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November 03, 2005

The Mystery of "The Mystery of Snowy Way"

How can you tell that the holiday shopping season is finally upon us?  There's several ways, actually... 1) the rows and rows of Halloween stuff at Target and Wal-Mart is gone (the DAY after Halloween) and there's Christmas decorations it its place.  2) CNN.com is already reporting on Wal Mart's leaked Black Friday "deals."  3) Because you need them, you begin to receieve thousands, upon thousands, of catalogs at your residence.

Amongst the three catalogs I received yesterday, there was one that I nearly chucked into the trash without taking a closer look.  A small 5.5" x 8.5" children's book(let) entitled, "The Mystery of Snowy Way," grabbed my attention after I took a second gander.  By examining the cover, it appears that this is one story in the series of "Adventures on Enchanted Lane," it's also "A Storybook Reader for Families."  Cool, so it's a small book for families to read together, which is what families are wanting more of -- quality time.  What stood out from the cover were the following two captions: "Holiday 2005" and "See coupons inside!"

Huh?

SnowywayNow a bit leary of what I was holding, I opened the booklet to see what "coupons" were inside.  At first I saw no coupons, but just a childrens story, complete with illustrations and a decent story.  The catch... every character had on different clothing on each page, and at the bottom of each page were photos of the clothes they were wearing, a description of the clothes and a price.

Arriving at the story's finale, you learn that this entire book is from Sears.  It's a marketing tool to get kids and families looking at the same items, without thinking they're being marketed to.  The only place you see a Sears logo is on the back two pages (and a small copyright notice on the cover).  Talk about sneaky.

So sneaky, in fact, that you can't find anything on Google about this.  So sneaky, that it's not even mentioned on Sears' web site.

Good marketing?  Failed follow-through?  We won't know until after these coupons expire and see what kind of response Sears gets.

Posted by SethyG on November 03, 2005 at 09:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Advertising

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Comments

I don't know how "sneaky" this was. I got the same thing in my mail - although I quickly threw it away because I have no kids. There is a big sears logo printed on the back of it - and the ads on the bottom of the pages just seemed like it was a catalog.

I found your blog from a link on AdJab - which apparently isn't tracking back to your entry. (Yargh! The pirates of blog content) - although they are linking toyou.

Ryan

Posted by:Ryan Gardner | November 06, 2005 at 10:54 PM

Good point about the logos, Ryan. After thinking about this more, I still do think this was a well-planned tactic... here's why. Assuming that most kids were like me when growing up, I would haul ass to get the mail first before my parents. If most kids/families are like this, then the kid's probably not going to care about any type of logo on the storybook. It's still true that kids are major driving factors to parental spending, and if kids get a hold of this before their parents can trash it (not that they would), then Sears has accomplished half of it's goal.

Eh? Maybe?

Posted by:Seth | November 07, 2005 at 08:46 AM

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