STORES Magazine - February 2008 - (Page 31) Now Playing: YouTube.com Launched: February 2005 Founders: CEO Chad Hurley and chief technology officer Steve Chen Last September, Neiman Marcus took over the YouTube homepage to promote its 100th anniversary. A specially created video showcased the luxury department store’s style savvy. American Eagle, Gap, Ice.com, Victoria’s Secret, Macy’s, Nike, adidas and a handful of others have also dabbled on YouTube, testing the waters to determine what works and what doesn’t. Still, the lion’s share of retailers remains on the sidelines, tuning in to view online videos only when their brand is parodied . . . or worse. Retail executives say they’re intrigued by YouTube and other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, but they’re not ready to get in the game – at least not yet. The biggest stumbling block is fear of trademark infringement and the desire to protect their brand from being used improperly. The global power of the web to enable anyone, anywhere to instantly disseminate information and images on a shoestring budget represents a threat that most retailers and brand owners feel ill-equipped to manage. Additional worries factor into retailers’ social media paralysis. Some fear that their operations are too conservative for the more free-wheeling approach of YouTube. Others plead ignorance or offer excuses about the overwhelming task of managing social media. Then there are the skeptics who question its ability to lift sales. Experts acknowledge retailer’s concerns, but refuse to allow executives to use fear as an excuse for wavering. “It’s a challenge for retailers — one that is shared by the entire advertising community,” says David Polinchock, founder and chief experience officer at Brand Experience Lab. “In the past, companies controlled their media buy. They knew the target and they knew where to find those eyeballs. That’s not the case any more and it’s scary. “What’s more, a few years back shoppers accepted mediocrity,” he says. “Now, they won’t tolerate a poor shopping experience and they have no qualms about sharing a company’s flaws with millions of Americans in online blogs and videos.” Opportunity knocks till, Polinchock views the social aspect of the web as a huge opportunity, pointing out that most retail companies have S a lot of content. “The problem is that they’re building What it is: An online video content on one end of their destination to watch and business and don’t think to share original videos worldwide. Using YouTube, people use it in another; they need can upload or share video to rethink that.” Retail clips across the Internet. companies should be looking for ways to engage Who uses it: YouTube’s brand “evangelists” and audience closely mirrors the ought to explore the use of demographic of the U.S. how-to videos, he says, proonline population. vided that they’re authentic Audience size: YouTube has and relevant within the con55 million unique users each text of the brand. month — the 8th-largest Sucharita Mulpuru, prinaudience on the Internet cipal analyst at Forrester Research, contends that Source: Nielsen/NetRatings, while there may not be huge U.S. only, July 2007 upside potential in sales, there is little downside risk to social media. “Producing an online video is relatively inexpensive and low effort, especially juxtaposed with the number of eyeballs this media vehicle delivers. I ask executives, ‘What are you afraid of? Is it that someone will parody your brand? Are you afraid someone will post a negative video talking about what went wrong in your store?’” The challenge, Mulpuru says, is not the policing of YouTube and MySpace and their social content counterparts: it’s in executing well in every aspect of your business. “You can’t cheat on the customer experience or shoppers are going to call you on it – and there’s a good chance they’ll do it using an online video shared on YouTube,” she says. Anne Bologna, founding partner and president of Toy, the New York agency that dreamed up OfficeMax’s ElfYourself holiday campaign, insists retailers’ concerns about protecting their brand are manageable. “You can put protections in place to safeguard your brand on YouTube, like deactivating user comments,” she says. “Still, I would caution that in a world of transparency, you have to be careful not to overdo it. There’s something to be said for deSTORES / FEBRUARY 2008 31 WWW.STORES.ORG http://YouTube.com http://ice.com http://WWW.STORES.ORG
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.