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BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE: DAILY BRIEFING | |||||||||||
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BW ONLINE DAILY BRIEFING |
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FTD, SharperImage, Nordstrom: Sending the Right Message, Mostly The flower peddler and the department store hit the jackpot, while the gizmo-seller trips If you're FTD.com, drumming up business via TV should be a no-brainer, right? FTD sells flowers. I can't think of anyone, aside from an allergic friend of mine, who frowns when flowers show up. Show some flowers, play some nice music, throw in a few scenes hinting at intimacy, and you should have a winning commercial. That's just what FTD.com has done. My favorite FTD scene is the one from a flower-speckled field where people who can fly like bees occasionally burst through the vegetation and dive back in. Now, I don't believe that buying a bouquet can make you fly. But it was entertaining. And it reminded me of how much I like flowers. SharperImage.com has faces a tougher challenge. Not everyone knows what it is, to start with. And its Q-ball commercials don't immediately make that clearer. I'm an avid TV-watcher, and I had no idea that the Q-ball -- a computerized gadget that supposedly answers yes or no questions -- had anything to do with the Sharper Image. Until a pale yellow graphic popped onto the screen showing the gimmicky store's url and the price of the Q-ball: $39.95. A LITTLE BIG SHOT. In one Q-ball/Sharper Image ad, a family asks a Q-ball questions ranging from "should I invest in that tech stock?" to "will my husband remember our anniversary?" Now, if the actors had been sitting on vibrating chairs listening to stereos with 100-disk CD changers, instead of congregating around a homey breakfast stand, I might have understood that SharperImage.com was involved. But today, no way. That's an opportunity missed, Q-ball and all. A similar problem afflicts PeoplePC.com, which has a good story to tell, if you ask me. It allows just about anyone who can save $1 a day to rent a fully loaded computer. But its commercials don't quite convey that notion. The ad features an adorable little boy pretending to be a big-shot executive -- complete with pie charts -- but you have to really tune in to figure out what the commercial is promoting. If you're in the habit of making a trip to the refrigerator during commercials and returning halfway through, you may miss the sales pitch entirely. (O.K., I realize that for some viewers that's a plus.) For example, a skinny man tries to lift a dumbbell. As he struggles with his second repetition, the words "deals on training videos" and "deals on protein shakes" flash across his chest. "PeoplePC" doesn't come into the picture until later -- when you finally learn that this ain't an ad for a talking chest. MAKE ROOM FOR SHOES. A nice contrast is Nordstromshoes.com. If you like shoes, you can't help liking its ads. The upscale retailer's new Web site features everything on a Nordstrom rack. But in its TV ads, shoes take center stage. The best ad, by far, features a woman who has her husband's mint antique car compacted so she'll have more room in their one-car garage for -- what else? -- her shoes. Even people who aren't car enthusiasts will cringe when the cherry red, perfectly-maintained car is squished. And that's nothing compared with the look on the husband's face the next time he opens the garage. Another Nordstrom's commercial features a woman placing her sleeping husband on the stoop of a stranger's home. She staples a note to his shirt sleeve that reads: "Please take care of my husband." Then she hurries back home, where the closet is half-bare. The commercial reads: "Make room for shoes." Entertaining? Yes. Effective? I remembered it when I went online shopping a few days ago. Too bad I couldn't find room on my credit card to buy anything. By Mica Schneider in New York _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ |
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