Two Hits & A Miss: Costco, Walmart, and Lowe's

00:00:00:12 - 00:00:23:22

Ryan Fratzke

Hello, everyone. This is Ryan Fratzke with Fratzke Consulting. I'm a partner and executive strategist here. And this is two hits and a miss each week. I want to talk to you about two things that I'm seeing out in the marketing brand strategy, communications and culture world that I like. And one thing that kind of maybe was a miss, something that didn't hit me the right way.

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00:00:23:22 - 00:00:50:03

Ryan Fratzke

So let's jump into it. We've got three topics today. Costco keeps the costs low. Costco's chief financial officer recently stated that they plan on keeping the price of their soda hot dog combo at a dollar, 50, $1.50. And what I like about this is that it's sort of, hey, we've got your back. Customer. We know inflation is high.

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00:00:50:26 - 00:01:12:26

Ryan Fratzke

We want to keep the things you enjoy at a low price. And what's funny about this is that it is such a small thing and no doubt prices have gone up for certain things. At Costco, on that same food menu, the chicken bake went up from $3.99 to $4.99, but they're keeping the hot dog soda combo at a dollar 50.

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00:01:12:26 - 00:01:31:01

Ryan Fratzke

It's kind of like a loss leader, but it's saying, hey, we've got your back and we're not going to raise prices just for the sake of raising prices. And so I like that. I think it was a hit. And to be honest, I had some Costco hot dogs with my kids this weekend, and you can't beat that combo for the price.

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00:01:31:01 - 00:01:57:02

Ryan Fratzke

It's a pretty darn good dog. So that's my first hit. My second hit is Wal Mart going meta. So Wal Mart recently announced a partnership with Roblox where they're going to be essentially launching a Walmart land inside of their metaverse. Now this is just one component of it, but I think that this partnership makes a lot of sense.

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00:01:57:02 - 00:02:17:41

Ryan Fratzke

If you are thinking about toy sales and reaching the audience of children, Roblox is a really smart place to be. Back when I was a kid, it used to be advertising during the Saturday morning cartoons, but I think those of you who have kids know they're not watching cartoons in the same way. There's not really those advertising opportunities.

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00:02:17:53 - 00:02:42:57

Ryan Fratzke

And so this makes a lot of sense. The other thing I like about it is that Walmart's CEO has openly said this is just a testing ground for us. Right? We want to start dipping our toes into the metaverse and seeing what makes sense to really participate in. And so I'm kind of future casting here, but you could really imagine a world where you walk into Walmart land and there's a section dedicated to Nerf Nerf guns.

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00:02:42:57 - 00:03:05:11

Ryan Fratzke

Right. And you can see a world where there's games you can play, you could test out different models. And then what if there was some sort of certificate? When you buy that model in the metaverse, that you also get like a discount to go get it in a brick and mortar or on walmart.com. So I do see a lot of interesting cross-selling opportunities here, and I think this is a great way to reach the audience that they're trying to reach.

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00:03:05:11 - 00:03:36:37

Ryan Fratzke

So we'll see where it goes. All right. So let's talk about my Ms. for the week, which is Lowe's abandoning marketing now? Not completely. Here's the story. They recently parted ways with their CMO and they moved the marketing department underneath merchandizing. And I think what this can create is the wrong incentive structure for the team and put them in a position where they're really focusing on sales for right now and not thinking about the big long term picture.

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00:03:38:12 - 00:03:59:22

Ryan Fratzke

So a little bit more background, low, solid, two years of great sales growth over the pandemic because people were at home, they were doing more DIY projects and they had some additional income from their stimulus checks. Now as things are opening back up, they've seen two quarters of decline sales growth and so they took the opportunity to shake things up.

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00:04:00:38 - 00:04:20:21

Ryan Fratzke

The reason why I think this is a miss, though, is when we look at some of the outside factors that are going on. For example, for ASCII just released some research looking at the building materials and construction industry, we indexed the organic search volume for keywords in that industry. And we're seeing year over year declines that are huge.

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00:04:20:44 - 00:04:46:27

Ryan Fratzke

This which suggests to me that the entire industry is in for some tough sledding when it comes to winning at digital. And I think not having a seasoned CMO in place to help lead that ship is going to prove to be a mistake. All right, everybody, with that being said, this was two hits and a miss. Again, I am Ryan Franchi from Frisky Consulting.

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00:04:46:27 - 00:05:09:59

Ryan Fratzke

I'm a partner and executive strategist here. And if you have any needs around digital marketing, communications and culture and brand strategy, Francie would love to talk with you and learn more about your goals. With that all being said, if you enjoyed this video, please don't be afraid to click. Like to share it. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe to the channel and we'll see you again soon.

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00:05:10:00 - 00:05:11:32

Ryan Fratzke

Thanks for watching. Take care.

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