Retailers Getting In On The Good

In his inauguration speech, President Obama invited us to a new era of responsibility and to choose our better history. The message resonates with people of all ages and circumstances.

With the economy continuing to take a toll on people across the income spectrum, it’s an interesting time to call people to action on behalf of those less fortunate than ourselves. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening. I’ve written before about Ebay and World of Good, Kenneth Cole and Network for Good, Gap’s (Product) RED, and TOMS Shoes. The newest entrant: Starbucks with HandsOn Network and Oprah. The program encourages consumers to pledge five hours of community service before the end of the year.

Is this the new state of retail? Activism is a great way for brands to make their values clear and accessible to employees and consumers, in hopes of acquiring and retaining customers while also doing good. And retailers have something that causes don’t – a presence in neighborhoods, access to us where we live.

For years, the same handful of brands came up whenever anyone talked about doing good. The original do-gooders, like Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, Body Shop – where does that leave them? Happy that cause-based retail has caught on? You bet. And upping the ante on these newcomers. Patagonia has grown its environmental advocacy from supporting the Surf Rider Foundation to full-fledged leadership across diverse initiatives to protect the environment, from “Freedom to Roam” to”Voice Your Choice,” the Conservation Alliance, campaigns to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and more. It’s a breathtaking range of issues and initiatives to support or participate in.

What’s next? More ways to get connected and involved. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns created a program for outdoor retailers to promote the outdoors and outdoor activity to their customers in conjunction with a 6-part TV series about our national parks, which PBS will air in September. The program encourages retailers to co-host special outdoor events, sponsor park of the month nights, host a park lecture series, promote local outdoor or nature clubs, sponsor photo and essay contests, or host family camp-outs.

Burns told the Salt Lake Tribune last week that such efforts are especially appropriate in difficult economic times. "It's paradoxical but in the toughest times of the Great Depression, the national parks thrived as never before," he said. "We fell back on resources we didn't know we needed."

Burns, PBS, and the outdoor industry are betting the national parks will thrive again. And Starbucks? They’re just hoping to help us focus on something bigger ourselves. Already, over 1 million hours have been pledged to all kinds of causes – just since the inauguration on Tuesday! I’m in. What about you? Sign up to get involved.

With this one, we all win!

Doing Good...(too) Quietly

This Christmas, I scored surprise shopping success at Kenneth Cole, where everything in the store was at least 36% off. After buying gifts for others as well as myself, I learned of a new Do-Good opportunity that the retail community was promoting. This one is brought to consumers by Network for Good. Kenneth Cole suggested that consumers should “make your presents felt” (pun intended). Already a supporter of Gap’s (Product) RED and of eBay’s WorldofGood.com, I was surprised that I had not heard of this promotion.

Founded by AOL, Cisco and Yahoo in 2001, Network for Good today is a complete how-to site teaching non-profits how to thrive in a Web 2.0 world. The site offers articles and tools for developing marketing campaigns, training volunteers and employees, creating and managing donor databases, and more. The articles are well written and relevant. The founder and CEO, Bill Strathmann, was featured by Fast Company this year as one of 45 Social Entrepreneurs Who Are Changing The World.

My purchase entitled me to a $10 contribution by Kenneth Cole to the charity of my choice from the over 1 million charities supported by Network for Good. All I had to do was go online and use the individual access code on the hand out. What’s more, I was also eligible to win up to $10,000 for the charity of my choice if I filled out the 3-line entry form (name, address, email address) while in the store and gave it back to the sales associate. No purchase was necessary for entry into this contest. Turns out, I was also able to enter online.

I saw no in-store collateral promoting this great promotion. In fact, the store associates didn’t mention it until they placed the collateral in my shopping bag. It’s possible this understated approach is right on-brand for KC – I don’t really shop there regularly and don’t pretend to know what the brand stands for. Nonetheless, this was an opportunity to associate the Kenneth Cole brand with the worthy causes supported by Network for Good, and with the nobility of giving to charity.

So, while a great idea with lots of potential, seems to me that Kenneth Cole did not commit fully to the initiative, and did not benefit as much as they could have.

New Tools Needed to Gauge Store Busy-ness?

Thanks to a December surge in my own business, I got a late start on holiday shopping this year. But when I finally got going, I was amazed at the crowds. I was expecting to find deals galore and empty stores. Not so on both fronts!

The weekend before Christmas, The San Francisco Centre was mobbed. Forever 21 was as crowded as usual, if not moreso. Gap, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Restoration Hardware, even Kenneth Cole were similarly jammed with shoppers…and buyers. There were sales, to be sure. At Kenneth Cole, everything in the store was at least 36% off, which enticed us to buy when we otherwise would have only looked longingly. Resto had a huge table of stocking stuffers marked down 30%. (Though when I got home to wrap them, I found price tags covering up lower prices – so they pulled a classic mark-it-up only to mark-it-down move!)

My own experience doesn’t jive with Stephanie Rosenbloom’s Dec. 25 story in the NYTimes reporting a 24% drop in holiday store traffic. Everywhere we went, there were crowds with shopping bags to prove they had purchased. Even the grocery stores were packed. The aisles at our local Safeway were jammed with shopping carts loaded to the gills on the 23rd. In Whole Foods on the 24th, the tension was palpable. We realized we had not made enough desserts for Christmas Eve dinner, and went in to pick up a few more treats. It was no treat inside.

At Christmas Eve dinner, I discovered to my surprise that credit card issuers may not understand that people retreat to cash in a recession. An in-law who works for a major card issuer reported that her firm was interpreting the fact that it was missing its transaction volume forecast as proof that the economy was still in decline. Though no doubt, the decline continues, I offered up a few explanations for why her company's transaction volume could be down. First, people are using more coupons and doing more comparison shopping, so they are getting better deals (which translates into lower average order size). More importantly, more people are shifting to paying in cash. These explain why they could be missing plan but sales could be more robust than they appear. The shift to cash has been well documented – I even blogged about it in October!

Could the same thing be happening with store traffic counts? Are the people and tools for capturing store traffic somehow missing vital pieces of the market? As with the Florida vote in 2004, where the down ballot candidates all got more votes than the presidential ticket, is there a massive undercount going on – albeit unintentional?