Month: March 2019

Apple isn’t chasing Netflix. It wants to copy Amazon. But even after this week’s high profile Apple event, there are still a ton of questions about how, exactly, Apple will attack streaming video.

The key hits:

• Apple’s new TV offering will center on an ad-free subscription service that will offer high-priced original movies and TV shows, as well as the ability for users to subscribe to video channels from other programmers.
• But there are still plenty of questions on Apple’s business strategy for Apple TV+ and Apple TV channels.
  Apple negotiated the ability to bundle different channels and products together, which means it could offer channel bundles.
• The company is certainly more likely to offer a services bundle, which could package products such as Apple TV+, Apple Music and AppleCare into one subscription.
• Apple also plans to distribute its TV app on other streaming TV platforms as it builds its services business that made $10.9 billion last quarter.
• It’s hard to root against Apple, which has a ton of cash, marketing prowess and with Apple Music has demonstrated that it can get people to subscribe.

Apple unveiled two new video products during its event this week, including Apple TV Channels, which clones Amazon’s popular Prime Video Channels program, and Apple TV+, which will offer high-priced original series from filmmakers and stars such as Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon.

The post Video Briefing: Apple’s streaming video plans bring up more questions than answers appeared first on Digiday.

A blow-up is brewing at Bed Bath & Beyond.

This week, a group of activist investors announced their intention to try and replace Bed Bath & Beyond’s entire 12-person board, as well as the CEO, and to sell off underperforming assets. Bed Bath & Beyond issued a statement in response, defending its board, and said that “many of the areas highlighted by the Activist Group in its press release are already being addressed at a detailed level by the company.”

This clash between Bed Bath & Beyond and some of its investors has been a long time coming: Same-store sales at Bed Bath & Beyond have declined every single quarter for nearly two years. During the third fiscal quarter of 2018, net sales rose just 2.6 percent year over year, from $2.96 billion to just over $3 billion.

What’s happening can be boiled down to three issues at the heart of Bed Bath & Beyond’s woes: a confusing pricing strategy, outdated store design, and slowness to expand private-label offerings.

“I just don’t know what they stand for anymore,” Jane Hali, CEO of Jane Hali & Associates, said. “They have to have a target audience, and I don’t think they do.”

Bed Bath & Beyond’s advantage used to be its vast assortment: It carries a wide array of products in home furnishings, ranging from bedding to furniture to kitchen accessories. But that advantage has been eroded by online-only competitors like Amazon and Wayfair; if customers want to browse through seemingly endless product options, they’re not going to do so in stores like Bed Bath & Beyond’s.

“Consumers now want curated selections of product from which they can quickly select the best option. Many customers come into Bed Bath & Beyond on a mission with particular products in mind,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. “The dense approach to merchandising and the vastness of the selection makes shopping hard and occasionally unpleasant.”

Having a retail strategy anchored on cramming as much product as possible into towering aisles, leaving customers to search them for what they’re looking for, is an outdated approach, and the quality is also on the decline.

Bobby Griffin, a specialty retail analyst for Raymond James, wrote in a note to investors on Tuesday that “we find too many of those stores cluttered, tired, and — in too many cases — dirty,” and “we also wonder how often the current senior management is in the legacy stores outside of New Jersey/New York.”

Redesigning the stores is a goal of Bed Bath & Beyond CEO Steve Temares. Temares wrote in an email to employees sent earlier this week and obtained by CNBC that the company plans to roll out 40 “working labs,” where it will test out new product layouts. But the activist investors said in a news release that they lack confidence in Temares’ plan, given that in the past, “management has lacked the ability to successfully implement initiatives that generate customer visits based on product or store experience.”

Online, the retailer isn’t faring much better. Like many of its competitors, Bed Bath & Beyond started investing heavily in building out its e-commerce business in 2013, causing its operating margins to fall. But, net sales didn’t increase fast enough to offset its investments. In 2016, Bed Bath & Beyond lowered its minimum shipping threshold from $49 to $29 in an attempt to increase sales even further, before raising it back up to $39. It’s emblematic of Bed Bath & Beyond’s continued struggle to wean itself off of a reliance of coupons and discounts in order to juice sales.

Underpinning Bed Bath & Beyond’s problems online and in stores is an inventory challenge that’s getting addressed too little too late. The retailer is only now making a long-overdue private-label push, selling affordable products customers can’t find on Amazon and Wayfair. The company rolled out Bee Willow Home, the first of these private-label brands, earlier this month.

But unlike some competitors, Target and Walmart, Bed Bath & Beyond hasn’t invested in or secured as many partnerships with digitally native brands. Bed Bath & Beyond did acquire online home furnishings retailer One Kings Lane in 2016, reportedly for less than $30 million. But while Walmart has used lessons from its acquisition of digitally native brand Bonobos to launch its own online-only brands, Bed Bath & Beyond hasn’t done the same, and it hasn’t made very clear what it’s taking from One Kings Lane and applying for its own business. Temares recently touted a new custom upholstery business that One Kings Lane launched in the fall as a way that the brand was pushing differentiation for Bed Bath & Beyond, but so far the company hasn’t said how much business it’s generating.

If the activist investors get their way, they’ve said that they’ll look to sell off non-core assets, like Buy Buy Baby, a children’s clothing store it acquired in 2007, and Cost Plus World Market, a specialty retailer it acquired in 2012. They’ve also released of 16 potential board members that they’d like to see Bed Bath & Beyond replace their current board members with, ranging from Alexander Smith, the former CEO of Pier 1 Imports, to John Fleming, the former CEO of Uniqlo.

Saunders said he does believe a shakeup is necessary. “Management has presided over these issues for far too long. There is nowhere near enough radical and creative thinking coming from the C-suite,” he said.

The post ‘I don’t know what they stand for anymore’: What went wrong at Bed Bath & Beyond appeared first on Digiday.

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In 2019, the “day in the life” story format has become a near-parody of itself, with people eagerly rising at 5 a.m. to perform a sun salutation before crushing a smoothie made of kale and nut milk. As a corrective, we have decided to profile somebody we knew would shoot straight with us: Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy. Here, he describes a Tuesday in late February.

On a day like this, I’ll let myself sleep in as late as I can.

I wake up, check social media, quickly — I rarely post anything before I get to the office — then shower.

I like to be in the office by 10 a.m. — 10 a.m. is the start of the day for the content people — but during the football season, we’ve got so much going on, it could be 8 a.m., depending on other people’s schedules.

I listen to music on the way to work every day. I have one playlist that I started, I don’t even know how many years ago, called Wrecking Ball. I didn’t understand how Spotify worked, and the first song I put in was Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.” It has about 600 songs now. It has everything: Miley Cyrus, Jimmy Buffett, AC/DC, country, Kanye. If I like a song, it goes on it.

I don’t eat breakfast. I think breakfast is a scam. People say it’s the most important meal of the day; it’s just not true. I’m not hungry, I don’t need the calories, I eat way more. I don’t buy into the whole breakfast agenda.

I have a ton of coffee. This morning, I knew I was tired, so I had an Adderall, then coffee in the morning. Tommy [Scibelli, aka Tommy Smokes, to Stoolies] gets me the coffee. I walk in, it’s sitting here every morning. He’ll probably bring me three more like this throughout the course of the day. Same size [a Starbucks Venti].

[My] schedule up here. If it’s in blue, it means it’s official. I don’t write it. [Producer] Frankie [Borelli] writes it. There’s this girl Daniella, who works closely with Erika [Nardini, Barstool’s CEO], she writes on there, too. For the most part, anybody can get on the schedule, but if I look at it and I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’ I don’t have to do it.

A lot of times, I’ll have an idea of what I’d like to do. Today, I have written down: I want to get a Roger Goodell clown car for the Daytona 500. I have to go ask Erika if I can have a table at Saratoga. I want to go to Talladega and Bristol, so I’ve gotta look into that. And then Malia Obama, there’s a picture of her drinking rosé, so I want to blame that on LeBron [James]. I have to write a blog that LeBron is corrupting everybody. That’s just stuff I have to mix in with everything else.

Around noon I go eat pizza, every day [to produce content for Barstool’s pizza app, One Bite Pizza Reviews]. We’ve exhausted every place around here. Sometimes I’m gone an hour, hour and a half, with an hour and 15 minutes spent in a car, which sucks.

Around 1:30 or 2 p.m., we film Barstool Sports Advisors, which is our gambling picks show. 3:00 p.m. every day is a rundown, a recap of the day’s stuff, and then from 4 to 6 p.m. I do Barstool Radio. In between those things, on a daily basis, people come in asking if they can do certain things for content, getting permission for travel, complaints, you name it.

It gets a little draining. By the end of it, with the radio show, I’ve probably talked about anything I’m going to talk about.

People like it when I’m upset about something. My show tends to skew a little bit more toward internal controversy. The second hour of the radio show can sometimes drag a little bit. We try not to let that happen. We take calls, but when it’s 5:30 p.m. on a Friday, there’s times I just want to get out of here, and I’ll just be like, ‘Peace, I’m out.’

A lot of times, because I’m so busy from about noon till 6 p.m., there’s people who are waiting after to talk to me. So I get stuck, with my jacket and my headphones in, and I’m like, ‘OK, what do you want to talk about?’

If you went out there and asked what I’m like, people would say, ‘Dave’s short.’

I try to leave right away after that.

At home, I order from one of three places every single night. I either get a grilled chicken sandwich if I’m feeling good and trying to be healthy – maybe two, because they’re not very big – or I order from a place called Mighty Bowl. I used to get sushi all the time, but I got mercury poisoning, so I had to cut that out.

After that, TV. Lately, it’s college basketball. I generally have bets going, and I’m always on social media, 24-7. It used to be a lot more blogging, but blogging is one of those things you have to be in a flow to do. If I’m in a flow, I’ll blog all night. But I do a lot more now on video and radio. During the games, I’ll pause them so I can keep checking my phone.

After that, I’ll generally get into bed and spend another hour on social media. There’s always something going on. I’m fighting with someone on social media, I’m retweeting, I’m bragging, there’s something that’s going on.

I have to force myself to put the phone down before I go to bed. That’s just built into my brain. Even if it’s not a work day, if I’m out on a date, I have a hard time not checking my phone, even if there’s nothing to check.

Sometimes I have a hard time sleeping. Sometimes I watch movies just to think about them, because it takes my mind off of Barstool.

The post ‘Breakfast is a scam’: A day in the life of Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy appeared first on Digiday.

While 1-800-Flowers isn’t considered in the conversation of trendy DTC brands, the company’s direct-selling strategy is what’s protecting its turf as large floral brands and startups try to gain market share.

Since the 42-year-old company first acquired the 1-800-Flowers phone number 33 years ago, its goal has been to create a direct line of sight to the consumer through delivery. It’s had an e-commerce site since 1995, and it’s used its network of corporate and franchise-owned stores, a network of Bloomnet affiliate stores (a total of more than 5,000 locations) and its own fulfillment centers to reach consumers as quickly as possible. It’s also expanded its product offerings to gourmet foods and gift baskets, the result of its 2014 Harry & David acquisition.

“You should not be constrained by the opening and closing hours of a physical shop — we wanted to empower our customers,” said chief marketing officer Amit Shah, speaking of the company’s early plans to offer round-the-clock delivery to customers via phone orders, even prior to the internet.

Last year, the company brought in $1.2 billion in total net revenues, 52 percent of which was generated through its gourmet food and gift baskets business, while 40 percent was through its 1-800-Flowers consumer floral business. Its growth is built off of its physical footprint combined with tech investments that yielded advances in online and mobile ordering, conversational tools like message-based commerce, and voice. Last year, it spent $39.2 million on technology and development expenses, which included costs associated with its website, content development, maintenance, fulfillment and other costs.

Being early to a market doesn’t guarantee success today, as eager brand founders look to disrupt sleepy industries. But 1-800-Flowers has stayed on the defense, and has combined digital communication methods with the strength of a physical store and fulfillment network that’s helped it hold its own against chief competitor FTD, startups like UrbanStems and Amazon. According to investment firm DA Davidson, the e-commerce floral market is valued at $6 billion, and 1-800-Flowers maintains a leading position.

But 1-800-Flowers faces the challenge of trying to meet customers’ needs across channels and innovate on product development across a wide geographic footprint, Shah said, as customers don’t tend to use one channel to complete their purchase trajectory. Therefore, being present on a range of different platforms is essential to reach customers of varying ages (it said its target is 18 to 80), comfort with technology, and locations, Shah said. Social media-based marketing, particularly via Instagram, is an important driver for the brand’s growth.

To close the circle on online-to-offline communication, the company has been evolving its ordering and payments through messaging, a process which started by its rollout of Facebook bot ordering and payments three years ago and since expanded to Google Assistant and Apple Business Chat. With respect to messaging platforms, the challenge is to be able to build a tool that can learn based on customer interactions, something which tech company Conversocial is helping 1-800-Flowers achieve.

“[The] biggest piece about automation is the ability to learn based on what people are asking that we don’t know; if somebody is asking for something specific [that they don’ t have] — you’re able to take that intelligence and learn from it,” said Conversocial chief automation officer Shane Mac. And difficult inquiries can be easily escalated to humans, he added.

What’s keeping 1-800-Flowers a strong player is its consistent investment in technology and digital marketing, according to DA Davidson research analyst Linda Bolton Weiser. It’s added a series of digital and conversational commerce tools out over the past decade, including an Alexa skill, ordering and payments through Facebook messenger, Google Assistant, Apple Business Chat and Samsung Bixby.

“They’re dominating because FTD is almost bankrupt — their issues are that they didn’t invest enough in capital expenditures and marketing,” she said. “[1-800-Flowers’] secret sauce is they’re very sophisticated in digital marketing and investing in platform and digital capabilities.” 

In addition, while Amazon has dabbled in flower delivery, it’s not high on the retailer’s priority list, she added. Meanwhile, 1-800-Flowers has borrowed from some of one of Amazon’s most successful ways to lock in customers: a Prime-style membership program called Passport which offers free two-day shipping and other member benefits.

As a next step, building on its success in digital customer outreach and fulfillment, a brand refresh that pulls together all the tech improvements under the wrapper of a fresh look and feel could help it stay relevant with a younger audience, said Matt Rednor, founder of Decoded Advertising.

“They have deep expertise built up over time — they could probably benefit from a fresh modern marketing campaign that reframes them in consumers’ minds. They don’t want to be seen as the grandmother’s flower brand anymore.” 

The post How 1-800-Flowers competes in the direct-to-consumer era appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook is trying to make it easier for people to get information about the ads running on its platform. Ad transparency – political ad transparency, in particular – has been a top priority at Facebook since it became clear that bad actors were running amok in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election. Starting Thursday,… Continue reading »

The post Facebook Centralizes Its Ad Transparency Tools appeared first on AdExchanger.

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Facebook revealed the next steps in its efforts to make advertising on its platform more transparent, including a revamp of its Ad Library feature and making more information available on pages. Ad Library will now display all active ads that a page is running, not just political ads. This information was previously available in pages’…

Facebook’s advertising works sufficiently well enough – in spite of its problems – to keep marketers excited to spend their dollars there.

Interior design has gone through something of a reinvigoration over the past decade. Thanks to the envy-worth inspiration, courtesy of Instagram and Pinterest, having a professionally-designed home is more in vogue–and more attainable–than ever. That accessibility is thanks in part to Noa Santos, founder of interior designer service Homepolish, which aims to make interior design…

Mayor Bill de Blasio says the Ballyhoo Media’s LED billboards, which travel on a barge along the Manhattan and Brooklyn waterfronts, are breaking local laws.