You Sleep When You Die

Retailers are jumping ship in record numbers. They’re tossing out incumbent agencies and shopping for new ones, even going to “a creative shootout strategy between a roster of agencies.” In the past few months, Wendy’s, Volkswagen, Microsoft, Zappos.com, General Motors, Taco Bell, Wrigley’s and dozens of others have put their accounts into review or have hired new agencies.

Why?

I love what Walmart does and how they do it. Walmart is the world’s largest retailer for a reason: they provide goods and now services to consumers at the best value possible. All that being said, does it make any sense whatsoever that the bigwigs in Bentonville would focus their time and energy towards cannibalizing the Girl Scouts? Of course not! To quote Girl Scout “Cookie Mom’s” blog,

“This time, Walmart is knocking off the Girl Scouts…shoving itself in front of these little girls, and knocking on your door to sell you their almost-as-good fake Thin Mints and fake Tagalongs.”

Are you freaking’ kidding me?

Almost every agency out there says it has the best interests of its clients at heart. Well, actions speak louder than words. And based on their actions, it’s clear that most agencies don’t have the best interests of their clients at heart; in fact, far from it. Many agencies are more concerned with creating work that makes the agency itself look good than creating work that actually advances its client’s business.

“Why does it take a catastrophe to start a revolution?”
Jonathan Larson

Why did it take a crisis for banks to start thinking like consumers? In addition to taking the time to build a trust-based brand, banks need to drive consumer relationships every single day. In other words, they need to start thinking and acting like retailers.

Retailers just don’t get it…yet.

In order to be successful, retailers must achieve total vertical integration. The more control you have over every aspect of your brand, the better your profits are going to be. Brands must have control over every single component of their business – all the way from the big picture stuff at 30,000 feet up, down to the smaller day-to-day details at the floor level.