Zappos let 22 marketing agencies aggregate in Las Vegas last week to vie for the honor of spending $7 million of its money on "evolving our brand" next year.
It should reimburse them for their expenses, and forget the entire shebang.Zappos was the poster child darling for a brand that's based on customer service, quality, and all the other attributes we normally ascribe to reality. I can't tell you how many times I've referenced its "no marketing spend" strategy as an example of how to do branding right. It put all its cash into customer service, and thereby turned every purchase (or service issue) into an opportunity to satisfy and delight customers (and attract others).
Now, it's trying to dilute that approach, at best, and perhaps blow it up entirely.
It floated an RFP to a starving and frightened agency community, asking for ideas about getting brand awareness for Zappos "...as more than a shoe retailer..." (and generating campaigns to drive sales and acquire customers). 104 agencies responded with spec creative, gifts, pizzas, and other sundry gestures of self-immolation. Little more than 1/5 of them were chosen to fly to Vegas for the honor of begging on both knees. At least one of the agencies that wasn't selected claimed that its RFP response got all of a minutes' worth of review.Forget for that minute that Zappos violated its own principles in the conduct of this process, as soliciting free ideas from would-be vendors is an old, cheap trick that tends to offend or outright turn-off everyone so abused (the rejected suitors will total 103 agencies when it's all said and done, so how many thousands of people, and their friends, is that?). There's an even bigger question:
Why does it think it needs an agency?
It has already run some ads in national mags, and had at least one guerrilla campaign last year that put its logo in airport security bins. But the bread and butter of this brand has never had anything to do with the detritus of branding. No image management. No positioning. No complicated stratergy about associated emotions, benefits, blah blah blah. It got to where it is today in large part because it avoided the typical nonsense marketers tell businesses to do, and focused instead on the business as its best marketing to tell people about itself.
So something must have changed. Maybe it hired a new top marketer, who is doing what every new top marketer does, and bringing in outside help to "evolve the brand." Maybe it is getting cold feet, and worrying whether its tried-and-true approach will keep working. Or maybe it has gotten lazy and disconnected, and actually thinks that its success means it can do no wrong.
What Kool-Aid is Zappos drinking?The Bulb Asks:
- Isn't it a bad idea to violate your own principles?
- What got you to where you are works, by definition, so don't give it up too easily?
- What can imaginative branding accomplish that operational reality can't?
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