Thanks to Nike, the importance of balancing marketing strategy across performance and brand has come into sharp focus this week. The lure of short-term gains and a false vision of an all-encompassing D2C future driven by COVID lockdowns hit home for the brand with the bottom line suffering. Nike is teaching us all a lesson in how not to do it, demonstrating the danger of neglecting long-term brand building and retailer relationships while creating huge opportunities for small rivals to follow in their footsteps.
Mark Ritson’s piece for Marketing Week has more, and if you have time, it’s well worth reading Massimo Giunco’s post, which is linked in his article.
While Nike is grabbing the headlines, the return to normality in our post-lockdown world has resulted in whole sectors struggling to regain ground. The stratospheric rise of D2C has settled, and the huge peak in interest in certain sectors has passed, leaving retailers who had once struggled to keep up with demand now sitting on stock levels that were based on a short-term trend. Those in the outdoor sector certainly felt this as the rush to enjoy the British outdoors impacted clothing, bike sales, equipment and more, creating a market saturated with outdoor goods.
The C-word is back
Yes it’,s time to gear up for the festive season. This post from Ocado’s CEO Hannah Gibson reminded me of the importance of site search for retailers and all the weird and wonderful spelling variations that come with a product like panettone – reporting that in the last week alone, there have been 16 variations entered into the Ocado search bar!
Creative of the week
As David Wilding points out, there’s no real reason for these two things to be promoted side by side, so kudos to whoever decided Mrs Doubtfire and Miranda Priestly made a good double act.
Freebie of the week
A slightly dull but useful character count tool, which gives you a count line by line as well as a total. Useful for numerous things, including drafting PPC copy.
And finally…
Today is the last day to apply for a chance to be a Radio 1 DJ this Christmas. Submit your 5-minute demo here. Thanks to Rob Dowell for sharing this to my feed.
