According to Eleftheria Parpis of Adweek:
This 15-second commercial is one of 12 new TV ads to begin running nationally as part of the Fort Worth, Texas-based retailer’s ambitious effort from Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners in Sausalito, Calif., to rebrand itself, at least informally in its marketing materials, with the shorter, presumably friendlier nickname.
“If you think about how you use nicknames, you generally use them with friends, people for whom you have an affinity and trust. Those are important attributes for any brand and certainly for us,” said Lee Applbaum, CMO of RadioShack, who explained that consumers and the company have used brand name shorthand for years. “If you can latch onto a brand truth, it’s a really wonderful thing.”
There’s more at The Shack, a new experiential microsite, also from Butler Shine.
Interesting to see this “Summer Netogether” weekend of events they’ve got planned.
They’re keeping it concentrated on NYC and SF. While those cities are the two dominant media and technology cities in America, I kinda think they’d be two markets where Radio Shack is less needed and visited. Perhaps having more events in secondary markets might be more appropriate.
When I heard Radio Shack was choosing BS&S, I gave it as assignment to my Portfolio Center students. A couple of them renamed it “RS” but none of them thought to name it the Shack. They all wanted to redo the interior of the stores, though.
“Brand truth.” Feels like a consumer truth, if anything.