Best Buy reported a 15 percent drop in first-quarter profits yesterday, but chief marketing officer Barry Judge remains confident the world's largest electronics retailer can hold its own in tough times. And, now that rival Circuit City's gone bankrupt, it's going full throttle with an ongoing push for its "True Stories" campaign, which competes aggressively with Walmart on price. But yellow tag aside, Judge said Best Buy's key selling point, in a tough economy, is how its employees help consumers "before, during and after the sale." Same-store sales were down 5 percent in the U.S., but Judge says Best Buy still has plenty of opportunity to win consumers over, including a new wave of ads from its in-house agency, Yellow Tag Productions. (One shows a blue shirt worker, Rachel, answering a Walmart shopper's call for help, and eventually winning him over.) Judge said these and other "true stories" would likely increase the retailer's market share in key consumer electronics categories. Some excerpts from a recent conversation are below.
Brandweek: Best Buy first debuted its "True Stories" campaign as part of last year's holiday push. How has it evolved? Where are you taking it?
Barry Judge: "True Stories" was developed almost a year ago. And really, what it was designed to do was bring to life our product, which is our people. When you think of Best Buy and how competitive it is going forward, a lot of it is in the space of we are the best before, during and after a sale. We've got people to help you. We've got product assortments that are very broad that can help meet those needs and we have the service to back it up. We're telling real stories about how we can help consumers get what they need, as well as the most efficient way to get that message out. It's part of what we've always wanted to do, which is to celebrate and make the blue shirts front and center. We always knew we had a great story to tell and that was the genesis of it.
We've run the same format [of ads] for the past eight months or so. And every month, when we run the commercials, we get another call for stories based on the product we might be selling at that time. We'll get six or seven hundred stories back, we'll get it down to a small number that we think may be ready for prime time and then we'll narrow it down to one or two. On Bestbuytruestories.com, you'll find interviews that never made it to TV. It gets into the human part of Best Buy, the human part of our brand.
The "Rachel" ad recounts how one employee (Rachel) helps win over a Walmart shopper looking for product information. (Her knowledge and friendly attitude convince him to make the switch.) Would you call this aggressive advertising? How does this figure into Best Buy's strategy to attract more customers in tough times?
Our value proposition is our people: how they help you before, during and after the sale. With before, it's how they help you find the right things, and with the after, a lot of it has to do with the Geek Squad -- delivering, setting up, and if it breaks, we fix it. Our ad campaign is trying to land that.
In the ad, we are talking about how aggressive we are on price. Our prices are as good as anyone else's out there. We thought it was the most authentic, genuine and subtle way to bring out our price match guarantee.
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