Three years ago, when we were running our monthly “How Would You Save” series, Lairig Marketing offered a host of suggestions to “save” the struggling Sears brand. As expected, the company adopted none of our recommendations, and finds its share price exactly where it was back then. How’s that for progress?
From a performance perspective, Sears continues to wobble. Its fiscal third quarter was craptastic, and even though we outlined how well the retail industry did over the holidays, Sears’s same-store comps for December were down by an unbelievable 6%. I can’t imagine anything but red ink when Sears reports fiscal Q4 this Thursday.
Yet, from a stock price perspective, the company has been bid up 30% since early this month. An aggressive share-repurchase program coupled with a vicious short squeeze are driving a completely counter-intuitive outcome on Wall Street.
And the madness has spead to Madison Avenue.
Today, Advertising Age was bombed with nearly 50 comments on an article highlighting Sears’s intent to rewrite the rules of “the pitch,” i.e., when a half-dozen or so agencies work weeks on end for free to present a new branding concept, in hopes of being selected (and paid) to work on the account for a year or more. Sears's new pitch rule = any agency accepting the pitch consultant’s invitation must sign over ownership of all concepts, at no charge, win lose or draw. Heresy.
And heresy just might be at the core of the Sears brand. Some examples:
(1) Even though it has been around for 100 years, it can’t conduct a pitch without a "pitch consultant" (Select Resources International, the king of preying on the weak in the ad industry).
(2) It has been shuttling in new VPs for this and that division almost monthly. Some corporate relocation company somewhere in Chicago is having a good year.
(3) Even for agencies of record, Sears is known for requesting never-ending serial pitches on never-awarded incremental projects (disclosure: I have had direct experience with this, on at least three separate occasions).
Dysfunction begets dysfunction. The winner and the losers in the Sears pitch will get what they deserve. In a way, it’s a bit like the running of the bulls. Most contestants jump off to the side early on. A few stick with it, and end up getting gored. And one outlasts the beasts by running farther, faster.
Outrunning your client. Not exactly what the “winning” agency will be expecting as its reward.
