Jonas Brothers Push Propels Wal-Mart Strategy Toward a New Generation of Customers
Wal-Mart's focus on young people as potential sales drivers in entertainment and electronics â€" and beyond â€" has entered a new dimension with a promotion for the Jonas Brothers, one that boosts the retailer's online operation but also demonstrated how it intends to keep winning new customers even after the recession ends.
Starting today, the Jonas Brothers' tween and teen fans can view a new, exclusive concert and special behind-the-scenes interviews featuring the band exclusively at walmart.com/jonasbrothers. The footage offers the band's first live performance of songs from their upcoming album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, which releases in exactly one week. Fans can pre-order the collection as a digital album from Wal-Mart for $9, and the retailer is sweetening the deal with a free MP3 of the new track Lovebug from the private concert and a copy of the radio single, Paranoid.
The promotion bolsters Wal-Mart's entertainment and electronics strategy in several ways. For one thing, it is a major initiative to drive consumers to walmart.com music downloads and to put the retailer on a more competitive footing with Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com among a demographic group not necessarily set in its music purchasing ways.
Consumers lured to the site by the Jonas Brothers are also coaxed to linger, with the page including their concert also promoting and linking to other performance footage, at least some of it exclusive, featuring Mandy Moore, Lil Wayne, Lady Gaga and Rascal Flats among others. The performers get to plug their albums in performance previews but they also plug walmart.com and the products that act as sponsors of their footage. Consumable products, which bring consumers into stores frequently, are key sponsors with Jonas Brothers plugging Degree antiperspirants and Many Moore plugging Vaseline lotions. An archive featuring dozens of performers ranging from Adele to Yurida doesn't emphasize product pitches but could keep site visitors on the site and bring them back again.
The Jonas Brothers hook the retailer into another high profile and popular tween/teen entertainment brand â€" and although the Jonas brothers are people, Disney has essentially turned them into a brand â€" just days after Wal-Mart announced a deal with another performer tuning brand, Myley Cyrus, that ties entertainment into product offered elsewhere in the store, in this case, an apparel line.
Finally, the Jonas Brothers promotions is a fresh manifestation of Wal-Mart's strategy to use electronics and entertainment to pull new customers into its operations both in store and online. In a recent analyst presentation, Wal-Mart vice chairman Eduardo Castro-Wright said electronics "provides us credibility and authority with new customers." In his presentation, Castro-Wright was addressing consumers trading down in the recession, but the Jonas Brothers provide Wal-Mart the opportunity to reach a new customer source that isn't going to tap out. As with the Myley Cyrus initiative and a recent promotion for the movie Twilight, Wal-Mart is using a multi-product promotional effort to engage young people as a next generation of shoppers not fixed in their habits, and who, given the limited incomes they are likely to face right through school and their early work lives, need to save money on non-necessities they particularly covet.