Kmart Holiday Ads

Kmart's new holiday TV spots have been mentioned in class so I wanted to post a couple of them because they were being developed this summer while I was interning at Sears.  I actually had the opportunity to go to the office of Kmart's creative agency, DraftFCB, the day that this concept, along with two others, were first presented to the Kmart strategy team.  This was a really interesting experience because while the in-house marketing team and agency worked together pretty much everyday and had weekly meetings, this was a different, more formal meeting similar to a pitch that you would see on Mad Men.  The two creators of the campaigns walked the group through the concepts using narratives and storyboards similar to those that we created for the Green River Beer case.  They also had a few preliminary slow-motion videos to further illustrate this particular concept.  Here are a couple of the final commercials that have been airing recently (good luck getting the song out of your head):






The ads are pretty unique and Kmart has produced a number of them; however, it will be interesting to see what kind of effect, if any, they have on sales.  My main concern is the fact that they lack a strong holiday theme--although they may have more variations coming.  The wrapped gifts at the end are really the only ties to the holidays and the paper is not really holiday themed since it is just the Kmart logo--the inclusion of the logo in the wrapping paper was something the Sears higher-ups felt strongly about because they wanted to reinforce the branding of the commercial.  The holiday season is such a major time of year for retailers that it will be interesting to see how this concept competes against those like Target's new Big Dog commercial which is much more traditional. 

Ultimately, while Kmart's ads may create some buzz this holiday season, the in-store experience for holiday shoppers will remain largely unchanged which is perhaps the largest reason why Kmart continues to lag far behind Walmart and Target.