Ship Your Pants

Online shopping is the new trend for those of you who aren’t quite up to date. In my personal opinion, online shopping is most beneficial because you don’t have to worry about getting out of your pajamas to go shopping, I mean come on, what more could you ask for. This new trend has created a new type of competition in the retail world. Amazon has a large market share in the game of online shopping. As soon as Amazon became the big dog in online shopping, many other retail stores started to use a different strategy in the game.

The Strategy

I work at UGG Australia and the first thing I am supposed to ask someone if we don’t have something that they want or the correct size is if they would like to order it online and have it shipped to their house through the store with next day shipping. UGG offers online shipping from in the store for free overnight shipping. This is something many stores have began to use. 9 times out of 10 when you walk into a store and they don’t have your size or color they will ask you if you want to order in the sore. If this has ever happened to you I would suggest you to do it! You will get exactly what you want with free overnight shipping, which means you will basically get it the next day (without paying for shipping and handling). As this new tactic has become very common throughout the retail world, one store took it to the next level by informing all their future perspective buyers through their recent creative communications campaign.

Photo from Zayre88 (Creative Commons License)

Kmart is a discount department store that follows closely behind Walmart and Target. Each of these three large department stores have a different marketing technique and I personally believe that Kmart has taken a new path to put them ahead of the pack in advertising. I have yet to see anything like this from Target or Walmart. Almost a year ago Kmart aired a new commercial called Ship My Pants. The big message in this communications campaign was that Kmart offers free shipping if you don’t find what you’re looking for in the store. Watch the humorous ship my pants video here.

Yo Mamma’s Big Gas

I guess you could say I’m not just a fan of the online shopping fab, but I’m also a huge fan of Kmart’s new commercials. Kmart’s “Ship My Pants” commercial got such great feedback that they decided why not do more? and so they did. This back to school year Kmart did another comedic commercial aimed at Yo Mamma. Although in this communications campaign it didn’t point out the free shipping, but rather all of their cool back to school clothes that Yo Mamma could get on layaway.  My last favorite communications campaign that Kmart did was “Big Gas Savings“. In this commercial they advertised that Kmart shop your way members could save 30cents a gallon with every $50 or more they spend at Kmart.

Photo from YHVH Talent Management
(Creative Commons Licence)

Although there is some controversy over Kmart’s new communication campaign about if they are appropriate or if they should have gone about advertising this way. I think that what they did was awesome and was a great way to get people to become aware of what it is they are trying to do for their customers. I know for this blog we were supposed to pick our favorite creative communications campaign, but it was just so difficult for me to pick one. So I decided to just pick one store’s communications campaign. Although Kmarts’ are not as easy to find here in St.Paul, Minnesota compared to a Walmart or Target, but they are making themselves known through their many creative advertisements.