Q&A   //   August 15, 2024

How Zappos is using ‘fun and a little weirdness’ to show people how it fits into everyday moments

Zappos customers did a double take four months ago when the retailer announced it was selling “footmade” candles that smelled like athletic shoes. “You asked, we delivered!” Zappos wrote on its Instagram. The products were ultimately an April Fool’s joke, an example of how Zappos is trying to bring “fun and a little weirdness” into its marketing campaigns, its senior director of creative strategy told Modern Retail.

But that tagline — “You asked, we delivered!” — is also emblematic of Zappos’s wider strategy to resonate with shoppers. In addition to regularly collecting customer feedback, Zappos increasingly places actual Zappos shoppers at the center of its marketing efforts. Since 2017, Zappos (which is owned by Amazon) has also run a program called Zappos Adaptive that caters to those with physical or sensory disabilities. With these initiatives, Zappos is working to position itself as a company whose products can fit into anyone’s everyday life.

In February, Zappos rolled out a campaign highlighting runners who use Zappos products, including a new mom, a United States Marine Corps veteran and a women’s fitness instructor. Then, in the spring, Zappos partnered with the pet-sitting and pet-walking app Rover to curate shoe collections for dog walkers. These were broken down by activity level; Zappos recommended a Hoka sneaker for the “10k-steps-a-day walker” and an Ugg slipper for the “woke-up-and-ready-to-roll walker.”

Next up, on August 26, Zappos is celebrating International Dog Day by giving away free products to customers who have adopted senior dogs. Anyone who names their dog “Zappos” also gets dog walker-approved shoes for life, a suggestion that came out of a Zappos brainstorming meeting and encapsulates its “anything goes” attitude, Jennifer Braunschweiger, Zappos’s senior director of creative strategy, told Modern Retail.

“We’re really as a brand very much about connecting to our customers about the things that they care about, and people really care about their pets, present company included,” she said.

Braunschweiger spoke to Modern Retail about the company’s marketing efforts following her appearance on a panel about brand storytelling at the eTail East conference in Boston. Here’s what Braunschweiger had to say about creating campaigns that stand out.

What makes a Zappos campaign ‘Zappos’

“There are four different pillars that we think about when we’re evaluating content: easy, helpful, inclusive and unexpected.

Is our content making something easier for the customer? Is it easy for her to imagine what to wear with those shoes? Are we solving a need for her? Are we making it easy for her to tell if the shoes would work on her feet? Are we inclusive? Are we showing lots of different people, lots of different ways to wear something, lots of different points of view coming through? Then, the piece that is most elusive but also the most Zappos is an element of unexpectedness. Are we bringing some kind of surprise? Are we bringing some sort of joy? Are we showing something that hasn’t been seen before?

I would say that one of our core values is to create fun and a little weirdness, and for content, that’s a really fruitful place… There was a conversation on the panel about guardrails, and I think that’s important, but I also think that one mistake that creative people can make is being a little too precious with their brands and saying no too often in a way that doesn’t let surprises happen.”

Using real customers versus traditional influencers

“One thing we know is that people tend to buy shoes when something is happening in their life. They’re going on a trip. They got a new dog. They signed up for a 5k. Their kid is starting school and grew six inches overnight. So there’s something that has happened that is making that consumer want a new pair of shoes. How can we understand that, and then share answers and inspiration for how she’s going to meet her needs? You start there, and then you plan your content from there.

In our community, we’re about connections. So who in our community has the most authoritative voice… so that she trusts the answers that she’s being given? For the running campaign, we had real runners come in and photographed them instead of models. These are people who really use the product, who really understand what goes into it. And it comes through in the photographs, in the videos, as being really genuine because it is.

We’ve been spending the year really bringing real people’s stories into our campaigns in different ways, and we are continuing with that. In the panel, there was a question about influencers, and I think it’s important to really broaden how we talk about influencers so it’s not just a single person with 100 million followers. Influence can be very powerful when it’s smaller, [when there is] one person who is very listened to in their circle.”

Measuring the success of campaigns

“There are a number of answers to that question. And I think when people hear the word ‘measuring,’ they often think in numbers, of really wanting to be able to put it on a spreadsheet and show, ‘It drove this many shares and this engagement.’ And we do care about those things, of course.

However, I am going to put on a sort of controversial hat as a creative person and say that when it comes to content and creativity, you’re also allowed to say, ‘Did we like it? Did it make us smile? Did it make us feel what we were wanting to make people feel?’ I do think that the best content makes people feel something. It shouldn’t be boredom. To be on brand for Zappos, it should make you feel happy.”

Update: After publication of this story, Zappos told Modern Retail it is no longer running a campaign around customers who name their dogs “Zappos.”