The Wall Street Journal (paid sub. req.) says Wal-Mart’s new ad campaign strikes “an emotional chord,” although I fail to see much evidence of it in the following print ad.
The campaign hopes to evoke “a series of simple, real parent-to-parent conversations with Wal-Mart customers,” says Danny Robinson, a creative director at Martin Agency, an Interpublic Group-owned agency based in Richmond, Va. “It was important that people get to see what we are selling,” he says.
Highy respected Martin picked up the business after the Draft-FCB debacle.
In other Wal-Mart news, the retailer is introducing a new feature on its website that lets users review and rate products sold in their stores.
Matthew Creamer of Ad Age calls the move “a bleated push by the stodgy giant into the social web.” Creamer also says the real benefit may turn out to be how it affects the performance of the Wal-Mart online store in search-engine rankings, a crucial factor in the performance of online retailers.
Consumer-generated reviews will give Wal-Mart thousands of additional pages of content to be indexed by major search engines, which look favorably on unique new content.
Hope the rest of the campaign proves to be better. That’s pretty awful and not the kind of work you normally see cranked out of Martin.
That’s a great Freudian slip on the typo: “a bleated push by the stodgy giant.
Works both ways, lol
Martin Agency seems to have a tendency to start off slow with some of their clients, in terms of pushing the creative envelope. Think of all the years of lukewarm Geico stuff they did, and now Geico ads are some of the best stuff out there.