non-bloomingdale’s Marshalls NEWSPAPER ad

Client:

Marshalls is a multi-billion-dollar off-price retail company whose shoppers (more female than male, roughly ages 25-55) are equally interested in fashion and value.

Challenge:

Because Marshalls is an “off-price” retailer, they often have top-label and designer merchandise, but can’t advertise the actual labels they sell. In this case the Manhattan Marshallses got a huge shipment of merchandise that was normally sold in Bloomingdale’s. The challenge in this newspaper ad was to convey that the merchandise was from Bloomingdale’s without ever being able to say the word “Bloomindale’s.”

Solutions:

Bloomingdale’s is notorious for its “Big Brown Bag” shopping bags. Though the Marshalls legal team deemed using the phrase “Big Brown Bag” too problematic, we were still able to reference the “brown bag” and the reference was still clear to the audiences reading the newspaper in which this ad ran. In the second ad, we referenced the Bloomingdale’s flagship store’s famous address. As a note, I had advocated to use the copy “The easiest way to get from 59th and Lex” instead of “59th and Lexington” to reflect how Manhattanites actually refer to the street, but I was overruled by the brand team. Nonetheless, the message was still both clear and effective.