Why J.C. Penney Is Treading the Red Carpet at the Oscars
Our BNET colleague Lydia Dishman recently took J.C. Penney (JCP) to task for launching a marketing campaign, including a big Academy Awards push, that may be better tailored than its apparel.
She has a valid point, but another way to consider what J.C. Penney's trying to do is to think less in terms of fashion and more in terms of geography, at least its metaphorical dimension.
Between the Rockies to the west and the Appalachians to the east, the U.S. is home to millions of people who like those mountain ranges for buffering them from the influence of the more frenetic denizens of the coasts.
That's not to imply antagonism or to venture any clichéd assessment of midwestern provincialism. Indeed, many consumers who live in the country's center are as interested in the latest fashions as those on the coasts.
But a great many would like them interpreted for their tastes.
So, J.C. Penney and many other retailers including, for example, Macy's (M), with its headquarters in Cincinnati, buying office in New York and regional merchandising centers scattered across the U.S., are constantly assessing and reworking how to balance a desire to be stylish with a reluctance to be voguish.
By placing itself alongside the designer-strewn red carpet, J.C. Penney can bask in reflected glamor without appearing too trendy.
The balancing act can be observed in other J.C. Penney initiatives. For example, J.C. Penney has got itself a supermodel, only this particular fashion icon has been emphasizing her motherhood and home life as much as her runway strutting. That would be Cindy Crawford, who has launched a jewelry line dubbed One Kiss at J.C. Penney in time for the Academy Awards push. On Oscar night, her new home furnishings brand that will get the advertising spotlight.
J.C. Penney is the Academy Awards ceremony's exclusive retail sponsor, by the way. The company isn't chancing any fashion heavyweight coming along and tilting the balance against its message. Other J.C. Penney Academy Award advertising includes three spots for women's brands ALLEN B., nicole by Nicole Miller, she said, a.n.a, Worthington and Bisou Bisou, and one spot for one menswear featuring Levi's, J. Ferrar, and JOE Joseph Abboud. As an appetizer, if it's to one's tastes, J.C. Penney will sponsor a 30-second spot showcasing junior's brand, Olsenboye during the pre-Oscar coverage on ABC and E!
In another signal of the retailer's desire to balance wholesome with indulgent sensibilities, J.C. Penney will emphasize the affordability of its apparel throughout the spring marketing campaign that the Academy Awards push inaugurates.
One other thing to consider. When J.C. Penney opened its new flagship store on Herald Square in New York, it was playing to that cross-mountain sensibility. The company entered America's fashion headquarters to suffuse itself in the latest style, just like Macy's, with its buying shift to the city, and Sears Holding (SHLD), which has made a point of the design center it operates in New York for its namesake and Kmart chains. Suffuse but not regurgitate. J.C. Penney's role is to reconstitute the season's style sensations for the broad range of sensibilities it must address nationwide. In that way the retailer reassures customers that they are neither chasing nor falling behind fashion. Rather, they are pacing it at the distance â€" and price -- most comfortable for them.
Earlier reference to America's geography was characterized as metaphorical. It was because the reference was to a cultural and personal sense of the word. You can be sure that many of the folks who shop at J.C. Penney in Herald Square won't be taking plane, train or automobile home, but a cab back to their little Manhattan apartments. Not everyone in New York is a hardcore fashionista, even if they are fashionistas part of the time.
Sometimes, a comfortable distance from the cutting edge is welcome even in Gotham.