Archives > Plano Star-courier > News
Print
E-mail
Comment
Rate
RSS
Share
J.C. Penney takes advantage of new advertising medium
By Marthe Stinton, mstinton@acnpapers.com
With back-to-school shopping high on the list of most parents and teens in the area, J.C. Penney Co. has prepared for the season by taking advantage of a new trend in marketing - "hauls."
New videos have been surfacing on the Internet featuring teens, mostly young women, discussing their shopping finds, or hauls, with other teens looking to fill their wardrobe with the latest trends. According to Kate Coutlas, PR manager for Brand Communications at J.C. Penney, the company has taken advantage of its new back-to-school campaign, which has the tagline of "New look. New day. Who knew!" and is venturing into new advertising territory.
"While J.C. Penney has long gotten credit for its value and quality, we often don't get credit for our style," Coutlas said. "We want new customers to discover the fashion [of] J.C. Penney and also [want] customers that may have not been in a J.C. Penney in a few years to come give us a try."
The J.C. Penney "haulers" are diverse in that they are of different ages, backgrounds, locations and hauling experience; some are experienced haulers, while others are completing their first haul videos.
Haulers were provided two $500 gift certificates to use toward their J.C. Penney haul and/or to use for any additional shopping trips to J.C. Penney.
"Girls that were not local were flown into Dallas and provided accommodations so they could shop our full back-to-school assortment available at the Lewisville store," Coutlas said.
While the Lewisville location - which is less than 20 minutes from J.C. Penney headquarters in Plano - is always set early with merchandise, J.C. Penney stores across the country were all prepped with back-to-school merchandise on July 20. J.C. Penney uses this store as a model for the rest of its stores.
"As these haul videos are part of our back-to-school marketing campaign, we needed to get these girls to our store ASAP so they had time to shop, film their videos, send them back to us, and we could then incorporate them into our back-to-school digital campaign," Coutlas said.
In all the videos, the haulers disclose that J.C. Penney provided them with a gift card to shop their store.
"The videos will also be posted to our teen Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube channel and also be available to view on our special back-to-school WAP [Wireless Application Protocol] mobile site, jcpteen.mobi," Coutlas said. "The girls will also be posting their haul videos to their own sites as well."
According to Coutlas, J.C. Penney has a history of using innovative marketing to reach out to teens, and this back-to-school season is no different.
"Hauling is definitely the hot phenomenon right now, and we are thrilled that we have been able to incorporate it into this year's campaign and provide an opportunity to have real teen girls talk to other teen girls about our back-to-school fashions," Coutlas said.
J.C. Penney has recently revamped its teen selection to include new designers.
"It was really fun to watch the videos and see how surprised the girls were at the level of fashion available at J.C. Penney," Coutlas said. "Along with an exciting array of our private brands, we carry brands by well-known designers such as Charlotte Ronson, Nicole Miller, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen and have Sephora boutiques located inside our stores."
The following are comments from the readers.
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
In no way do they represent the view of Starlocalnews.com
You must register with a valid email to post comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Only your Member ID will be posted with the comments.
Registered users sign in here:
Become a Registered User
- Return to: News «
- Home «
- Top of Page ^
