usual” ads and emails reminding me to buy things.

Newsflash: It’s NOT business as usual.

Please stop inundating me with weekly emails from retailers imploring me to buy this, buy that!! This week, I received an email from Theatermania promoting a discount to Broadway shows in September. They said (in not so many words) – “[Don’t worry] … we have confirmed with the productions … that these discount codes are valid”, they told me. Uh, when I saw that email, my main concern was not whether these were fake discounts – it was a question of what happened to all the now out-of-work actors on Broadway and how they might be doing?

One particularly irksome company has been RenttheRunway, who took to their instagram feed immediately after we were all ordered to quarantine at home — and posted a video with amazing ideas of clothing that would look cool during our WFH conference calls (and if that was a joke, it was lost on me). On Instagram, there is also a post of their team working from home wearing all their RentThe Runway clothes in a conference call fashion show! I cannot imagine what kind of marketing meeting these ideas came from.

A better approach: Ask yourself what is important to people now.

These ads all seem to be from data-driven marketers asking themselves how they can build sales at this time. A better approach would be to ask what your customers need of you right now and then figure out how you will meet that need with your product. I was surprised that in the Theatermania email, there wasn’t a footnote or a callout for Broadwaycares.org or a similar charity. I would have purchased Broadway tickets for September if they told me they were refundable, and I probably would have paid extra for those tickets if they told me that a significant percentage would support out-of-work actors and stagehands.

Think for a minute.

How can you as a company use your brand’s resources to support the broader community?

These ads are just adding to the constant noise and stressful Covid-19 headlines we are facing online. Friends are sick and dying. Parents are struggling to homeschool their kids. People are worried for their jobs and the future. I think most people don’t need to be told what to buy, or that they are missing out on a $50 reward from Neiman Marcus. Most people right now just need empathy or a hug.