Sears Holdings Corporation
Company: Sears Holdings Corporation, Hoffman Estates IL
Company Description: Sears Holdings Corporation is the nation's fourth largest broadline retailer with over 4,000 full-line and specialty retail stores in the United States and Canada. Sears Holdings is the leading home appliance retailer as well as a leader in tools, lawn and garden, consumer electronics and automotive repair and maintenance. Sears Holdings is the 2011 ENERGY STAR® Retail Partner of the Year.
Nomination Category: Marketing Awards Campaign Categories - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Viral Marketing Campaign of the Year
Nomination Title: Come See The Zombie Side of Sears
Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 500 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:
Sears has been a trusted retail name since its beginning over 100 years ago. Along with an extensive history and iconic retail roots, comes great customer loyalty but also an aging image. Having an older customer, but a best-in-class online and mobile shopping experience, how could sears.com turn a younger generation of shoppers onto the site in a measurable way?
As a strategic PR tactic, sears.com created a unique and unexpected category
page humorously targeted toward zombie customers. The goal was to grab the
attention of a younger crowd that would find this type of edgy content greatly
appealing. Sears.com recognized a unique opportunity to take advantage of a
popular, yet under saturated holiday like Halloween to implement a surprising
campaign and drive significant buzz. Sears.com planted strategic viral seeds to
grow conversations in social media communities. The next step was to ride the
wave of social buzz with traditional media outreach to drive program results.
Planning for the zombie campaign began in early summer 2010. To begin, the
sears.com user experience team gathered to conceptualize page design and
creative direction. It had to be shocking, gruesome and unexpected yet mirror an
actual sears.com page. Building of the zombie site stretched through the summer.
As the creative elements came together so did the formal public relations and
marketing plan. Outreach was strategically scheduled with a set goal to first
saturate the social communities and then drive the campaign national with
traditional media placement.
As social conversations began to pick up and traffic to the page increased (note
no ads were pointing to it), blogger outreach was implemented. Targeted blogs
included: BoingBoing, Wired, Buzzfeed, Advertising Age, Digg, Examinar and more.
Placement was quickly secured.
Following significant social media buzz, Sears implemented aggressive national
and local media outreach. As the project quickly secured placement on major
media outlets like CNBC.com, CNN.com and AOLNews.com, banner ads were added to
the sears.com homepage linking to the zombie site. This opened up the page to
millions more viewers. Commentary about the page reached overwhelmingly positive
levels.
RESULTS
• Dominated media coverage and share of voice, with approximately three million
media impressions. Highlights included placement on:
oCNN
oUSAToday
oAOL News
oThe Consumerist
oMSN
oAdage.com
•A total of 7,959 conversations around Sears Zombies.
•At the end of the campaign, the zombie page had nearly one million page views.
•CSAT scores related to brand image, brand commitment and site look and feel
increased several aggregate points following the campaign.
•The sears.com zombies page drove incremental revenue well above set goal.
USE THESE AS DESIGN ELEMENTS
“Sears has a hilarious section of their online site dedicate to their life-
challenged customers that must be seen to be believed.” -Wired
“Sears has given its website a creative makeover to try and attract the coveted
zombie demographic…it really raises the bar.” -Adweek
“Nice job, Sears. And in case of invasion, I know where to go for supplies.” –
USA Today
List hyperlinks to any online work samples, videos, images, presentations, news stories, press releases, or other documents that support your case. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/dap_10153_12605_DAP_Zombie?origin=zeta&storeI...
http://thesearsbuzz.sears.com/2010/10/sears-com-opens-doors-for-zombies/
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-10-27/tech/sears.zombies_1_zombie-makeover-sears-taglines?_s=PM:TECH
http://www.cnbc.com/id/39913180/Come_See_the_Zombie_Side_of_Sears
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2010/10/afterlife-well-spent-zombies-take-over-sears-com.html
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpps/news/sears-zombie-website-embraces-the-undead-dpgoha-20101029-fc_10357552
Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 100 words):
The Sears Zombies campaign was conceptualized and created by the User Experience
(UX) team at Sears Holdings. The UX team is led by Andrew Daniel, Divisional
Vice President of User Experience. As the DVP of User Experience at Sears
Holdings, Andrew leads all online creative development for sears.com, kmart.com,
craftsman.com, kenmore.com, mygofer.com and thegreatindoors.com. Alexandra
Lawrence led the production of the Zombie project. Alexandra has been with Sears
for over a year and has done promotional work in the past for Allstate, Target,
Ty inc, Hallmark, DreamWorks and McDonalds.