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How Macy's tapped mobile video freedom to create emotional bonds

NEW YORK ? A Macy?s executive at Forrester?s Marketing 2016 Forum explained how digital and mobile video allowed the department store chain to create a more in-depth storytelling piece that generated more than 33 million views. 

During the session, "Thriving in the Post-Digital Age," the executive detailed how showing the emotionality of a brand is necessary to connect with consumers, and mobile has allowed the brand to create more long-form content that relies heavily on sentiment. Macy?s shared a video online in December 2015 that was longer than a typical ad spot and allowed the brand to tell a meaningful story that connected with consumers. 

"I like to think of our brand as a human, and when you are a human, emotions come out," said 
Martine Reardon, chief marketing officer at Macy's. "The way that you connect with consumers, they want that emotional connection. 

"They want to view Macy's as a person and not just a place," she said. "So for us to be able to personify some of that it comes from a lot of that emotional connection of brand marketing that sits at the very top of who we are. 

"The spot was one of our first pieces of long term content. The spot was engineered to tell a story and as marketers we are storytellers, but a fifteen second television spot you do not necessarily get to tell a story."

Macy?s emotionality

The video showed the story of a young girl wishing for a puppy for Christmas and while watching a television ad for Macy?s annual Believe campaign, receives a magic pen that appears from the TV. She uses the pen to write her Christmas wish list but nothing ever happens. 

But when she starts to write down wishes for other people, they begin to come true. For instance, the young girl writes down that she wished for snow for her little brother, and the next morning he wakes to a fresh snowfall. 

At the end of the video, the little girl comes down for Christmas and is quickly surprised when she sees a puppy appear. It is revealed that her younger brother used the magic pen to wish for a puppy for his sister.  

Mobile loyalty

Conveying emotionality to consumers is especially important when it comes to women, who are the majority of Macy?s audience. During the same session, a Forrester analyst emphasized that while women are much pickier when it comes to spending, especially in mobile, but once they come to are likely to be much more loyal the retailer or brand as compared to men. 

"Again, I like to think of the brand as a person, bringing a human element back into who we are," Ms. Reardon said. "Our brand promise, if you will, is really creating the magic of Macy's. 

"We are a brand that is extremely trusted simply because we are brand that has been in business so long."