Men’s Shoe Campaign

My Role: Art Director and Lead Designer

The Challenge: Nordstrom’s men’s shoe department was losing market share to online competitors like Zappos. Saks Fifth Avenue was opening the largest shoe floor in the country at their Manhattan flagship store. What was Nordstrom’s point of difference and how could it leverage its existing reputation?

Goals:

• Create a campaign for the average guy to increase the men’s core shoe business 

• Identify key categories that could be merchandised with trending styles

• Entertain and delight customers with an alternative shopping path beyond category pages

• Demonstrate Nordstrom’s fashion authority by showing how to wear must-have shoe styles

Actions: Working with merchants, the product was organized into key categories with supporting marketing placements for digital and print that educated customers on must-have styles. An entertainment component was layered into the experience in the form of an infographic that worked in tandem with curated category pages. In addition to beautiful product photography, ads featured head-to-toe looks to show different styling options for trending shoes and useful information about care.

The Outcome:

• Sales increased by 7% to over $1 billion

• Yellow is the defining color for Anniversary Sale and continues to this day

• Increase in online traffic with modest gains in stores

• Model cutouts replaced mannequin presentations, freeing up product and giving stores more time to focus on merchandising

The Outcome: Site traffic increased during the campaign with many styles selling out in stores. Although this disappointed some customers, the problem was mitigated by having similar styles available within the established categories. It also revealed an inventory management issue that would ultimately be solved in the future by improvements in merchandise store transfers. The success of the campaign supported its continued use for 3 seasons.