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150 year old John Lewis can still teach startups a trick or two

30th May 2014
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I am on a mission to rid the Planet Earth of dirty tongues, with a deluxe range of tongue cleansers, sold via e-commerce.

Granted - a little left field, particularly since I started my career as a humble Article Clerk with Whinney Murray ticking and bashing away…

I am ready for launch of the AMANO Tongue Cleanser, with all the key marketing elements are in place (I think). And at the fulcrum is an e-commerce site built on the battle tested Shopify platform - slickly designed by web-builders Wemakewebsites.

To bridge the skepticism-gap we have commissioned 2 informative and highly stylish short videos (I do say so myself) made by Isle of Sky based The Cuillin Collective. One borrows generously from Star Wars whilst the other is called an Ora-bel History of Tongue Cleansing – and features, in context, George Washington and Julius Caesar...

So before I pit my meagre marketing budget against the Golliaths of the oral care universe – where can I go for that final bit of pre-battle inspiration?

Well how about the nations favourite store, which is celebrating its 150th birthday right now.

A few weeks ago I visited the mocked up ‘original’ John Lewis 19th century haberdasher store, within its flagship Oxford Street branch. Designed by the people who worked on Harry Potter World – the store is initially all dark wooden cabinets, subdued lighting, with clothes and fabrics piled neatly up to the ceiling.

The exhibition then goes onto remind us of all the reasons we have fallen in love with John Lewis.

Finally at the end we get to see state of the art retail and marketing gadgetry that John Lewis is hoping to employ, to ensure we remain attached to it well into the 21st century.

John Lewis knows that the baton for NFS - ‘nations favourite store’ - has swiftly passed from M&S to Tesco to them. And they are out to show that they will not be loosening their grip on it anytime soon.

Crucial to this continuing love-in is effective marketing.

Earlier this year, Andy Street, managing director of John Lewis told Marketing Week its marketing activity has played a key role in its success. 
He said; “We have been following pretty ruthlessly the omnichannel bricks and clicks strategy and building the brand and marketing has been a part of that.”

He then added: “Marketing itself doesn’t bring the success but it is an absolutely fundamental part of our success because it helps pull everything together.”

The retail marketing battle for the consumers attention and wallet may be now conducted with 21st century weapons such as SEO, PPC and CRO – but at the heart of any effective campaign still lies the basic marketing building blocks of:

Having the right products - and finding clever ways to get the consumer to visit, relax, look around, consider and then choose to buy.

And then once that decision has been made to ‘buy’ – make it as quick and easy to pay as possible. If the queue is too long or you can’t find the till – as we all know, that buy decision may well be reversed.

With e-commerce it’s precisely the same. The longer the consumer lingers on-site - the more there is a chance of a ‘buy’ decision.

Navigation through the product lines through to the payment process must be clear and quick – otherwise (again) you will end up with a discarded cart.

(Of course with e-commerce a discarded cart swiftly leads to a follow up email, whereas John Lewis has yet to pursue shoppers out of the store waving garments left in the changing room).

With all this in mind our The AMANO Shopify site has been designed to make the case for tongue cleansing as engaging, clear and straightforward as possible.

So right now I feel a little like John Lewis’s founder Spedan Lewis 150 years ago – I’ve made those last minute checks – time to open those shop doors …

I wonder who will visit?

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