Q&A: Sears CMO Richard Gerstein on Marketing Across the Metaverse

Last month Sears launched an ambitious back-to-school campaign across seven different youth-oriented virtual worlds and avatar sites. It's a new direction for a major brand. While some, like Scion, have run multiple campaigns in different virtual worlds, this is the first to aim for this wide of a reach as a part of a cohesive campaign. It's still early, but the kids are starting to head back to school, so we caught up with CMO Richard Gerstein for an email Q&A about the early results, why Sears took this approach, and what virtual worlds offer to the department store giant.

Virtual Worlds News: That's an incredible amount of work in virtual worlds and social media. Why the big push?

Richard Gerstein: Expanding our marketing strategy into the online world of user communities and social networking is a critical means of developing engagement and brand loyalty within the youth demographic and allows us to reach teens and tweens in their own environment.

VWN: I'm assuming it comes, at least largely, because that's where your audience is. Is that a new shift you're seeing?

RG: Teens and tweens are making more and more of the purchase decisions, or at least influencing that decision. Mom already knows that Sears provides trusted value and quality, but we need to prove to the teens and tweens that we have the apparel and styles to help them “arrive” at school this year with confidence.

VWN: How do the online campaign and virtual worlds fit into your overall marketing mix? I.e., Sears obviously still has print and television campaigns. What's the advantage of going into virtual worlds as well and how do they fit in?

RG: These fully integrated campaigns with key external partners builds on the direction we’ve been taking in Sears marketing. As you may know, in the spring we partnered with Hearst and some of its magazine editors for the “Reimagine You” campaign. For holiday we rallied around the theme “Don’t Just Give a Gift. Grant a Wish” and a larger-than-life grassroots campaign.

Each season we are getting more integrated and building bigger, more disruptive marketing campaigns. And as we continue to expand our outreach to the tween demographic it is increasingly important to expand our marketing strategy to include the mediums where tweens are spending most of their time.

VWN: One thing I'm interested in is the mix of social networks and virtual worlds. Do you see your audience spread out across both or trending one way or the other? It seems like older groups lean more heavily on social networks, so I'm interested to see so many virtual worlds figure into the campaign.

RG: Social networks are more teen focused, due to age limitations. Tweens spend a lot more time in virtual worlds, so we wanted to be sure to reach both groups.

VWN: Also, this is one of the first times that any brand has launched a simultaneous campaign across so many virtual worlds. They've tended to focus on creating one very rich/deep experience instead of many. Why go this route?

RG: Some of the partnerships involve a very deep, rich experience, such as Zwinky.com’s virtual store and fashion event. Others are less involved, but still help build our relationship and showcase our fashion relevance with the audience. For example:

· Alloy Media + Marketing’s Teen.com Network – Virtual world Zwinky.com created a Sears virtual store within its Zwinchester Mall, offering users exclusive apparel for their personal avatars and items for their rooms and will host a “Fashion Forward” event celebrating the best of B-T-S fashion. 3d avatar creator Meez.com features a Sears B-T-S boutique offering users the coolest clothing, backgrounds, and animations to get ready for the new school year and invites users to compete in a “Best Dressed B-T-S” competition. Additional promotion will run across Alloy.com.
· GoFish.com – GoFish has created custom Sears Back-To-School branded experiences. These include a Sears clothing store and runway contest on Cartoon Doll Emporium and WeeWorld Sears WeeMee assets and contest.
· Nick.com – The site developed a custom Sears back to school section on their site with Nickelodeon character driven activities, quizzes and videos that link to www.arrivelounge.com.
· Addicting Games – The Web site developed a fully branded back to school hub featuring custom games created exclusively for Sears and integrated Sears “Arrive Lounge” content throughout the site.
· The-N.com – The-N.com developed a custom Sears boutique in its avatar mall and products within The-N avatar world. Every day the boutique is giving away a free virtual item and free creds (the-N’s online currency). The-N also features a Sears Screening Party where users can view and interact with custom Sears back-to-school content.
· FunBrain.com/Poptropica.com – Developed a custom Sears game for Funbrain.com and a Sears building within Poptropica.com, a virtual world.
· NeoPets.com – NeoPets has included exclusive Sears content within the Summer Faire environment on their site and custom Sears “Closet of Clues” game
· Facebook — Sears back-to-school Facebook Pages featuring “Arrive Lounge” content and applications as well as the ability for students to become “fans” of Sears and interact.
· MySpace – Custom Sears back-to-school page featuring “Arrive Lounge” content and apps.
· Seventeen/CosmoGIRL! – Both magazines are participating in cross-channel promotions with custom online Sears back-to-school content.


VWN: What led you to the virtual worlds that you chose over others?

We evaluated the various opportunities by the experiences that could be customized to integrate with the campaign, and tween/teen traffic to the sites.

VWN: What would you call a success for this campaign?

RG: If we come out of our season with much more relevance with the teen/tween group, and improving our sales and profitability with this group, we think it's a big win.

VWN:. Obviously it's too soon to evaluate the real effects of the campaign, but can you talk about early responses at all?

RG: Within the first few days of launch, there were more than 500,000 visits to the Sears virtual store on zwinky.com, with over a third of visitors “purchasing” apparel and dorm room items with points.

The velocity and viral power of video has also been proven. Within days of posting our music video starring Vanessa Hudgens on YouTube and our arrivelounge.com site, hundreds of thousands of teens and tweens viewed the video and they are sharing on blogs and discussion boards.

VWN: In prepping for the massive campaign across both virtual worlds and social networks, is there any one thing that stood out to you as a necessary change to make or step to take in the way you approached the campaign?

RG: Developing campaign strategies that leverage the unique opportunities offered by social networks and virtual communities was definitely a challenge. However, we’ve gained a lot of experience and learnings that we can apply to future campaigns.