A- on Sears Community, GNN plus
Sears partnered with AOL a few months ago to create Good News Now, adding to their MySears efforts of last year. Yup you guessed it, GNN is all about good news meshed with some causes but isn’t shy on Sears ads either. Sears has an artillery of social media efforts including MySears, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and a back to school campaign. Sears is doing a lot of good things, now if only they would take a look at the flow of their sites as a whole.
B+ for Authentic. I’ll give Sears props for all their efforts right off the bat. They’ve got multiple campaigns running for genuine and good causes. They’re also upfront about what their Twitter feeds are for- deals (nothing wrong with that, as long as you know what you’re getting into). GNN is definitely stuffed with good news, but is it overkill? Tech Crunch seemed to think so and gave a pretty tough review using words like “barf”. The site does push the Sears brand to the forefront. The question is: is it a crime to push your brand? I think that a brand has the right to match up with their causes (thus cause marketing) but Sears may be a too flashy on this one. Also what does GNN really provide to the reader? Random good news? I’m more favorable of some of their other campaigns that are much clearer in their call to action and meaning.
A- for Inclusive. Sears provides a lot of ways for consumers to give feedback like through MySears Community where you can write/read reviews and participate in discussions. When they launched this new media outlet, Mashable took a deeper look at the application, pointing out a few quirks like the sites directing you to idle (wrong) twitter accounts- and they still have fixed it. Overall they got a good review, and I agree that these are the steps companies, especially large ones, need and should be taking.
Snapshot of MySears Community
B for Constructive. On one hand they have some specific campaigns (like their Heroes at Home) but GNN itself? Well a little too noisy for my taste. Some may argue the point is simply to show good news and they do tie in their other campaigns that have a call to action. OK I won’t argue with that but their Good Causes category is listed down near the bottom of the site while Store Locator, Good Deals and Weather (not sure what this one is doing here), are listed near the top. At MySears, consumer contributions are at the forefront, much more construct- of course this is a mechanism to generate reviews which is of a higher interest to Sears. There really isn’t a natural flow, however, from their different online presences- facebook, MySears, Sears.com, etc. I think if they were to reorganize and take a look at how all of the pieces can work together, they’d be more constructive, drive more back and forth, and be more efficient in capturing interests.
A for Mutually Beneficial. At the end of the day Sears is doing a lot of great things with their campaigns. In short: they’re making the effort. Maintaining such extensive sites, and so many at once, is no easy task. They have a good flow of content and their efforts benefit real people (consumers and military vets at home mostly). On their Heroes at Home page you can read the stories of military personnel that were helped and see search results by location + active users (check out CT). Sears has really expanded their efforts over the last year in reaching out to people and interacting with the community. I think by tying their sites together a little better and cutting out some of the fluff they would really rise as a top brand for social media.
The effort is there and like a lot of these big companies, Sears is aggressively moving in the right direction (consumer interaction). There are flaws and improvement to make but on the 4-way test (+ my views) they score an A-. To really hit this one home Sears can work on how their sites/campaigns can work together and continuing to improve the consumer experience.