So Close, And Yet So Far

JCPenney went to great lengths to produce a funny video to promote its jewelry offering, and then failed to connect it to anything resembling a sales transaction.

It’s branding, of course.  So getting lots of people to watch, forward, or interact with it is benefit enough.  I can't wait until it tries to tell that to the shareholders; November’s comp store sales were down 11% from last year.  Investors should be thrilled to learn that the company, and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi, chose to focus on increasing brand equity instead of making money.

That's not to say that "Beware of the Doghouse" isn’t funny.  The set-up is that a husband gives wife a vacuum cleaner for their anniversary, and gets banished to a doghouse that hides a subterranean prison for fellow romance-violated louses.  The closing caption reads "brought to you by The Jewelry Store inside JCPenney," and is underscored with links to nominate someone to get stuck in the doghouse (submit a photo), forward to movie and, oh yeah, click on the store link.

I felt robbed after watching it.

The movie is funny, but only up to a point; then it gets really, really long (almost five minutes' worth of a joke that should have taken all of one).  Worse, the concept is so smugly happy with itself that it forgets entirely to provide any relevance to this holiday shopping season.  The campaign was promoted with the usual Twitter/Facebook nonsense that passes for community these days, so the entire shebang is intended to get people to have fun with the doghouse conceit.

Shouldn't it have tried to sell some merchandise?

I'm not talking a hard sell, or anything as unpleasant as promoting a price (gasp!).  There are lots of creative, funny ways to get would-be consumers closer to something other than adoration for branding creative.  Here are five:

1. Where's the jewelry widget, in which you could enter various personality attributes for your loved one, and it would spit out possible gifts (and deals)?
2. How about a fembot IM app that you could talk to about your galpal?  The helpful android could suggest gifts that were tied to buy now discounts, making the transaction (from branding to buying) real-time?
3. An online club for guys who've been in the doghouse, in which they could earn discounts or points toward purchase for doing things like advising one another, letting guest women grill them, or whatever?
4. A ranking tool that categorized various doghouse-destined "violations," and converted them into the appropriate jewelry gifts?  Perhaps certain mistakes are so sever that it would take two distinct jewelry moments to rise back to the light of day?
5. Let visitors take out doghouse insurance, which would be some nonimal purchase that gave the buyer quick access to a small set of jewelry options, pre-packaged to get shipped overnight to remedy a conflict?

Where are such (or better) connections to the reality of purchase?  Just because the video is intended to accomplish branding, I don't quite understand why it can't also accomplish selling.  What good is the former if the latter doesn’t sustain it?  It's as if the video got to close to being relevant to behavioral reality, but then chose to stay far away.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Brand experts relegate selling to the doghouse.

Comments

[Georges van Hoegaerden]

Great minds think alike, also like the doghouse club - perhaps create a doghouse social network on ning. Unbelievable how much money is spent on a great onramp without finishing the call to action. Lesson number one in advertising.

[Nick]

Your ideas to round out the campaign are dead on, however, if this is their attempt at "branding" it is an utter failure.
Brand is about emphasizing the inherent link between the provider of goods and the consumer. This is simply advertising.

Don't blame branding for this, real brand managers know the difference between publicity stunts and branding. Blame the so-called "professionals" who have been erroneously assigned brand manager positions.