The forecasts for back-to-school sales are important, both as major contributors to many retailers’ yearly numbers but also as an indicator of whether holiday sales will be good or bad. Most experts put this year’s school sales at even to a few percentage points above last year — and that was before the government almost reneged on its debt and the jobs picture flat-lined.
The truth is that such a tepid (and small) forecast was always more of a hope than a prediction, but with it came an interesting observation: Store traffic has and will likely continue to decrease, so any sales will come from a fewer number of shoppers buying more than they did last year. This is a big deal, made only bigger by the fact that most retailers seem incapable of admitting it, let alone doing something about it.
You should thank your lucky stars you’re not a retailer CMO. If you are, you have my condolences. Skip the rest of this article and go get yourself onto one of those marketing panels where you can wax poetic about brands and tweeting and whatever. The 2012 job market is going to be of particular interest to you.
Here’s a simple illustration of the problem: Are you aware of a retailer doing anything new or interesting this year compared to last? I’m not talking about creating great ads, placing product in webisodes, orchestrating complicated “like” campaigns via Facebook, or any other communications artifact. That’s easy stuff, and it’s the same throwaway stuff that any marketer can create for any brand, especially those doing business on the web. I understand that many retailers are banking on exclusive apparel lines, which seems like a high-stakes crapshoot to me. It’s also nothing new.
It’s as if these retailers have never “met” their customers before, and each year need to troll to find them. But surely that’s not the case. Every family shopping for school this year had to shop for it last year, save those of newly minted kindergartners. They have rituals around this activity, along with specified budgets and limited time. They already know the game — from who has the best selection, sizing and quality to when to catch the best prices and how to facilitate returns. There’s no possible way that one store will possess “the shirt” that everyone wants, or that it will for long. The funniest marketing rarely translates into the best sales.

To read the full article visit: http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/back-school-retailers-blackboard-ideas-ipad-age/

Article Source: AdAge.com

Related Posts:

• Mobile Marketing: Online Coupons Boast High Redemption Rate
• Agency News: Marketing Lessons From JoePa
• Stevens & Tate Marketing and Endora Digital Solutions Announce Lend A Hand Marketing Giveaway
• Brainstorming: The Search for the Big Idea
• The End of Link Building as We’ve Known and Loved it

Stevens & Tate Marketing, a full-service advertising agency, developed The Daily Twitch to consolidate and provide useful information surrounding advertising and marketing. We are devoted to serving content useful to an array of industries including B2B, Hospitality, Real Estate, Education, Senior Living, Food, Packaging and Retail.

We encourage you to view our work on the S&T website in the following categories:

B2B Advertising
Food Retail Advertising
Healthcare Advertising
Real Estate Advertising
Senior Living Advertising
Hospitality Advertising