Throughout December, I’d estimate that I spent 20+ hours a week online checking out the top 100 retailers’ holiday promotions and digital experiences. As a whole I was underwhelmed with how many retailers took advantage of the flexibility digital offers in offering creative approaches to seasonal promotions and experiences.
Most retailers took consumers completely outside of the way they typically shop to a gift-giving destination or, even worse, created experiences that felt like an afterthought. However, J.C. Penney stood out in my mind during the holiday season as taking a very strategic and logical approach to seasonal sales.
Like most retailers, J.C, Penney’s created a centralized experience for gift giving, a concept that isn’t a new or revolutionary tactic. However, it was the implemen
tation of the “gift center” that made me take notice. Consumers think differently about gift giving than they do about shopping, a fact that most retailers don’t give thought to when building out holiday campaigns. JCP, however, provided an experience that suited both the gift giver and the shopper mentality.
The holiday gift center was very simple – categorized by consumer type (for her, for him, for teens, etc) with the ability to filter by price or browse by classification using very emotive actions – give style, give warmth, give comfy, give sparkle etc. Invoking emotion in consumers without disrupting the shopping process is very difficult to accomplish, yet the JCP experience did just that. I, myself, wanted to explore deeper to see how I could “give comfy” to my mom and “give sparkle” to my sister.
Not only did they create a centralized location for giving, they also brought little pieces of the gift giving experiences into relevant areas of the shopping experience. By carrying the “Give Warmth” or “Give Style” themes into the category pages, they were able to sprinkle gift ideas throughout the typical shopping path without disrupting users by forcing them off the path to a gift-giving destination.
It seems almost too simple, which essentially is the beauty of the approach in itself. It is simple to the user, yet feeds a mindset they don’t even know they have. It doesn’t try to change the way people shop. It just makes their shopping more productive.
