The naked truth

Zappos.com, one of the internet's most successful retailers, has a problem.

It's not their sales. In just over ten years, their annual sales are well over one billion dollars.

It's not their profits. Even in this down economy, they seem to be hanging in there.

It's that 80% of their revenue still comes from the sale of shoes.

That's not entirely surprising since they began as an online shoe store and only started to add accessories and clothing in 2007. But now they're making a concerted effort to change that perception with a bold, new advertising campaign.

Strategic nudity is nothing new in advertising. Certainly not in fashion retailing. What makes this work for me is that nudity isn't the strategy, it's the executional idea that brings the strategy to life.

The strategy is: Zappos sells all kinds of clothes with the same fun attitude and great customer experience you've come to expect over the last ten years.

Is nudity a gimmick to grab your attention? Yes. But like all great advertising the gimmick is tied directly to the promise of the ad and reinforces the message. It's not a superfluous gag as is the case with the humor in most light beer advertising.

I'm sure some people will take offense to the ads. But that's okay. In the end, as long as the campaign drives sales, it's better to have a few people hate your ads than nobody notice them.

Your brand is not the center of my universe

The problem most marketing executives have is perspective.

They spend eight, ten, twelve or sixteen hours a day thinking about their brands. They're in meeting after meeting where the topic is the brand. They're writing marketing plans about the brand. They're obsessing over brand identity and packaging details. Attending brand discovery focus groups. Picking apart the competitive brands. They're listening to their agency tell them how cool the brand is. In short, their brands occupy most of their lives.

Meanwhile, here's what's happening on the other side of the fence.

I see your commercial, say "that's cool" then get a phone call from a friend who wants to play golf tomorrow. Poof, you're gone.

I'm rushing through the store, filling my cart, trying to get home in time to make dinner. Your brand may be just one of fifty that I've thought about for ten seconds during that trip, if you're lucky.

I'm at the bar after our round of golf where there are fifteen taps and thirty other bottled beers available. Which brand is yours again?

There are thousands of brands in my life every day. From my computer to my toothpaste to my cereal to my shirt and on and on.

I barely have time for relationships with all the people I know. I certainly don't have time for a relationship with every brand I use.

I'll use your product and if it works I'll buy it again. If it doesn't, I'll probably move on. But I'm not going to have a conversation with you. I'm not going to 'like' you on Facebook so you can tell me how special you are every day.

Your brand may mean everything to you. It means very little to me.

Make it interesting. Make it different. Make it easy. Make it good. Then I'll give you money for the privilege of using it.

That is the extent of our 'relationship.'

Friday Repost

I'm not going to do this every Friday, but I've decided that on days when I don't have anything new to say, I have enough older content that some of you may not have seen, so I'm reposting a favorite of mine from last February. Enjoy.

You might be wrong

You never know. In fact, in most cases you can't know until you do something.

Some of the most successful marketing and new product ideas could have been killed for one logical reason or another.

Apple's board of directors thought Steve Jobs was wrong in 1984 and tried to kill the most successful commercial of all time. After all, it mentioned the brand name only once and didn't even show the product.

Focus groups hated Absolut Vodka's bottle design because it didn't conform to the norms of the category, yet six years after its introduction, Absolut became the best-selling imported vodka.

At one point, Fred Smith couldn't find anyone to invest in his new delivery company, Federal Express, so he went to Vegas and won the $27,000 he needed to keep the company afloat.

So while all the people who know better are telling you, "you might be wrong." Just remember this: they might not be right.