New York Store's Ads Play Funny and Rude, Like the City

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA
The New York Times
Published: Jan 07, 2009

A LOT about New York has changed in the 37 years since Joseph and Rachelle Friedman opened J&R Music World across from City Hall in Lower Manhattan. The same could not be always said of the store’s advertising.

J&R’s TV spots, known for their bubbly exhortations to “run, don’t walk” to its downtown location, are familiar to longtime New Yorkers, as are its newspaper circulars and ads. All are created in-house at J&R; none has ever been described as edgy.

But the music and electronics retailer is hoping to change that with a series of TV spots that use dark humor to remind shoppers of J&R’s New York heritage — and make no mention of three-day sales or unbelievable prices on digital cameras. The spots were created by Toy, an independent agency based in New York, representing the first time J&R has worked with an advertising agency.

The timing of the campaign will strike some as curious. With the economy in recession and consumers on the hunt for value, even prominent national advertisers like McDonald’s and Home Depot are trading high-concept branding efforts for commercials that promise big savings.

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But the time was right for J&R to focus on its brand, Mrs. Friedman said.

“We’ve become a big tourist destination,” she said. “Our bags are seen everywhere, in TV shows like ‘Sex and the City’ and in movies, but people aren’t really aware of who we are.”

“So we decided to do something a little bit different, to run an ad that a big-box retailer wouldn’t run,” she said. “We wanted to do something very New York.”

The first of the five spots centers on an unflappable J&R salesman who coolly assists a customer despite a pair of sidewalk Santas who are seen brawling just outside the store. Another features a stockbroker who walks into J&R and stomps on his Bluetooth earpiece in frustration, then does the same to one he borrows from an employee.

Each of the commercials closes with the store’s new tagline, “Since 1971.”

The Santa commercial began running before Christmas, and the others will make their debuts this month. They will run locally in New York, mostly on cable channels like MTV, ESPN, CNN and Bravo. The spots will also run in movie theaters and as “pre-roll” ads before videos on Web sites like CNet.com.

As of now, there are no plans to extend the branding effort to J&R’s print ads, meaning its circulars and newspaper ads will maintain their look. Mrs. Friedman said the cost of the TV campaign was in the low seven figures.

While it’s easy to question the wisdom of running a branding campaign based on dark humor in the middle of a painful recession, it is also easy to see why J&R feels justified in taking a victory lap. Much of its local competition — stores like Nobody Beats the Wiz and Crazy Eddie’s — went out of business thanks to the influx of national chains like Best Buy and Circuit City (which itself recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection).

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Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at the research firm NPD Group, said J&R was wise to focus on its New York roots. “This has been a business of survival of the fittest for the last 20 to 25 years, and we still see a pretty strong regional marketplace for electronics,” he said. “In general, the electronics business comes down to a handful of national players and then lots of smaller regional players.”

Many consumers prefer to buy electronics from local retailers because there is a sense the regional companies have a better understanding of their needs, Mr. Baker said.

“Different products sell well in different parts of the country,” he said. “One area might be great for Apple products, while another may not. There is definitely an advantage to being able to understand your specific market.”

It’s just such a focus on the New York consumer that has helped J&R survive where others have failed, Mrs. Friedman said.

“We made a decision very early on that we don’t want to expand, we don’t want to become a cookie-cutter store around the tri-state area,” she said. “This way we can really get to know and focus on our customers.”

The privately owned J&R continues to occupy its original Lower Manhattan location, though it has expanded into other buildings on the block and now occupies 300,000 square feet of retail space. That is its only location, except for a small presence inside Macy’s Herald Square store.

J&R — which is alternately referred to in its advertising as “J&R Music World” and “J&R Music and Computer World” but is officially known simply as J&R — also has a healthy online presence, said Mrs. Friedman, though she declined to say what percentage of the company’s revenue comes from Web sales.

While the discounts may be gone from J&R’s advertising, they are still alive and well in the store. Mrs. Friedman said that the holiday shopping season was a successful one for J&R, largely because of lower prices.

“I’d say sales were up a bit, but margins were down,” she said. “We had to run a lot of specials, and we did lower prices in many categories. People were looking for deals.”

© The New York Times. All rights reserved. This article originally appeared in The New York Times.