Category: Business

The STORES Top 100 Retailers are ranked by annual revenues as reported in SEC filings, public statements by the companies and, where noted, estimates based on Planet Retail research.  View the list here.

I just found out Amazon.com added a great new universal wish list bookmarklet.  As you probably know bookmarklets are gaining popularity and I think it was brilliant for Amazon.com to create one which lets you add something you want to purchase from anywhere on the web (not just Amazon.com).  Let’s say you are surfing a non Amazon.com site and you see something you want to purchase in the future.  Normally you may write that item down or perhaps even save it to a Google Docs spreadsheet.  With Amazon’s new feature you can add that item to your universal wish list with one click of a button.  You can add it to your browser with full instructions provided here.  You can also view my wish list any time via the left hand navigation of my website or by clicking the image below.  I go to the bookstores to browse books and then send myself emails with the title of the book because I can usually get it much cheaper online.  I’m pretty much an open book (no pun intended) so I made my wish list public.  Pretty spiffy huh?

Stromberg Consulting Presentation

• Target and Best Buy are using Stromberg Consulting to help with their branding strategy
• Brand + Reputation + Perception = Today’s Reality
• Employees, customers, and stakeholders are all seeking much more transparency in the relationships that they have with companies.
• Branding
  • Good brand = promise
  • Great brand = promise kept
• From the moment we are born we are all in networks.    Some of us even find love through our networks.   Stories travel the world in minutes through our networks.    People play different roles in networks.    Using networks to change our professional lives.
• Referred to Tipping Point book
• Find out who the hubs of information are in an organization…who are people going to in order to get answers?
• Asked employees what channels they find most effective to receive communications which ended up being email, managers, and employee toolkit (portal).
  • They then did a cost analysis of each communication channel
• Drivers of Engagement
  • Team connections
  • Senior Leadership
  • Quality of work
  • Growth and Opportunity
  • External reputation
  • Assesses “a day in the life” of someone and understands hour by hour what spends a day getting fully immersed with the employees.

  Leadership Visibility

  • Has your CEO directly addressed how you’re tackling the economic environment?
  • Have you increased leader visibility in the face of uncertain times?
  • Have you considered a “back to the floor” program?
  • Is there a mechanism for two-way dialog with senior leaders?
  • Have you considered setting a leader’s specific communication targets?
  • Employees are more apt to form/join a union if the relationship with their manager is failing.
  • Measuring seat time vs. productivity (social media)

  Mike Brown – Director, Marketing Planning at Target

  • Target is a “destination for trendsetters”
  • Values mounted on the wall in the highest traffic area of the headquarters
  • To be the best company ever for our guests, team members, and shareholders
  • Want their team members to know the vision, then act on it
  • Want their employees to be fast, fun, & friendly
  • Want to find a leader in everyone
  • Speed is life (we want to know what our guests want before they do)
  • Advance our reputation
  • Recognition
    • Great team cards (peer to peer cards)
    • Use real estate (artwork and digital signage) to remind them of the brand throughout the campus
    • Bullseye boutique (employee store)
    • Doing a dog (Bullseye) dress-up contest for employees for their plush dogs
  • Able to attract most affluent and highest educated customers
  • Target has planograms for Store Manager’s offices so if a Store Manager leaves the next Store Manager can jump in and find things
  • They call their employees “team members”
  • They call their customers “guests”
  • Word of Mouth Marketing Organization (educates employees about social media guidelines)

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

  

  

  

  
  

I was at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters today in Minneapolis, MN for the CMMA Professional Development Conference.  The agenda for the events today were as follows:

• Keynote Dialogue: Video Fueling Culture.  Brad Anderson, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Best Buy
• Fueling Communications Culture Topic & Discussion #1: Advocating for the Audience (Best Buy’s TAG TV Team)
• Fueling Communications Culture Topic & Discussion #2: Listening to Employees (Best Buy’s Employee Communication Team)

Presentation #1:
Keynote Dialogue: Video Fueling Culture.  Brad Anderson (Vice-Chairman and CEO) and Brian Dunn – (President/COO), Best Buy

• Best Buy did a video series where they asked customers who walked out of the store why they were leaving the store without merchandise.  They were able to get lots of insight into why they were missing out on potential sales.
• In our old days “we sold products to customers instead of solutions for customers”
• Best Buy’s China operations: one of the first two Best Buy China employees hired was named Arial.  The reason she was hired was in her interview she was asked why she wanted to work for Best Buy.  She held up her hand and said to the CEO:  “Mr. Anderson do you see this (pointing to her lifeline within the palm of her hand)?”  She continued saying “in that time I want to help change China.”
• “We want to be the kind of place that attracts people who have big dreams” (Brad Anderson)
• An audience member asked “what are your customers telling you where you need to be 5 years from now?”  Brad Anderson answered by saying “people feel like they are slaves of their devices.  People engineering their devices engineer them to fit their needs instead of consumers needs.  It isn’t a good excuse because of scale any more.  Best Buy will be successful if we can enrich people’s lives by solving that complexity for the customer”.
• People want to be able to do business with companies they can trust.  How do you get to a place where you are transparent so people can trust you?
• They do spots where employees tell the stories of customers they have affected
• Communications is the conscious of the organization and they were never accepted and they were a little dangerous in that they let a story go out that challenges a premise of a company.  Talked about a book called the naked corporation.
• The leaders that have a tough time with it end up being the butt of the jokes.
• Sending DVDs to the stores of “Tag TV”
• Not actively measuring video effectiveness but when employees pull a corporate video that was pushed it is a sign of something that is working

What is the story of Best Buy now and how does it end?

• The center of Best Buy is its employees.
• Things that don’t have a reason to exist tend not to
• Organizations as large as Best Buy can’t grow without communications and technology that support those communications

Best Buy Corporate Campus Videos