EXCLUSIVE Q&A: JCPenney promotes brand offerings with ‘Real Big Deals’
JCPenney is launching the third installment of a seasonal campaign called “Real Big Deals” that is integrated with the new NFL pro football season.
Each Thursday night through Christmas, a new "Really Big Deal" will be revealed during Amazon’s Prime Video football coverage. JCPenney will showcase the deal again in the postgame broadcast. The deals will immediately go live online and extend to stores from Friday through Sunday.
NBA basketball Hall of Fame legend Shaquille O’Neal, who hosted the first iteration of Really Big Deals during Prime Video’s fall 2024 Thursday night NFL football broadcasts, is returning to host the campaign again this fall.
Chain Store Age spoke with Michelle Wlazlo, brand CEO of JCPenney, to get more insight about the strategy behind the Really Big Deals campaign and what’s new this fall.
Why did JCPenney initially launch Really Big Deals?
It’s part of something broader. JCPenney has been around for 123 years. But we have been working to reinvigorate the brand over the past few years. Part of it is about fashion, like the Yes, JCPenney! campaign we launched earlier this year. We surprise and delight our customers that we carry so much fashion.
The effort is also about expressing and making sure people know the incredible value we have. In 2024, we started Really Big Deals during football season, and then did it again in the spring. The new Really Big Deals campaign marks our third time doing it.
We have almost 650 stores. It's a more ‘in your face’ way to express our incredible value and our massive and broad assortment in a relevant way to a broader mass audience across the U.S.
How do you select the specific products that you feature in the in the weekly deals?
The filter is, how do we show the whole store? We don’t only show home products every single week, because then people would think we're just a home store. First and foremost, we look at how we can show the biggest breadth of our assortment in the deals and what is going to have the most consumers feel like they can participate.
That's why we selected towels as the first product featured in our fall 2024 campaign. It was also the first featured product last year. Everyone uses towels, regardless of age or gender. The deals need to be broad-based enough, but they also must be relevant and connected to our brand.
Has JCPenney found any specific advantages by aligning the campaign with football season?
TV habits have changed over the years. Football allowed us to reach a live audience, which is very impactful. In addition, football there is now a lot of age and gender diversity in the football viewing audience, so it's a vehicle to reach the most viewers, both existing customers and potential new customers.
[READ MORE: How football is becoming the latest retail promotional season]
Are there any other changes in the new version of the campaign?
Shaquille O’Neal is serving as host again, but each week, there will also be an up-and-coming new talent to talk about each deal. Hopefully every week, people will be interested to see who the new talent is and what the new conversation is.
What are your goals for the fall campaign?
The goal is to remind consumers of our brand, and to re-engage or validate their love for JCPenney. Part of it is about acquiring new customers, along with validating with our existing customers that JCPenney is the place for great quality and value.
