Stanley Black & Decker builds content

Warc, 9 July 2014

NEW YORK: Retailers are placing greater demands on brands when it comes to providing content and building tools like mobile apps, according to a senior executive at Stanley Black & Decker.

Leisa Glispy, Stanley Black & Decker's director/ecommerce marketing, discussed this subject at the Internet Retailer and Conference Exhibition (IRCE) Focus: Brands and B2B Conference.

"What we're seeing here in our industry in general is that retailers are expecting a whole lot from brands now," she said. (For more, including how Stanley Black & Decker is approaching content, read Warc's exclusive report: Stanley Black & Decker drills down into content marketing.)

"And what they're asking us for in a lot of cases is content," she added. "It's definitely one of the key conversion factors we're going to start to see as we move forward."

Leading this demand for content is Amazon, the largest ecommerce site in America, which is adding ever more expansive product information to its pages.

"We're seeing these product detail pages that are much richer than a regular product detail page," Glispy said.

"And they're coming to us and saying, 'We want lifestyle content from you, we want more product specs, we want video that's specific to our channel. And we want you, the manufacturer, to create it'."

The digital imperative extends beyond Stanley Black & Decker's marketers to members of its sales team, who increasingly have to be conversant with the new media universe and the company's campaigns in this space.

"I have sales reps who used to call on Home Depot that now need to be digitally-minded, and go and talk to Amazon, and go and talk to Homedepot.com," said Glispy.

"If they don't get digital, if they can't talk about advertising campaigns that are digital … they can't make that sale in many cases; they can't pitch an idea of how we're going to promote it."

As a further indication of how the online and offline worlds are influencing one another, shoppers often now compare prices on a phone while in bricks-and-mortar stores. Such "showrooming" is worrying some retailers.

"They are asking us for tools to help with showrooming," Glispy said. An example could be a tool that retailers integrate into their own mobile apps to help shoppers pick the right drill, string trimmer or similar product for them.

"And we're seeing more of these types of things being asked of us. So we're expanding beyond just our own sites, helping our retailers' sites, [and] now building mobile applications to help in store," said Glispy.

Data sourced from Warc