Barnes & Noble and not Borders
One of my favorite bookstore chains is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It became my favorite bookstore chain because of its frequent 30-40% discount email coupons. I always enjoy discounts on quality products, especially books. I wondered what went wrong? Why is Borders filing for bankruptcy? I read an article a few weeks ago of a potential merger between Barnes & Noble and Borders. What ever happened of that? So I started doing a simple search to find out. I found a very strong response on Quora through a user named M. Evans. I am reposting his response because I feel it is very well composed and the closest thing to an insider's perspective.
Without further adieu, M. Evans please take it away:
This is a question that many of us at Borders asked ourselves frequently and I think the answer is not a simple one. As someone who has given this a tremendous amount of thought and was Director of Merchandise Planning & Analysis for many years, I've outlined my assessment below:
Mike’s Hard Lemonade Ads
Whenever I watch commercials I always try to imagine the group of people who decided to sign off on this commercial. At some point this group received feedback from either their customers, their superiors, or purely through divine intervention. The feedback told them exactly how their customers felt or what they were saying about their particular brand. Let's take Mike's Hard Lemonade for example. For those of you unfamiliar to MHL I suggest you run down to the nearest market and buy a 6 pack and take a swig of this lemony, sugary malt beverage. It's not half bad!
Back in 2001 USA Today took a poll on what people thought of several ad campaigns
(MHL included). Mike's Hard Lemonade took a BRUTAL BEATING back then. Here is the article. where the brand is just taken to the gutter.
Here is one of the ad spots from that particular campaign: guy loses leg and then gets over it because buddy offers to buy a Mike's. There were those online who disagreed with the public and thought it was great: Drew Babb & Associates top 100. You have to love how the honesty of the masses compares very much so to the image of a smaller devilish version of yourself whispering into your left ear all the while an angelic counterpart, standing near your right ear, heartily disagrees with everything you heard earlier. Love it or hate it, these commercials are here to get you off the fence and start talking about them.
In 2002 they had a guy in front of a computer with a second head growing out of his shoulders. I'll track down the commercial later. Sorry everyone.
Fast forward to today and Mike's Hard lemonade has come up with their best ad campaign yet. Basic premise: large man whose ideas get turned down ALL THE TIME. Commercial. There's just something about a very happy and clueless, large man who pitches his ideas with conviction. Unfortunately every pitch he throws is a slow ball over the plate ready to get smacked like some sort tee ball practice for any Major Leaguer. His ideas just get slammed... and I love it more and more.
I still have a hard time figuring out what these commercials are trying to say about their customers. I must already be buzzing off a pack of these things so perhaps the message was just meant to get lost in the buzz.
Jeff and Mario on Shrooms (not the kind you’re thinking of!)
More and more I am becoming convinced that video games have become a cornerstone of not just 'at home entertainment' but as a cornerstone of entertainment. I am not a gamer myself so please don't send me messages of being a gamer homer. I remember as a kid that video games were something I played after school and before I got out to play basketball before dinner. It was a short and sweet session of punching through blocks with Mario or Luigi. I was on shrooms' back then: the ones that make you grow larger and allow your opponent to hit you just one more time before suffering a Goomba induced fatal would.
My buddy James directed me to this article on CNET showing GTA IV's first week performance. $310M ONE DAY OPENING. $500M IN ITS FIRST WEEK. Is that not just ridiculous? I had a blog earlier on Iron Man's stellar first weekend opening of ($100M). We are talking about 3x that in just one day for a gaming title. I will point out however that for every behemoth title or franchise like GTA, Halo, and Mario there will be a host of other titles that are your equivalent of Bennifer's disastrous Gigli. It just boggles me.
GTA's FIRST week of sales would rank it's publisher Take-Two Games and its developer Rockstar Games (if they combined to become a 'country') to be 176th in GDP! They would have a higher combined gross domestic product than the following countries:
- East Timor ($472M)
- Comoros ($436M)
- Vanuatu ($421M)
- Samoa ($387M)
- The Gambia ($379M)
- Solomon Islands ($358M)
- Guinea-Bissau ($343M)
- American Samoa ($334M)
- Dominica ($268M)
- Federated States of Micronesia ($232M)
- Tonga ($219M)
- Cook Islands ($183M)
- Palau ($145M)
- Marshall Islands ($144M)
- São Tomé and PrÃncipe ($142M)
- Anguilla ($109M)
- Kiribati ($73M)
- Tuvalu ($15M)
- Niue ($10M)
That's just ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as Gigli.
