The same but different

Last Thursday, I received two emails from Shop Direct Group, the parent company of Empire Stores and Littlewoods. The emails had an almost identical subject line: “NEWSFLASH! £15 off your first order + new arrivals”. The only difference was that Littlewoods called its new arrivals “hot”.

Recycling the headline is rather lazy from Shop Direct, which surely could have come up with two separate subject lines (unless all its brands went with this offensive to see which of them had the biggest response). What’s more, Empire Stores had tried the previous week to tempt us with “£15 off your first order + our new season collection”, further showing a relaxed attitude to email-subject-line brainstorming.

Back to the emails at hand though—what, aside from the subject line, do these emails have in common?

Where’s the deal?
Both emails dive straight in, displaying the offer above the fold. In a move I presume saves on back-end administration, both brands use the same offer code. I would have thought a slightly different code for each brand would better aid tracking—especially as codes so quickly end up online on websites like myvouchercodes.co.uk where they are used by non-email recipients and lose all connection to the original marketing channel.

The emails then lead into the second part of the subject line: the new collections. However, where Littlewoods (below) displays a selection of new arrivals, Empire Stores (above) devotes the space to a message that harks back to its agency catalogue days and reiterates its “buy now, pay later” terms. The Littlewoods’ range is also more expensive—a Diesel dress for £170, a South sequin jacket for £69. The most expensive item in the Empire Stores email is a jacket that costs £79.

Twiggy vs Coleen
There is a clear age divide in these emails too. Empire Stores is obviously targeting a more mature market—for a start, the outfits promoted are not as figure-hugging or skimpy as the Littlewoods new arrivals. Second, Empire Stores is using 60s model Twiggy as its face, compared with Littlewoods’ use of top WAG Colleen Rooney as its “style editor”. Another indication that Empire Stores is targeting an older demographic is the reinforcement that larger sizes are available and the copy’s emphasis on comfort, rather than trendiness.

In the jeans
Both emails also feature a Denim Store section. In the Littlewoods email, the item is illustrated by a graphic—no product pictures—and the copy: “Women’s Jeans 100s of styles from classic to big brands, from all the latest fits: skinny, bootcut and more”. The Empire Stores email has an expanded Denim Store section that features three pairs of jeans next to their price per week: “So Fabulous Distresses Tapered Jeans £30 or £1.50 per week.” The main copy for the Denim Store also highlights “great value” and the availability of plus-sizes.

Despite these emails having twin subject lines and a similar layout, Shop Direct has set out clear brand guidelines, based on age, size and financial status. We previously blogged about Shop Direct supporting two separate, but nearly identical, brands. It seems that this time round it’s had a rethink and set its brands apart.--MT

As an aside, I noticed a technical difference too. Littlewoods had a "click here to view the email in a browser" link, whereas Empire Stores didn't. The reason why is something I cannot work out.

The “big book” isn’t dead yet

The headline of the press release was innocuous enough: “JCPenney Transforms Catalog Strategy to Better Serve Customer Preferences”. But beneath the corporate-speak came the real news: The Stateside department store retailer is discontinuing its twice-a-year “big book” general-merchandise catalogue to focus on the web and speciality mailings. The fall/winter 2009 edition will be the last. It will also be the last major consumer big-book catalogue in the US. Montgomery Ward ceased publishing its big book in the mid-1980s; Spiegel and Sears retired theirs in the 1990s.

So the big book is dead in the US; long live the big book in the UK?

Without a doubt, the traditional UK big books aren’t as big as they used to be. And the Big Six are now owned by just two companies: Shop Direct Group has commandeered Littlewoods, Great Universal, Empire, and Kays (transforming the latter three into near-identical triplets), while Freemans Grattan Holdings owns—wait for it—both Freemans and Grattan. The Big Six have moved from their agency roots, though the ability to pay for products in weekly or monthly instalments remains part of their appeal to lower-income consumers and those ineligible for major credit cards.

Of course, those brands could still offer payment plans as online-only entities or while substituting smaller, niche catalogues for their comprehensive editions. And in fact Shop Direct this summer rebranded its Littlewoods Direct fascia (which unlike the core Littlewoods brand did not allow for weekly payments) as Very. The website, which has a prominent social-networking component, is Very’s core sales vehicle; the first print catalogue under the new name was nothing more than a compilation of tiny photos and SKU numbers of every item available on the website, designed solely to drive readers to Very.co.uk.

The second edition of the Very catalogue, however, did revert back to a more traditional big-book form: in situ photos, a variety of page layouts, 676 pages versus 354, the listing of the call centre phone number as well as the website URL, an index, size guides. Which suggests that the UK is not ready to abandon the big books just yet.

Another sign that the extinction of the big book in the UK isn’t yet imminent: The past few years have seen a few new entrants. Supermarket giants Tesco and Asda both launched comprehensive catalogues of their nonfood, nonapparel offering in the past few years. These catalogues follow the Argos big-book model, and not just in appearance (smaller trim size, boxy layouts). For all three brands, you can have products delivered to you or you can pick them in-store (though not all Asda and Tesco supermarkets allow for store pickup of direct orders just yet).

Why, though, do the Brits still favour comprehensive print catalogues while the Yanks apparently don’t? A few thoughts:

* The US is a much more diverse population and therefore has more need of speciality catalogues. The BNP’s fear-mongering to the contrary, 92.1 percent of the UK population is white, according to the 2001 census, and of that group, according to the CIA World Factbook, nearly 84 percent are of English ethnicity. Indians are the largest minority group, with 1.8 percent of the population. In the States, according to projections from the US Census Bureau, 68 percent of the population are non-Hispanic whites, with Hispanics of all races accounting for 15 percent, African Americans 12 percent, and Asians 5 percent. When you’re speaking to a less homogenous audience, you need to create more-specialised marketing to best target their distinct preferences and needs. For example, Spanish-language versions of mailings make good sense for many Stateside marketers.

And that’s just barebones ethnic diversity. The US is also more diverse than the UK when it comes to geography and climate: If the fall-winter edition of a big-book catalogue features 50 pages of snow boots, anoraks, ice scrapers, and portable heaters, that’s 50 pages of content irrelevant to recipients in southern states.

* Digital marketing in the US is more advanced than in the UK, making it a more viable substitute for traditional print catalogues than in Britain. No, I’m not suggesting that digital can replace print full stop. But because US websites have been quicker to adopt features such as customer reviews, live chat, product recommendation engines, video demonstrations, and the like, they have become more of a primary resource for shoppers than the print catalogues. In response to this quicker evolution of ecommerce in the States, print catalogues over there have morphed more dramatically into traffic drivers. (For examples, see “Which is the tail and which is the dog?”.)

* The Brits love their traditions more than the Yanks. Despite the advent of satellite TV with its 500 channels of choice, and regardless of the fact that the monarchy is all but powerless, Brits still sit themselves in front of the telly after their Christmas dinner to watch the Queen’s Speech. It serves no real need and has no real effect on anyone’s life, but the British won’t give it up. So we shouldn’t be surprised that two-thirds of all UK households still have an Argos catalogue in their home at any given time. For most UK shoppers, it—and other big books—still works just fine, thank you.--SC

A fascia too far?

While leafing through my Empire Stores spring/summer catalogue last night, I felt a sense of deja vu. When I got to the office this morning and saw the spring/summer Great Universal catalogue on my desk, I realised why. Except for the front cover and opening spread, they're the exact same book, with the exact same credit offer. Likewise, so far as I can tell, the websites are the same. Only the phone numbers and the URLs differ.

Of course, both brands are owned by Shop Direct, the parent company of Littlewoods. Empire was acquired last year; Great Universal in 2004. But why should both brands have virtually the same 1,126-page catalogue? Or perhaps the better question is, Why should Shop Direct support two separate, but nearly identical, brands? Why not migrate both brands to the Littlewoods fascia?

I can understand that Shop Direct might be afraid of eroding hard-won brand loyalty. But consumers aren't stupid; if executed thoughtfully and thoroughly, transitioning "Great Universal" and "Empire" to "Littlewoods" shouldn't cost the company many, if any, of its good customers. And by consolidating its brands, Shop Direct could get maximum bang for its advertising buck when promoting Littlewoods on TV and elsewhere. I'd imagine it could save money on the back end as well.

In today's Independent, Robin Knight of restructuring firm Zolfo Cooper is quoted as saying, "There will undoubtedly be a further flurry of collapses in the retail sector because retail is still heavily oversubscribed–there are too many fascias, stores, and too much space." It seems that even within Shop Direct there may be too many fascias–unless any of you out there can convince me otherwise.–SC