The acquisition of Maya's Mom by Johnson & Johnson, along with American Eagle launching an entertainment production arm called 77E, speaks to the enormous changes going on in the online business world.
Kathy Savitt, exec VP and chief marketing officer of American Eagle Outfitters, and an amazon.com vet, said concerning the core 15-25 demographic they serve: "It's an audience that is a voracious consumer of television, music and movies. Content is so important to who they are and how they're living their life. They're so smart and discriminating. We need to make deposits into the cool jar."
On Johnson & Johnson acquiring Maya's Mom via their Babycenter website, Paidcontent says, "This marks Babycenter’s continued transition to a media company, from an earlier focus on e-commerce."
Why is all this going on? This is all about a switch from direct sales to branding. Saying you're becoming a media company in contrast to being an e-commerce company, is the same as saying you're focusing on branding rather than one-time sales.
Of course it's not like sales and branding can really be separated, but the idea is branding is looked upon as being more important to many companies than direct sales at this time.
It's unique to see this because so many ignorant people were talking about the death of brands not that long ago, now companies are gravitating more to branding than ever before.
The reason why is what you are will eventually result in more long-term, predictable sales, against just getting an unconnected quick sale from someone you may never hear from again.
So when you hear that everybody is going into entertainment of some sort, it's another way of saying they're trying to brand deeper into the minds of their users.
Entertainment branding is becoming the new online currency, make sure there's something in that area you're looking to add to your strategy.
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