Sears Holdings Step Up Their Game with Social Media
In May 2009, Sears Holdings Corporation officially launched two social networks for their customers, MySears and MyKmart.
A little on MySears and MyKmart…
MySears Image
So what exactly are MySears and MyKmart? At their core, they are social networks for reviews. Customers can review items and join discussion groups on products.
MySears and MyKmart also incorporate several other useful social elements. They have their own message boards and active blogs.
In an economy that is increasingly tight for competition and customers controlling how much they spend-Sears Holdings Corporation is wise to utilize social media.
Here are sites that Sears Holdings utilizes:
http://www.mysears.com/
http://www.mykmart.com/
Sears and K-Mart utilize Twitter and Facebook
Sears and K-Mart also have fan pages on Facebook. Advertising deals and sales can also be found on Twitter.
http://twitter.com/SEARSdeals
http://twitter.com/kmartDealsnNews
Back to School Campaign
Sears has hired celebrity teens to represent their company in the company's Arrive Lounge. Vanessa Hudgens was hired in 2008 and Selena Gomez was their representative in 2009.
I think that by using teen celebrities as Sears spokespeople-that Sears is using the "cool" factor and kids will want to shop at Sears. I work at Sears on the weekends, and when the Vanessa Hudgens campaign came out-it was a pretty big deal. They had Sears featured in Teen Vogue and had a contest for two to go see Vanessa Hudgens in concert. So, I think that Sears is doing a fantastic job keeping in line with their competition and promoting the company's "cool" factor.
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Kudos to Sears and K-mart for making the transition to social media. It will be interesting to watch them over the next two or three years to see if they are truly committed to this strategy for the long term, or if it is just a marketing flavor of the month.
ReplyDeleteI say this because Sears was once the king of retail, but their corporate stratification and marketing inflexibility has had disastrous consequences for them over time. They appear to be making a comeback, but once you let Walmart, Target, and J.C. Penney in the door, you can only come back so far.
This blog made me think about a comment that my professor once made about Sears. After noticing a student sporting a new tattoo of the Nike swoosh, the professor asserted that one day this tattoo would have the same affect as a Sears/Roebuck tattoo-it would be outdated. I think that though Sears has continually shown that they can survive the storm of favor, this campaign can only be a step in the right direction. The generation of individuals who are using this application may have grown up in the world where Wal-Mart is king. However, if they can prove that they are a technologically savvy and "cool" company, they may find a new demographic.
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