Is Your Brand Ready to #OptOutside? How to Follow REI’s Bold Leap into Customer-Centric Marketing

For many retailers, the day known as Black Friday has become one of the most important dates on their calendar. Last year, shoppers in the US spent just over $9 billion on the day after Thanksgiving, counting for a sizable percentage of many stores’ holiday sales. This is why it was so surprising when outdoor equipment retailer, REI, announced that they would be closing all 143 of their stores this Black Friday and encouraging their employees and customers to #OptOutside instead. It remains to be seen if this bold move on the part of REI will make a dent in the company’s sales over the entire holiday period or if they will make up the difference elsewhere. What we do already know is that the early reactions to this decision have been extremely positive and there are some valuable lessons to be learned from this campaign from REI.

Customer-centric marketing is still marketing.

Make no mistake about it, this decision by REI is marketing. They have an entire section of their website dedicated to this #OptOutside idea and they are encouraging others to join them and to “tell the world.” A company does not take these steps for a simple announcement of a change in store hours. You go to these lengths for a marketing campaign. The fact that this is a marketing campaign should in no way take away from what REI is doing with this idea. They are voluntarily skipping out on one of the biggest shopping days of the year in order to do something that will benefit their people. Not only are they losing out on the sales from that day, but they are paying their employees to head outside! So this day is costing the company in a number of ways. Yes, this is marketing, but that does not also mean it is not an amazing and honest decision by this company. Marketing does not need to be a shady or deceptive thing, it simply needs to shine a light on your company. If you can do that while also doing something positive, that is a win-win situation.

Stay true to your ideals.

The main reason why this campaign from REI is so perfect is because it is absolutely in line with the company’s overall ideals. This idea makes sense coming from REI in a way that it would not if it was being done by Wal-Mart. That is not a knock on Wal-Mart, it is just the simple truth that this kind of a campaign would not be on brand for that retailer, while it is for REI. When planning your own campaigns, remember to remain true to your company’s ideals and mission. No one likes marketing that feels disingenuous, so by being true to who you are, your efforts have a much better chance of being well received.

Make the hard decisions.

On-brand or not, this decision could not have been an easy one for REI to make. There is no way to deny the fact that they will lose sales by closing the store on Black Friday. Still, they made the hard choice to follow through with this initiative anyway. That is an important lesson. Doing something new and unexpected is rarely easy. Sometimes it can be really, really hard. If you have thought through your plan and decided that it is the right direction for your company, you will need to make that hard decision and press forward. Depending on the structure of your company, making hard choices may require buy in from multiple people. Have these discussions and evaluate all the angles, but in the end, do not allow a hard decision to prevent you from making the right decision.

Do the opposite of your competition.

REI’s decision to shut their doors on Black Friday is so surprising because it is the exact opposite of what other stores are doing. Other companies are expanding their hours of operation, with many of them opening on Thanksgiving to get a jump on the shopping frenzy. A company that stands up and decides to take the exact opposite approach of what everyone else is doing gets noticed. When planning your own marketing or promotional ideas, look to what your competitors are doing and think about how you could turn the entire situation on its head. Dare to be wildly different and take the opportunity to show the world how you are different from your competition and why that should matter to them. Taking a unique approach can be incredibly powerful, especially in the world of the Web where everyone seems to be playing a game of “monkey see, monkey do” and just rehashing the same old campaigns and approaches over and over. If you want to break that mold, you can start by moving in the opposite direction of everyone else.

Tell the world.

The best marketing idea in the world will fail if you do not share that idea with the world. You need to promote your campaign so it reaches your customers and potential customers. In the case of REI, they didn’t just put a small sign on the doors of their stores to let customers know about their Black Friday plans. They shot videos, made a website, and created a whole campaign around their #OptOutside hash tag. When planning your marketing campaigns, be sure that you couple a great idea with a strategy to communicate it effectively. REI has done this perfectly and the incredibly positive reception they have received from people fed up with the ridiculousness of Black Friday has helped propel this campaign even further. All the while, people are talking about REI in a powerful and positive light. Yes the company may lose some sales on Black Friday, but what they are gaining in terms of public perception and promotion is priceless!

Have a plan.

In addition to communicating what you are doing with the world, you should also have a plan to capitalize on the results. REI is not stupid, they know that the business will still come and I fully expect them to run sales the rest of that Black Friday weekend. People who appreciate what the company has done for their employees and customers may make it a point to shop with them that weekend as a show of support. In the end, the company may even make up those lost Black Friday sales that weekend or over the course of the holidays. This has to be part of their ultimate plan – to do something positive and different while also positioning it in such a way that they will be able to recover anything that may have been lost. It’s a great plan for all involved.

In summary

REI took a bold stand in their efforts to break away from what every other retailer is doing with their Black Friday promotions. Instead of fighting for attention on that crazy shopping day, they have decided to take a different route. Because they stayed true to their ideals, made some tough decisions, and were unafraid to shake things up and be different, they are the store that people are talking about leading up to Black Friday, which is interesting since they are the only ones who will be closed that day.

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We the Media

Even before the first iPhone 4 left stores, and even as customers were enduring all manner of conditions while waiting in line for a chance to get their hands on Apple’s latest mobile phenomenon, the Web was already ablaze with reports about a possible design flaw in the wrap-around antenna that interferes with reception.

The story begins on the afternoon of June 23, when Fame Foundry started a discussion thread on the MacRumors community forum about a problem we encountered straight out of the box. Among the lucky 600,000 to successfully pre-order the highly sought-after device on June 15, we shot and posted this video to demonstrate the issue we had discovered:

In just over 24 hours since, the conversation in the discussion thread has continued across 46 pages, as other users have chimed in with their own theories, reviews, experiments and videos.

More significantly, the story of the apparent operating glitch has taken on a life of its own, leaping from the obscure fanboy territory of the MacRumors forum and ascending to the upper echelons of media.

The first to pick it up were tech blogs like Gizmodo, Mashable and Engadget. Soon after mainstream outlets including The Street, MSNBC and CNN followed suit. By the afternoon of June 24, Fame Foundry was fielding phone calls from reporters from national media organizations, all tracing back to the original YouTube video, which has received more than 400,000 views at the time of this posting.

The launch of the iPhone 4 has been a remarkable case study in the nature of today’s media and the ways and speed at which information spreads.

When photos and videos of a still-in-development iPhone 4 were published on Gizmodo, the story of how the device escaped the grasp of Apple’s famously impenetrable security and landed in the hands of a tech blogger became a much bigger story than the gadget’s shiny new design.

The launch of the iPhone 4 has been a remarkable case study in the nature of today’s media and the ways and speed at which information spreads.When the time arrived for the official announcement on June 7, Steve Jobs proved that the leaked photos had hardly stolen the device’s thunder, as he proudly introduced groundbreaking features such as video calling, 960-by-640 resolution display and high definition video recording. However, it is likewise worth noting that there were so many bloggers in attendance reporting live from the WWDC keynote event that a network overload brought Jobs’ product demonstration to a temporary standstill.

The hype surrounding iPhone 4 hit fever pitch on the first day of pre-orders. Apple racked up record-breaking sales, but this success story shared the headlines with the technical difficulties caused by the massive influx of traffic hitting their website, propelled largely by vocal frustrated customers who spent hours trying in vain to place their orders.

Returning to the events of the past two days, if a similar problem had occurred even just a few years ago, it would have taken much longer to come to light. In the absence of the instant connectivity of social media platforms and fan forums, users who encountered a reception issue might have assumed it was an isolated problem or that their particular device was defective, and Apple's customer service department would have been the only channel through which they could address their concerns.

By contrast, within hours of the first video being posted, there were legions of interconnected customers, bloggers and media outlets on the case, executing their own tests and drawing their own conclusions.

Interestingly, as of the time of this posting, the only response from Apple has come in an e-mail exchange between Steve Jobs and an iPhone 4 user (via MacRumors), in which Jobs describes the problem as a “Non issue. Just avoid holding it that way.”

Later, Jobs elaborated further on his position in a follow-up message:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

And so begins the next chapter in the iPhone 4 saga. Not surprisingly, this response is already showing up on blogs across the Internet, spreading just as quickly as the initial complaints.

Such is the nature of PR in today's 24-hour, on-demand information free-for-all. A single user-generated video becomes a viral sensation that far outshines the typical puff piece stories on how many people are eagerly waiting in line to buy the next great thing. Consumer backlash starts with a groundswell that becomes a tidal wave. A few brief sentences in an e-mail from one of the world’s most powerful CEOs stands in lieu of a carefully crafted press release as the company’s official statement. There is constant push and pull as corporate entities like Apple attempt to steer public sentiment in their favor – a delicate balancing act that requires juggling the mainstream press, the blogger nation and the average consumer with a Facebook or Twitter account.

As the course of events surrounding the iPhone 4 launch demonstrates, no one is safe when there is a potential reporter behind every keyboard and every camera phone – not even Apple with its notoriously loyal fan base.

More...

June 26

Test Shows iPhone Antenna Issue Impacts Voice Transmission Too [Gizmodo]

June 29

Leaked: Apple's Internal iPhone 4 Antenna Troubleshooting Procedures [Boy Genius Report]

June 30

First iPhone 4 Class Action Suit Filed Against Apple and AT&T [Gizmodo]

July 2

Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4 [Apple]

Apple "Stunned" to Find iPhones Show Too Many Bars [AP]

Class Action Lawyers Predictably Unimpressed with Apple's Statement [TechCrunch]

July 5

Apple Waiving 10% Restocking Fee for Returned iPhones [IntoMobile]

July 6

AppleCare: The iPhone Update Won't Solve the Antenna Problem [Gizmodo]

The iPhone is Ruining My Life! [Aol Small Business]

July 7

iPhone 4 Complaints Mounting: A Rocky Rollout [CIO]

iPhone 4: Officially a Hot Mess [Inc.]

July 12

Apple Deleting Mentions of Consumer Reports' iPhone 4 Piece on Forums, Can't Delete Your Thoughts [Engadget]

PR Experts: iPhone 4 Hardware Recall Is "Inevitable" [Cult of Mac]

July 13

iPhone Antenna Outcry Escalates with Recall Demand [MSNBC]

July 14

What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleeding [Mashable]

Microsoft Exec Mocks iPhone 4, Dubs it Apple's Vista [Computerworld]

Video: Does iOS 4.1 Fix the iPhone 4's Death Grip Antenna Issue? [TechCrunch]

Every Week Apple Doesn't Act on iPhone 4 Antenna Could Cost $200M [AppleInsider]

Report: Apple Holding Friday Press Conference on iPhone 4 [PC Magazine]

July 15

Apple Engineer Told Jobs iPhone Antenna Might Cut Calls [Bloomberg]

New York Senator Charles Schumer Writes Open Letter to Steve Jobs [Boy Genius Report]

iPhone 4 Signal Issue Can Be Fixed With a Software Update? [MacRumors]

July 16

Live from Apple's iPhone 4 Phone Conference [Engadget]

Apple's "Antennagate" Mea Culpa – Free Case Until September 30 [ZDNet]

A Defiant Steve Jobs Confronts "Antennagate" [The Wall Street Journal]

Jobs Calls Bloomberg Antenna Article a "Total Crock" [MacNN]

July 17

Apple's Claims About Other Phones – There's a Response For That [The Wall Street Journal]

July 18

iPhone Defense Prompts New Debate [The Wall Street Journal]

July 19

"Antennagate" Reactions: RIM, Nokia, Taiwanese Animation [MacRumors]

HTC, Samsung Rebut Apple's Smartphone Claims [The Wall Street Journal]

Steve Jobs's Disastrous iPhone 4 Press Conference [Harvard Business Review]

 

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