Baskin Dim Bulb branding advertising social media business strategy

Brand on the Run

The second song from the Branding Only Works On Cattle soundtrack is ready for your listening pleasure:

Download Brand on the Run

Brand on the Run tells the sad story of a marketing engagement gone bad, sung by a heartbroken brand in a retroelectro-acidbluesy style.  It's my second collaboration with lyricist Jim Lenskold, who otherwise leads the Lenskold Group and helps marketers find ways to measure their ROI (he literally wrote the book on it).  Our first release, The Sock Puppet Blues, topped 1,000 views on YouTube. 

I want also to thank Cate Baskin, who stepped in and saved the backup vocals. 

Branding Only Works On Cattle is the first and only business book to come with its own soundtrack.  As all companies look toward a challenging 2009 (to put it mildly), the book makes two very timely points about brands:

1. We need to change our definitions of brands as image and intention, and give up on our expectations that we can manipulate what consumers think (or that it would matter if we could)
2. If we do focus on behaviors as the underlying and unifying principle instead, it'll open up lots of new ideas, repurpose old ones in more effective ways, unleash financial resources across the enterprise, and enable companies to seize market opportunities that heretofore seem beyond our reach

The songs are...well...supposed to be fun, as well as illustrative of those themes.  Here are the lyrics:

Brand on the Run

I walked into your life
as the latest, greatest thing.
Funny pictures and lines
of the promises I'd bring

My interstitial melody
got you to sing my tune.
You knew my name, you liked my game,
thought we'd get together soon.

Brand on the run,
it looked like so much fun.
Brand on the run,
now my work is never done.

Oh darling, oh darling:
I want to be your brand.

Others tried to woo you
with their dazzle and distraction.
But you kept me on top,
I could feel your reaction.

You talked me up to your friends
as your latest, greatest love.
What you got was hot
and you couldn't get enough.

But when I thought
that I had satisfied your needs,
your attention drifted
and I knew that you would leave.

Looking right through me
missing the things for which you'd dreamed;
sad that all my promises
had left you unredeemed.

Brand on the run,
it looked like so much fun.
Brand on the run,
now my work is never done.

Oh darling, oh darling:
c'mon and touch your brand.

See you on TV:
What am I supposed to be?

Flipping past your ads:
Who thought it'd get this bad?

Conversationally:
You really don't want to talk to me?

Can't you make me care:
I'm getting tired of this dare.

I was sure that the joy I gave
would always satisfy.
But every time I change my story,
you still won't buy.

The thrill is gone, and you've moved on,
but I won't let you go.
New and improved,
I've got to give you my version 2.0.

Brand on the run,
it looked like so much fun.
Brand on the run,
now my work is never done.

Oh darling, oh darling:
won't you let me be your brand?

This Luggage Gives Erections

I love deconstructing brand image advertising, and I think this ad evidences an innovative partnership between Viagra ED medicine and Hartmann luggage.

Talk about a hard sell.

Obviously, there's no such deal, but there might as well be one.  The imagery in the ad is identical to that you-know-what-those-old-people-are-about-to-do stuff in the Viagra and Cialis spots.  The suitcase itself is positioned in a strategic, er, spot.  It's all zipped up, waiting to get opened...

TMI, right?  But what is the ad supposed to communicate?  Marketers had to have sat around a conference table and come up with it.  There's branding going on in the imagery; smart people think about elements, talent, movement, expression, color palette, etc.  

If they weren't trying to shoot an ED ad, they coulda.

This deconstruction business is dicey, even on a good day.  Ask two people who should react to an ad similarly because of some shared demographic or psychographic data, and they won't.  And marketing to lifestyle benefits always runs the risk of getting so broadly thematic that it renders the takeaway message generic, if memorable at all.   A happy or funny take-away from an ad is about as relevant to a future purchase decision as the temperature outside right now.

Yet Hartmann decided that the most important information it had to share with its potential customers was that 1) two generically good-looking mature white people are happy, and 2) there's a suitcase in front of them.

I'm dim, I know, but i just don't understand it.  If I turn the magazine page too quickly, I'd probably not even remember what the ad was branding; if I look at it for more than a nanosecond, it's long enough for me to figure out that I can't quite figure it out.

Does the new Tweed Collection hold stuff better, faster, easier, or more cheaply (more more durably, hence a higher price)?  Are the bags configured to fit under airplane seats, or pack the most into overhead bins now that checking luggage costs money?  Could the material be lighter to carry than something else, yet deliver some other benefit (resilient to stains)?

Oops.  That's all functional benefits stuff, so it doesn't count when it comes to branding.  Corporate image isn't about giving you anything so relevant or utilitarian.

This ad is supposed to give you something else.

While Rome Burns

A day doesn't pass that we're not reminded that our financial system is crumbling in flames and ashes around us, yet the first time I've heard directly from my bank in ages is via a generic email about all the changes they've made to "some of our online disclosures and agreements."

And I got two identical emails, separated by a minute, which made me wonder if I was getting phished, or spammed, or whatever.

The branding challenge facing financial institutions is about as hopeful as that for airlines or oral surgeons: the future promises nothing but pain, and there's little the presumptions of communications can do to overcome experiential reality.  Citibank is in flames, the stock markets are too hot to handle, and a school of thought suggests that there's nothing the financial institutions can do beyond hunkering down... and trying not to inhale too much smoke.

I disagree.  If ever there were the opportunity for using direct communication and social media, it's now. 

Depositors and investors are starved for information.  We lack proper context for the incessant flicker of incendiary news stories.  No standard-issue, declarative corporate ad can address this issue, let alone deliver anything relevant or lasting about the financial services brands. 

So why aren't these brand names leading the necessary conversations about what's going on?  Throw experts into chat?  Pose rhetorical, context-setting queries, and then actively prompt the verbalization of all the suspicions and fears that we all are bursting to share (and to address)?

• How about using direct communication to tell customers what's up -- perhaps find ways to dimensionalize the business, in much the same way manufacturers provide insights into how they source, make, and support stuff? 
• Tell me about regulations that do work, or the differences between commercial paper and developing country stocks (or whatever).
• Invite customers into real, one-to-one conversations on issues that matter to them; make every employee to mentor a handful of customers, with the mandate of making sure they don't 1) freak out, and 2) withdraw their funds?


Instead, I hear and get nothing, which leaves me to think anything and everything.  Well, I get an email entitled "Important updates to your Online Agreement," which is full of dense details about things I didn't ask about, don't quite understand, or want to read.  I half suspect that they're screwing me over.

But my bank doesn't care.  It's either disconnected from reality, or actively ignoring it. 

Sounds like a lot 'o fiddle playing to me.  And Rome continues to burn.

The Bias of Capitalism

How do you feel about providing a cash bailout to companies whose leaders have been short-sighted, at best, and criminally inept, at worse, and which support a large block of people who look out only for themselves, and want to grab as much money as they can?

Fahgeddaboutit, right?  Those auto companies don't deserve a dime of taxpayer money.

Only I'm describing Citi and the other consumer-facing financial institutions that are lining up to get handouts worth $750 billion (and climbing). 

Think about it for a minute: over the span a weekend's worth of closed-door deal-making, Citi made off with $20 billion outright, and guarantees for $300 billion of its worst loans.  Companies like American Express are falling over themselves to get qualified as "banks" so they can share in the largesse.  AIG got $75 billion in little more than a week, and did nothing more than appear (and be) pitiful.

Contrast that to the heat Detroit's automakers have been getting for having the audacity to ask for help:

• Legislators demanded specific plans, as if they had the savvy and insight to decide if the automakers had the capacity to run their companies 
• A steady stream of negative publicity has focused most often on the stupidity of making SUVs, and on the terribly selfish (if not outright oafish) unionized workers who've caused the problems. 

Bailout?  Yeah, right.  I think we've all pretty much concluded so far that the legacy US automakers don't deserve it.

But Citi does?

The argument for saving Citi (or AIG, or Freddie, or Fannie, yadda yadda) is that they're too big to fail...if a major consumer-facing financial institution went bust, it could trigger a run on the banks.  200 million savers and investors could be impacted by Citi's failure.

This is a marvelously circular argument, as the natural conclusion is that no financial institution can be allowed to fail, as each feeds into the system (Lehman Bros had little consumer relevance, so it was discarded).  "The Market" is a thing that exists beyond time, place, and the laws of causality, and we need to help and protect it, even as we can't quite point to what or where it is (Stocks?  Mortgages?  LIBOR rates?  Small-business loans?). 

The logic also makes serious moral value judgments about the nature of capital versus labor.  

• Investors can chase the highest returns possible, even to the point of embracing (or willfully ignoring) serious risk, but they're not guilty of the same selfishness as that of union workers who negotiate for the best possible contract terms.  Shouldn't self-interest be self-interest, whether shown by union workers getting the best contract deals, or investors chasing the highest interest rates/returns? 
• Once an investor/depositor has an asset, it's a sacrosanct obligation to honor and reward that capital (with more capital); wheres a worker who spends a lifetime building assets for a company in exchange for retirement health care is an "onerous liability" that unfairly impedes said company's competitiveness?
• The dependencies of capital (one bank lends to another while borrowing from a third, multiplied a zillion times over, all around the world) are core to the very fabric of our way of life, while the dependencies of people, suppliers, manufacturers, and the communities they both enjoy and support...well, those aren't so important in this global marketplace of ours?

So it's with straight faces that Congress can demand plans from the automakers to fundamentally rethink their entire operations, from what they make, to how they pay their employees and vendors.

But no such radical plan will be forthcoming from Citi, or any other financial institution benefiting from the bailout funds.  There are no alternatives to the absolutes of Captialism, and their failures have been deemed failures of judgment and execution, not fundamental principles or practices.  All they need to do is revise their tactics, while the automakers need to rework overall strategies.

There's a bias here to the presumptions of Capitalism, and I think it clouds our ability to see and understand what’s really going on. 

It's why we hear a lot about "fiscal stimulus" and tax cuts vs. job creation.  And judging from the toxic nonsense around using the word socialism during the Presidential campaign, we're not about to start talking about our problems any differently. 

There's a branding lesson here, somewhere.

Speaking With One Voice

My essay last week in InformationWeek about my difficulties getting a single answer from the companies partnered behind my iPhone generated one basic response from readers of my post:

Duh.

OK, the actual responses were a bit different, but were more like three variations on a theme:

1. I'm dumb, and I should do a better job of solving my own technology issues
2. The iPhone is dumb, so I should pick a different product (see first response)
3. Such a situation is dumb and all too common (see first and second responses)

It was that third conclusion that compelled me to write the post in the first place.  My problem -- a quirky inability to send emails a second time after having done so quite easily the first -- had proved insolvable by the three technology partners responsible for my iPhone experience.  Apple, AT&T, and GoDaddy had each been very pleasantly unhelpful on the phone, and their various forums (and third-party resources) had given me no useful answers. 

What they'd each done is confirm that their parts of the integrated whole were functioning just fine. 

So I'd written that this was downright silly.  It was as if I had a medical problem, but my options were only to visit a series of specialists without having access to a general practitioner. 

From a branding perspective, wasn't this a significant liability for each of the participants in the partnership (or so I mused), as consumers expect products and services to work, irrespective of who is responsible for what aspect of that performance? 

I felt that this might be a major stumbling block for technology brands facing a future wherein more of what they sell will be integrated with things that other brands are selling.  As a consumer, I don't want to know that Apple's hardware was working fine, per se, any more than I would want confirmation from the coolant manufacturer that my fridge freon was charged even though my milk was turning to cottage cheese. 

Thinking as a marketer, I wanted to know why there wasn’t more time/money spent up front on providing truly integrated, component-agnostic support, and whether that was a smart go-forward branding premise.

Duh. 

Here I was thinking that a major branding threshold for technology providers was to offer seamlessly integrated stuff, like appliances, and two-thirds of my responders felt the exact opposite: it was my responsibility to be the integrator, and there's nothing wrong with that (just something wrong with me).  I got a fair number of very well-intentioned suggestions on what specifically I might try.  A chunk of them were unimpressed with my branding conclusions, and said I should pick another product.

Now granted, InformationWeek readers are a technology-savvy, insider group, and their reactions weren't illustrative of how the general consumer might feel. 

So I ask you:

• Shouldn't there be unified, one-stop destinations for support for services or devices that involve multiple partners?  At a minimum, shouldn't customer support quantify and qualify the "top ten" problems that each partner encounters, and cross-reference them in a formal, thoughtful way, so you can find solutions more easily?
• Would this help or hurt the participating brands (or have no impact either way)?
• Is such an offering something that you'd pay for, on top of the normal service that comes with the purchase (or lack thereof)?

I should add that my essay prompted contact from high-level people at both AT&T and GoDaddy, and that they have been very thoughtful and earnest in trying to fix my specific problem.  I'm thankful for it. 

Thinking again as a marketer, though, it's intriguing that I got said calls as a result of my posting (one of the folks actually monitors Twitter), and not simply as a regular customer.  My problem wasn't a social media issue, but simply a service problem.  And I wasn't fishing for help, but rather using my woes to suggest a business strategy opportunity. 

If those brands spoke with one voice the first time I encountered a problem with my iPhone, I would have been a far happier customer...and written a post illustrating a business success case history, not a still-undelivered promise.

Shooting the Messenger

Late last month, Virgin Atlantic fired 13 flight attendants for making disparaging comments about safety and passengers in a Facebook forum.  British Airways followed a few days later to punish employees who posted references to travelers as "smelly" and "annoying."

As the proponents of social media tell it, these were examples of the necessity for companies to 1) have better rules about employee blogging, 2) monitor more closely the places where they might talk, and 3) more aggressively participate in said media, from a corporate perspective.

Here's a novel, alternate idea: fix your management problems.  Skip thinking the answer is to do a better job of tail wagging, and ask different questions of the dog.

It's not a secret that airline passengers are often both smelly and obnoxious.  Anybody who has to fly more than one a year will tell you so.  I had a flight delayed earlier this week because a passenger couldn't find room to store her suitcase in the cabin, and needed let let everyone within earshot know just how unhappy she was (and that we were all complicit   offenders). I've sat next to people removing nail polish, and others eating giant pizzas.

And maintenance, like service, is directly dependent on the available time and resources to deliver it, so it's more than likely that some lesser priority items might sometimes (or often) slip.  One of the fired attendants referenced cockroaches in plane galleys.  Would any of us be surprised to see that?  Not me.

So the airline employees weren't fired because they used social media.  They were fired because they told the truth, and social media just happened to be the way they did it.  Whatever they'd posted online had probably been the topics of face-to-face conversations for a long, long time.

If the marketers at Virgin or BA had any self-respect, they'd refuse to act as the media gestapo, and decline to spend any more company money outsourcing enforcement policies to external mercenaries.  Instead, they should help their employers see the real problems that need fixing:

• You can't cut staff and expect fewer people to maintain the same (let alone better) service, whether serving drinks or cleaning the planes
• You can't declare policies -- like bag or food charges -- and then expect the employees to absorb the negative reactions from passengers
• Plane turn-around schedules can't be so tight that plane clean-up has to start 20 minutes before the things actually land, and
• You can't let passengers treat airplane cabins as their own personal space, with no obvious rules for their behavior.  Remember, these are the people who don't stop a stop signs because they're talking on their phones.  They cut lines at Starbucks.  There need to be standards posted and enforced

While I know that every external factor has made it nearly impossible for airlines to be profitable, they've done their very best to make sure that their employees fail.  No amount of branding communications -- or policing -- can or should change that. 

Figure out ways to make airplane cabins more pleasant, and get rid of the cockroaches in the galleys, and there’ll be no more negative posts on Facebook or anywhere else. That's the real branding challenge, and the message everyone needs to hear.

What the airlines have been doing so far is shooting the messenger.

Ask is Still Searching

Ask's latest branding campaign is intended to frighten or offend most of its potential customers.  It does the job brilliantly.

The TV spots feature some nerdy guy with his chin resting on a pregnant woman’s shoulder, whether she’s walking down the street or laying in bed.  He asks questions that she might predictably ask.  The punchline is that Ask.com will help you find the answers.

To say that it's creepy is an understatement, especially when the guy in bed is wondering aloud if it's ok for the would-be mom to have sex with her partner.  It's also insulting, as he's obviously ethnic (for some incomprehensible reason), which makes Motrin's baby sling campaign (which drove this week's Twitterfest of hate) seem like a downright compliment to all of womanhood.

I can’t imagine why the braintrust at Ask would think that there's a brand attribute in Internet search more important than accuracy or utility.

Maybe that's what they're trying to get at with the campaign, but the message is obfuscated by all the creative and complex nonsense that brand experts regularly wrap around otherwise simple ideas.  Ask can't make the case for why its search is better, faster, easier, or othewise different from Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any number of lesser entrants in the category; it must instead make a statement about its brand.

Talk about a search query that turns up snake eyes.

Watching TV is kind of like aimless search, in that the consumer is somewhat aware and/or receptive to getting information, even if he or she wasn't necessarily actively looking for it.  That's the premise behind advertising overall: throw stuff at people who broadly might possess some willingness to buy your stuff, and hope that whatever it is you're telling them catches them at the right moment to actually register.

And an ad...any ad...has a really limited amount of time in which to earn that attention, as well as implant an idea that'll get used later on.  Or prompt an action that'll be more immediate (call, write, inquire, whatever).  In this sense, all advertising is direct, ultimately, even if all it asks you to do is to remember the content.

Ask's challenge to use this nanosecond it captures of your our attention to communicate that it provides better search.  There are probably lots of ways to make this care, many of them really fun and creative.  But the overarching goal is to make that case in a simple, unambiguous way.  There's little reason to do much else.

So what’s Ask's branding answer?  It wants you to remember the creepy guy.  Or get offended because he’s a stereotype of one sort or another.  At best.

In this way, the brand fails to deliver on the very premise of its campaign.  It can't even answer its own inquiry: how do we attract new users?

The Twits at Motrin

I'm a dim bulb, but I think that it's fun to watch a miraculous event coalesce into religious canon.  Motrin just added a parable to the Social Media Holy Book.

The marketers behind the popular pain killer ginned up an online ad about moms and the the back pain that comes from carrying babies in shoulder pouches, or slings.  It wasn't particularly original or funny, and it had zero utility content (i.e. it didn't tell would-be consumers anything usefully new).

In other words, it was pure branding, and it seems the goal was to get people talking about it online.

It's via such conversation that marketers are supposed to reach consumers, now that it's been deemed politically-incorrect to actively (and honestly) try to sell them something.  Converse they did.  Well, more like rant, one another another, in a process that my friend Alexander Wolfe over at InformationWeek calls versation

The primary engine was Twitter, a service whose 140-character message limit seems intended to keep people from sharing anything substantive.  However, these tweets -- I think the notes should be called twits -- are perfect for expressing either pointless or blunt emotions, like bordeom, or anger. 

Thousands of messages declared that the campaign was offensive, more than a few calling for a boycott to protest Motrin's trivialization of women's pain and a favorite baby-carrying technique.  A day later, the campaign was pulled, and apologies were issued from a clearly chastised corporate spokesperson.

So prepare to get lectured on what Motrin did wrong in communicating with the twittersphere: this self-annointed, often anonymous collection of people is an "influencial audience" you should talk to prior to running any new marketing. 

Create more forums for them to use, and spend more time and money getting their approval.  And, whatever you do, do more of it next time, because there are always more and newer technologies and services that let people connect.  I'd like to offer up a slightly different, perhaps apocryphal epistle for any marketer about to receive the accepted wisdom of Motrin's parable: It's about your branding, stupid.

If you choose to market pointless, irrelevant things, chances are there's at least one community somewhere, online or off, that will hate you for it.  A far larger percentage of consumers will simply like and trust you less.  The idea that any marketing strategy would get invented exclusively to use social media is itself just plain dumb; you'd never invent a unique reason to run billboards, or hire people to walk the streets wearing placards, would you?

There's no reason that you have to use any media, unless your brand strategy calls for it.Those who live by the sword...  Trying to guesstimate what people will think is funny or cool is a losing proposition, with a downside far greater and more likely than any upside.  So trying to earn recognition for it, let alone hope that it'll somehow, someday translate into purchase-influencing memories is, well, kind of like throwing dice in craps: it's not branding, it's gambling.

And if you think that there's some inherent value to just doing it (or your CEO does because of that latest story in a business magazine), you should plan for any and all reactions.  I guarantee you that somewhere there's an expert who believes that Motrin's campaign was an uttter success because it got people talking. Full stop. Give them something to do other than complain.  I think that social media programs need a purpose other than buzz or conversation.  It's just too easy for it to become a vehicle for sharing anger or a complaint.

You need to envision motivations for doing good things (could there have been some collective vow to buy J&J products because of something it did?).  The fact that in this example the network was buzzing about an ad, and not about things that might matter -- like ethical sourcing, employee benefits, career advancement for women, etc. -- tells me that the complainers were less influenced by broad principle than they were irritated by immediate circumstance.

But coming up with a behavior you want to get out of a social media program is a good litmus test of whether or not you should get into one.Like I said, we're going to see the Motrin story added to the theology of social media.  Get prepared for the sermon at your next marketing conference, or hearing about it in the next agency pitch.  Everyone is going to try to teach us things about it.

I just wonder if there's really anything there to learn.


What Will Citi Stop Doing?

Citi's announcement that it'll fire 52,000 people begs a basic question: what will it do to its brand?

No, I don't mean the impact of the bad news.  Every business other than Wal-Mart and your local pawnshop seems to be in trouble these days, so we're talking tears in rain here (thank you, Roy Batty).  I doubt that anybody will switch their checking account because their emotional attachment to Citi has been damaged by the bad news. 

However, there may well be customer defections based on what Citi has chosen to stop doing. 

That's 52,000 (and 17,000 already dismissed this year) less to do the account transfers, count the cash, or do whatever else banking industry personnel are supposed to do.  Approximately 1/10th fewer people will work for Citi when this blood-letting is over.

So what will it do differently?

I mean, that's the real question about the brand, isn't it?  Its experts can label the moves however they choose, and I bet there's more than one glossy, highly creative ad campaign somewhere in its near future.  The nonsense they've been running this year can only run so far before somebody looks up and notices that Citi's brand has very little to do with what it says about itself (or fantasizes about its customers in a Joe the Plumber sort of lifestyle marketing way).  Their answer will be to run different nonsense, I'm sure.

So the real impacts on the company's brand won't come from the marketing department.  Customer relationships with Citi will change.  52,000 fewer employees mean 104,000 fewer hands to answer phones, click computer buttons, or whatever.  So I wonder what new fees will get charged, or services reconfigured to be "customer-directed" (a great code word for "outsourcing work to your clients")?  What services or insights will simply disappear entirely? 

I read that the company will "jettison" some companies that aren't "core to its strategy," whatever that strategy might be...but the rest, well, for all we know, the company is going to try to keep on doing the same things it does now.  Only with far fewer people.

However it plays out, it'll be these activities -- or the lack thereof -- that'll impact its brand far more than any narrative coming out of its communications department, or from its agencies.  So it's these changes that will define Citi's branding going forward.  Not its Wall Street valuation (its stock price tanked today), nor its ranking on any branding agency favorites list. 

If it were really forward-looking, Citi would define and express these changes, and make them the substance of its outbound marketing. 

Tell people what'll change, so they're not disappointed or surprised.  Promise them the good things that'll happen, presuming there are any.  

We wonder why corporations rank so low on matters of authenticity and trustworthiness. I think it has something to do with making utterly incomprehensible announcements (and business decisions) like this one. 

We customers aren't totally dim bulbs, are we?  We know that a company can't fire a tenth of its work force and continue on with business as usual.  Things will change, and they most likely won't be good for us.  But Citi isn't telling us what, who, or when. 

I suspect we'll get to discover those answers on our own.  And in doing so, we'll define the Citi brand.

Best Buy's Dire Prophecy

Best Buy announced last week that its sales this quarter are down sharply, and that things don't look any better for the rest of the year.

The news came with the requisite promises of "adjustments" to inventory and spending from the finance department.  Aside from an oblique reference to "gaining market share," marketing was pretty much silent, which is also typical of these types of announcements. 

For a news event, there really wasn't much news involved.  The crappy economy has been the cause and/or effect cited in most media stories for the past few months.  It would have been surprising had Best Buy said anything positive, as the regulatory obligation and smart business strategy was to lower expectations.

But couldn't it have used the occasion to talk about its brand in terms that would have been relevant to its customers?  With the implicit promise that sales would stink, it could have declared that it would:

• Improve customer service -  The differences between flat screen TVs remain incomprehensible to most people.  Folks are cautious about making the wrong purchase even in flush times.  Lots of gizmos require integration with services or other gizmos.  Imagine doing lots of intensive associate training, incentives, and back-end support to turn customer service into a strategic customer differentiator (and poacher)
• Launch unique refurb/service offerings - If people aren't buying, then add dimensions to the offering so you give me other/better reasons to visit the store.  Where’s the "upgrade your PC" bundle?  How about something that lets people make existing products work (or look) better?  Maybe add some long-term, back-end services deal to the price on new devices, like an automaker extending its drivetrain warranty?   
• Experiment - If it's proving hard to drive consumers into stores, it's time to go nuts with innovative ways to work around the problem.  How about the aggressive deals to get every vendor, supplier, partner, and associate family member into the stores?  Or a social media promo that awards a $500 gift certificate every day (or every hour) through the end of the year?  Why couldn't strange, blue light special-like things occur in-store, so there's a reason why you want to be walking around one? 

The "You, Happier" ads are nice, but they're not motivational in a "get off your butt and into the stores" sort of way.  They’re almost too nice, promoting vague feelings in a very typical effort to associate the brand with lifestyle.  We already know what our "lifestyles" are going to be this holiday season...impoverished, or afraid of being so. 

So these spots pretty much attest to the premise that the company expects its prophecy to come true.  It could just as easily refuse to go silently into the night, and take the market externalities as an outright dare...not to just suffer, but reaffirm and reinvent its business.  That's pure branding upside, isn't it?

I don't know what the marketing would look like, and it's way too late to start making noises about challenging the Status Quo.  But if they'd asked me, I would have suggested that Best Buy use this dire sales circumstance to establish better, closer, and more aggressively satisfying relationships with its customers.  And that it tell everyone about it.

Then, maybe the prophecy wouldn't be so dire after all.