Home Depot’s soft spot
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Home Depot’s soft spot
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SCOTT JAGOW: Home Depot rolls out a new ad campaign today. The best word to describe it might be. . . mushy. The commercials have customers telling true stories of little home improvement miracles.
[ Home Depot Ad: My name is Amy, I’m a single mom. When I saw this place for sale, it just looked homey… ]
Home Depot could use some love and hugs the way things have been going. Ashley Milne-Tyte looks at whether this will make a difference.
ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE: It’s mainly investors who’ve been up in arms over the massive severance package of former Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli.
But Andrew Gilman of CommCore Consulting Group says the glaring headlines will certainly have made an impression on some shoppers. The bad press may even have driven them to rival retailers.
He says it’s too early to say whether a soft and fuzzy ad campaign will hit the right note with the public.
ANDREW GILMAN: But I do believe it’s the right thing for the company to do, to try to rather quickly stem any loss of either goodwill, reputation or customer behavior.
Next up, he says, is a potentially trickier task for the country’s second-largest retailer: convincing irate investors that the new CEO is a strong and effective leader who’s worth every penny of his compensation package.
In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.
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