The J.C. Penney Company on Thursday said it could invest greater than $1 billion to enhance areas like customer experience and operations, the most recent turnaround bid by the embattled department store chain. The effort also introduces a recent brand positioning and campaign, called “Make It Count,” that center on 4 core areas: making fashion accessible, offering a compelling loyalty program, supporting varied local and cultural communities and reinforcing a commitment to positive change. The company uses the brand name JCPenney in marketing and promoting.
“We have a belief that the industry hasn’t really taken our customer seriously enough, whether that’s size inclusivity, whether that’s the main target that now we have on our communities,” said Katie Mullen, J.C. Penney’s chief customer officer.
The JCPenney brand joins a deluge of others undergoing revitalization initiatives in 2023, reflective of businesses viewing the post-pandemic transition as a chance to pivot. Like many within the industry, JCPenney is attempting to balance leaning on what’s familiar — its classic logo is returning, as an example — while bringing something forward-looking to the table that may appeal to consumers whose shopping habits have shifted over the past few years. The J.C. Penney Company filed for bankruptcy in 2020 and was later acquired by two of its landlords, Simon Property Group and Brookfield Asset Management.
“What we’re doing isn’t a reinvention of the brand. It’s a reinvigoration, it’s a recommitment to the set of things that had historically been true about us,” said Mullen.
“Make It Count” was a couple of yr within the making, in keeping with Mullen, and involved six months of qualitative and quantitative consumer research. Mullen moved to the chief customer officer role in April after previously serving as the retailer’s chief digital officer.
On the messaging front, the main target is on working families and helping make their dollar go further without sacrificing style. That could resonate with consumers who proceed to grapple with inflation and an uncertain economy. At the identical time, the retailer is attempting to avoid conventional department store tactics that communicate value, Mullen said.
TV spots depict a series of “lifestyle vignettes” that capture authentic, sometimes messy moments between family and friends while showing off the range of fashions available from JCPenney. The brand positioning was developed with agency Yard NYC and artistic was handled by in-house teams.
“It’s not a bit picture of a product with a giant price sticker attached to it,” said Mullen. “It’s the romance, and each customer desires to be romanced.”
Context is key
Though the campaign is only one piece of a more sprawling initiative that also touches on the chain’s merchandising, supply chain operations and tech and digital capabilities, “Make It Count” represents a substantive increase in marketing expenditure. The media ramp-up arrives ahead of the crucial holiday season.
“We’re spending tens of thousands and thousands of dollars incremental to our baseline marketing to ensure that that we’re getting this big brand message out,” said Mullen, without sharing specific figures. “You’re going to begin to see us showing up in sports, in music in other types of entertainment that our customer is really highly engaged in.”
Mullen explained that marketing strategy supporting the JCPenney brand is essentially bifurcated. On the one hand, there are creative plays, just like the recent commercials, which are focused on reach. Congruent to that approach, the marketing team is deploying more contextual efforts targeted at specific product interests and demographics, which aligns with the broader inclusivity angle of “Make It Count.”
“For our customer who really cares about beauty, they’re going to see beauty content within the publications and within the forums that they’re using for beauty information. Likewise for cooking, likewise for home,” said Mullen. “You’re going to see us in media channels like Essence. We know that that’s an incredibly vital way for us to attach with our African-American consumer.”
At the highest level, the retailer is a far more “digitally native shop” than it was a number of years ago, in keeping with Mullen. However, the chief noted that the department store is aiming to avoid using “very short-term levers” for driving engagement. Or, in other words, to avoid the trend-chasing that publicly traded rivals might feel the pressure to adopt.
“As a personal company, now we have so much more flexibility to speculate in the suitable long-term ways of connecting and interesting with our customers versus being highly motivated to do what another public corporations might do,” said Mullen. “That’s not the sport we’re playing.”
In search of a turnaround
While Mullen emphasized that “Make It Count” is designed to have an extended tail, the marketing team is listening to some KPIs within the short term. Those include monitoring the brand’s net promoter rating, direct website traffic and, perhaps most significantly, customer frequency, an indication that shoppers are returning to the JCPenney brand versus rivals like Macy’s or Kohl’s.
“Make It Count” and the $1 billion reinvestment plan seek to right the retailer’s ship following a trying few years. The company’s net sales dropped 3.4% year-over-year to $7.6 billion in 2022, Retail Dive previously reported.
The retailer also highlighted recent moves like a partnership with celebrity stylist Jason Bolden to revamp private labels J.Ferrar and Worthington. Those types of deals exhibit that the makeover is gaining traction, in keeping with Mullen.
“There’s all the time going to be work that we still must do. But as measured by the best way the industry is taking notice, the best way potential partners are coming to us and saying they need to partner and do collabs with us, we expect that’s a measure of the indisputable fact that we’re able to go tell this story more broadly,” said Mullen.
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