“Until Steve Jobs died, Best Buy Co. was plotting a familiar course for its Super Bowl ad: hiring a celebrity spokesman,” Chris Burritt reports for Bloomberg. “Then all the tributes poured in after the Apple Inc. founder’s Oct. 5 death, and Best Buy’s U.S. marketing chief, Drew Panayiotou, realized Silicon Valley inventors are today’s stars.”
“Instead of heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and teen heartthrob Justin Bieber, who starred in last year’s ad, Panayiotou opted to hire innovators who could personify Best Buy’s selling premise: that no one knows more about gadgets and how they work together than the chain’s blue-shirt sales force,” Burritt reports. “The retailer is trying to attract U.S. consumers enduring unemployment and weak wage growth. Retail sales will advance 3.4 percent to $2.53 trillion this year, compared with a gain of 4.7 percent in 2011, according to the Washington-based National Retail Federation. Best Buy may grow even more slowly, with analysts surveyed by Bloomberg projecting a revenue increase of 2.6 percent in the fiscal year that ends Feb. 25, followed by a gain of less than 1 percent the following year.”
Burritt reports, “The Super Bowl commercial, airing in the first quarter of the Feb. 5 game, will spotlight inventors such as Philippe Kahn, who developed one of the first camera phones. Another is Kevin Systrom, who developed a free photo-sharing application called Instagram introduced on Apple’s app store in 2010. ‘They may not be at the same level as Steve Jobs, but they created some amazing stuff,’ said Panayiotou.”
Read more in the full article here.
‘Bout time Geeks were honored over mindless stage and screen stars.
That’s why we all pay so much money to see you perform.
Let’s just hope there are no nerding malfunctions…
“…Best Buy’s selling premise: that no one knows more about gadgets and how they work together than the chain’s blue-shirt sales force…”
Dammit, I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Those blue shirted morons need help finding their way home after work.
Yeah, that about nails it. I’ve bought a lot of stuff from Best Buy over the years, but my philosophy is always to know exactly what I want before I walk in the door. Asking most of the employees anything is a waste of time.
(Mind you, there are exceptions. There’s a man in the appliances section of my local BB who really knows his sh*t.)
——RM
Yeah, that’s a laff riot all right. Most of those blue shirters come straight from living at home with Mom & Dad and their pubescent voices modulate up and down in varying levels of disinformation & misinformation. Best Buy = Caveat Emptor
But they can sell useless add-on warranties.
Truth be told, I can’t remember the last time I was in a Bogus Buy.
You guys can bad mouth Best Buy all you want but where are you going to find more knoledgeable sales clerks? Wally World? Target? Sears? Oh, how about Radio Shack? If it’s not listed on their computer, it doesn’t exist. If you know so much more than the clerks why do you need them? You can just grab and go.
Oh, so that’s who did the Ozzy/Bieber ad. I had no clue.
The thing that advertisers don’t get is, everybody HATES ads. We may chuckle at a clever one when we first see it, but that isn’t gonna make us buy the product. OTOH, obnoxious ads (hi, Samsung!) can make us actively hate a product and/or manufacturer.
Philippe Kahn, known for inventing camera phones?
No, better known for Turbo Pascal and Borland International.