11.9.23

With Halloween out of the way, it’s time to sit back, relax, and coast until the New Year…said no PR person ever. Like many of you, we're currently getting together with our senior team for some 2023 post-mortems and 2024 strategy mapping. As your team does the same, we wanted to share some brand initiatives and our thinking on their effectiveness. The hope is we provide you with some thought starters for your 2024 communications and marketing plans. Let us know what you think!

Shameless Plug Alert: Our very own Kristen Stippich wrote an article about the impact of the Biden administration’s AI executive order on communications and how PR pros can shape the dialogue and public understanding of AI’s role in our future. We think it’s pretty great (PRWeek did too!) - check out the blog post here.

Solving a Customer Pain Point: M&M’s teams up with Gopuff to deliver emergency candy refills on Halloween

TL;DR: This past Halloween, customers who live in areas covered by Gopuff were provided access to M&M’s Halloween Rescue Squad to request a free refill of Mars candy within 30-60 minutes to avoid disappointed trick-or-treaters.

Takeaway: M&M’s and Gopuff identified a potential customer pain point – having to predict the correct amount of candy to give away on Halloween – and created a tactical solution that integrated both of their products. The magic, if you will, of this partnership lies in anticipating a need before the customer does. It doesn’t even require a brand-new product update, just strategic positioning of what’s already there. 

Regularly practice putting yourself in your customer’s shoes: 

• What use cases might your product be helpful for? 

• What problems do you have that could be solved with your product?

Become the Opposite of Your Competition: How brands like Shopify are taking on Amazon

TL;DR: Shopify just launched a web version of its consumer-facing Shop app, which allows customers to search for and purchase products across Shopify’s merchant base. While it looks like a competitor to Amazon’s marketplace, Shopify says that’s not it at all. Their goal is to help merchants build stronger relationships with customers and they won’t emphasize low prices or quick shipping.

Takeaway: Shopify’s move mimics other brands like Bookshop.org in taking on the eCommerce behemoth of Amazon – prioritizing ethics and fair sales practices over deals and mass consumption. If the story of being the underdog feels familiar to you, the moral should be this: becoming the opposite of your competition can be a good thing. There are always multiple ways to approach product positioning. You can’t go back in time and invent Apple or Microsoft, but perhaps you can hone in on being an agile business that can offer up a different way of doing things.

Ask your team:

• What are your competitors offering? What’s the cutting edge that they have?

• What’s the exact opposite of their cutting-edge? Is it something your business is poised to offer?

• What would it truly look like to commit to a contrarian POV? Is it viable for your business?

Evolving to Our Current Reality: Target Launches Immersive Toy Experience

TL;DR: Ahead of this holiday season, Target has unveiled an immersive shoppable experience on its website that lets shoppers explore a virtual room of toys from brands such as Barbie and Play-Doh.

Takeaway: The current reality is that parents and kids are deeply online. The days of physical toy catalogs and in-person holiday set-ups are dwindling (though they do still exist). If you choose to lean into this new reality, you might see that there’s value in embracing technology like AI and AR for holiday shopping instead of competing with it. For eCommerce brands in particular, innovations like immersive virtual shopping experiences help consumers discover your product more in-depth than on a static webpage. 

While experiences like this can be costly and time-consuming to create, consider the essence of Target’s idea: 

• How could you take your holiday shopping experience to the next level? 

• Could minor tweaks on your website or positioning help deepen your customer experience? 

• Even better, imagine what your shopping experience could be like with AR innovation and reverse engineer an experience from there.

We want to hear from you! Let us know your thoughts on the newsletter and what you want to see at the link here.