Dive Brief:

• Jet.com, a new e-commerce website founded by a former Amazon exec, ran a one-day real-time marathon that turned users' shopping carts into videos.
• The quirky branding promotion was meant to drum up brand awareness among potential customers.
• Even though Jet isn’t yet catching on with consumers, its ultra-low cost business model has been getting attention from business publications.

Dive Insight:

New e-commerce website Jet.com is facing a vexing problem for a retail company. Its business model is an ultra-low cost approach similar to Costco in the brick-and-mortar world and has been getting plenty of attention from business publications and media. The problem is most online shoppers have no idea what Jet.com is or what it offers. To remedy this the company embarked on an unusual promotion – it ran a one day video marathon that made use of shoppers’ carts to create real-time videos about the contents. For example, a shopper named “Tyler” bought beef jerky and deodorant and in response the event included an almost one minute video of a performer yodeling about the purchases.

The campaign was created with SS+K based on an internal question at Jet, “How do we infuse the humanity and fun-ness of our culture into how we express the brand to our customers and prospects?,” according to Jet’s Chief Customer Officer Liza Landsman who spoke with Marketing Land.

Jet shoppers were asked for permission before their carts were acted out for the videos that were then distributed via YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.