What an enormous cock up. And I don’t mean the good kind 😉
I’m talking about the latest Myer TVC.
My brother Chris and I were chatting about weak ads today. The Myer ‘Wonderland’ crapfest leads the pack.
It’s all about ‘bringing wonder / wonderful back’. I wonder why things cost so much in department stores but not for long. Because they are just not wonderful places to be.
It’s like selling an abattoir as a tourist attraction.
We can’t reinstate the wonder of a child in an adult. It’s a contrived delusion. Chris pointed out, ‘as a kid, it’s a long time between xmases. A year is a very long time. It feels impossible to make it through waiting for Santa. The wonder comes from having zero experience of the world so everything is a surprise.’
Sure, the Myer ad is creative. It’s made by ‘creatives’. But the call-to-action fails. Do I want to head into Myer? No. The only thing ‘wonder’ful about it is I’d wonder why I was there.
For a start, Myer is way out of touch with customers’ desires, behaviours and current shopping habits.
People see what they want online, go into a stockist – maybe Myer, maybe not – try on the outfit for size – then go and buy it online.
Big department stores have complained that customers do this. Stop complaining and start seeing what this unintentional focus group is revealing.
If Myer was smart, innovative, progressive and able to survive in this brave new virtual world, it would do the following.
Save a motza on warehousing in stores located in CBDs by stocking only one of each item in every size.
Reward customers who come in and try on outfits for size.
Offer a free coffee / champagne / snack enticements in a wi-fi area with devices and sales assistants helping customers buy online the items they have just tried on for size in the changerooms. Then, give away the samples a part of a promotion.
Myer is employing ideology of last century like the constricting attitudes displayed by Foxtel. They fight against obvious and evidential customer behavior by trying to block current habits. It’s as useless as putting a gate up and no fencing on either side. There are plenty of ways around it. Prohibition is the dickiest, most outdated way to treat customers and this was proven back in the 1920s.
It’s not customer behavior that has to change – it’s the behavior of businesses who claim they want customers. Try being a customer. Have empathy and create your C2A out of that.
As for the creative who made the Myer ad – look, your talent is way beyond making ads that don’t work. Anyway, Tim Burton did it better.
In fact, the ad is pretty insulting. If you think women want bags that can fit a mouse – you are way out of touch with the modern girl. Unless that mouse can multitask as a smartphone, lipstick, powder, condoms, keys, perfume and an emergency tampon – you have no idea what a bag is, what it is used for and what women carry in them.
How would you like it if I made an ad for men that offered the only tool you’ll ever need – a thimble – to protect the tiny ‘mouse’ you hide behind your fly’?
And if you think that hideous corporate monolith is an attractive place to go – think again [harder this time]. It looks more like a grim asylum for the fashionably insane and others suffering from retail retardation.
It lacks any visual appeal, and ironically, makes Myer look like an empty, shallow corporate entity from the bad ol’ ‘greed is good’ cowboy days.
It would look more at home on the set of Terry Gilliam’s classic Brazil (1985).
Lucky Jennifer Hawkins – she dodged a bullet being away from the ad that ate itself.
Oh me, oh my, oh Myer.
It’s time to nibble from the other side of the advertising mushroom.