Page 78 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

tower on the market and moved to more affordable quarters. All that made
Sears tolerable to its shareholders were the corporation’s Repair Centers,
All-State Insurance, the Discover Card, and the underlying value of the
company’s real holdings.

In late 1995, however, the stores showed signs of rallying. By December
1995 same-store sales increased almost six percent despite a sluggish retail
economy. Sears’s major weapon in the rebound was an intense focus on the
store’s “softer side.” Executives decided to let the impressive word of mouth
for Sears’s durable goods drive that portion of its business. They moved
furniture out into separate free-standing furniture stores. Then, with
aggressive “softer side” advertising, the addition of more national clothing
brands, wider aisles, softer lighting, and fancier displays, they drove up
women’s clothing sales 10 percent—an important improvement for a chain
in which women make more than 70 percent of the purchases.

At this writing, it appears that Sears’s focus on the softer and higher
margin portion of its business might revive the stores. (Though one could
also argue that Sears owns a unique “one-stop shopping” niche that has
great appeal in this age of time-strapped consumers.)

In any case, if Sears had not found this focus, this section would not be
subtitled “What Sears May Have Learned.” It would be titled “Remember
Sears?”

If you think you can afford not to focus, think of Sears.

Focus and the Clinton Campaign

He was dying. Bill Clinton had taken too many blows in the 1992
Democratic presidential primaries. Almost everyone involved with the
campaign thought the end was near.

Clinton’s problem was not his alleged fondness for women other than
Hillary Clinton. It was his apparent fondness for chaos. He gave a speech
one night and another the next, with no common themes.

Midway through the campaign, however, and with one dramatic gesture
at a blackboard in Clinton’s headquarters, campaign manager James
Carville turned Clinton’s entire campaign around with four words: “It’s the
Economy, Stupid.”

From that moment the campaign rarely lost this focus. Before, his
campaign speeches touched on everything from subsections of the tax code