By Guest Blogger, Donna DeClemente, Donna's Promo Talk
Last week I wrote this post on back-to-school marketing and specifically about the campaign that JC Penny has rolled out this year. I also wanted to write about what Sears is doing but last week's post got to long. So this week I decided to continue with this Part 2 back-to-school marketing post.
While the JC Penny marketing campaign is a good example of a brand integrating a broad mix of media and platforms, Sears has launched a much more targeted campaign that specifically promotes back-to-college sales this season and exclusively utilizes the social networking site, Facebook. Their campaign is a package of three integrated Facebook tools all under the umbrella theme of Campus Ready.
These Facebook apps are designed to help freshmen college students and their families prepare for what they’ll need for dorm life. Since my older daughter broke us in last year as a freshman at NYU, getting our second daughter ready this year to live the dorm life of a college freshman student is turning out to be much easier. I wish we had these tools last year.
First is the Sears Campus Gift Getter where Students can log onto Facebook to register and set up a wish list of items they want. Friends and family can then register on Facebook, access the studen'ts wish list, and select items for purchase and shipment to the student. There is also an optional GiveTogether platform that enables families to pool their contribution with one another in order to purchase one of the more expensive items on the wish list. Next is the Dorm Room Designer tool which enables students to connect with their friends and their new roommates to virtually design their room before they get there. They can choose from a range of room shapes and sizes, add doors and windows, and then place the four basic furniture items—bed, dresser, desk and chair—in the room.
Once they have the basics configured in the room they can then choose from a menu of Sears products that include small appliances, health and beauty items, clothing and entertainment. The items chosen can then be added to the student's room list, wish list or shopping cart and some items such as laptops and a mini-fridge can also be dragged and placed into the virtual room. Since my daughter found her roommates on Facebook you would think this would be a natural way to plan their room together.
Last is the “Roommate Matchup” tool which offers a quizz to helps the students find out what they have or don't have in common. This includes a series of 17, real-life, interactive questions such as “Do you believe in the five-second rule for dropped food?” and “Set the alarm for the time you usually wake up.” Results of the quiz can be published to the user’s Facebook wall.
“Our Campus Ready program allows Sears to connect directly with students as they plan to go off to college,” Sears CMO Don Hamblen said in a release. “We began by developing the Campus Gift Getter and transitioned into our Roommate Matchup and Dorm Room Designer applications. These applications allow students to get to k now their ne roommates and furnish their dorm room with their collective style in an affordable manner. The combination of these tools will help to prepare students as they enter the next stage of their life.”
Sears has also got TV home makeover guru Ty Pennington involved with the Campus Ready
campaign. He's featured on the Sears's Campus Ready website and offers tips for dorm room design and also
has a branded set of picks on the Facebook product menu.
Tabs at
the top of the Dorm Room Designer page lets users share their virtual room design by allowing them to choose which Facebook friends to invite to view their creation. The “Funny Fives” tab lets
students list the “top 5 things I wish I could fit into my dorm room.”
Lastly, with college tuition costs continuing to rise, Sears and Upromise have partnered up to offer a chance to win the $25,000 College Sweepstakes which is good towards a child’s college tuition. Upromise members are automatically entered with a sears.com purchase or they are accepting entries with no purchase on the Sears Campus Ready promotional website. So for those with college-bound children, go on and enter.
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