Sears Touts Good News Now That It Launches New Marketing Campaign

(MoneyWatch)  Sears Holding is reviving a holiday season experiment in a partnership with AOL that not only will provide a unique approach to communicating with consumers but also will act as lead initiative in a new marketing campaign the retailer is launching under the theme Life. Well spent.

The AOL partnership will generate a website dubbed Good News Now at gnn.com, dedicated to providing uplifting stories and links to shopping. Sears experimented with a Good News Now site in the holiday period and claims millions of unique visitors per month and an average visit time of four minutes plus.

The Sears logo is prominent at the top of the gnn.com home page with the new Life. Well spent. slogan below. The logo also is a link directly to shopping at Sears.com. Additionally the page includes Sears branded advertising for a charity campaign supporting military families, a Good Deals section that recently highlighted a Father's Day sale on a Sears Kenmore grill and a Sears store locator.

Site visitors can find good news in print but the stories are almost all detailed in video format. The site also has something of a social network element in that participants can upload and share good news by submitting links to cheerful items. The good news keeps coming, as even the weather and stock price reports are headed by the cheeriest developments. Major topic areas include Green, Health, Heroes/Winners, Videos and, in a challenge to pessimists everywhere, More Good News.

While it's all so sweet as to be dangerous viewing for diabetics, links to a more balanced view of reality are included at the bottom ?€" the very bottom ?€" of the page which give viewers access to AOL news topics including politics, science, health and entertainment, as well as outside sites and blogs on those subject and others such as sports. So, in a way, the site could function as a morning pick-me-up for viewers before they plunge into the more varied and often troubling news reports of the day.

For Sears, the site represents the extension of an evolving marketing strategy that uses alternative media as promotional vehicles and links to shopping at it namesake stores, whether actual or online, or at Kmart. Among the initiatives is Sears2go, a mobile commerce effort that allows consumers to purchase a limited range of products using their cell phones.

For its part, Kmart recently developed a YouTube channel linked to the ABC television program High School Musical: Get in the Picture. The site initially hosted a consumer video contest and continues to operate today featuring a community basketball clinic hosted by National Basketball Association star Al Harrington and a discussion about his involvement in developing the retailer's new Protégé line of athletic footwear. There, too, a click on the Kmart logo takes you directly to the retailer's online shopping site.