As agencies line up to impress the retail giant Wal-Mart, Brand New World's creative chief argues that appealing to specific customer segments and a better retail experience will outweigh any one size fits all ad campaign.

There was a time when creating for the mass audience produced massive results. From Henry Ford to Sears to General Motors, the power of offering mass products for a mass audience seemed invincible. Then came Wal-Mart and the rule once again seemed to hold true as scale and selection redefined the Supermarket.

Having squeezed tremendous growth out of scale for over a decade, Wal-Mart now finds itself confronting another challenge-- consumer relevance. After all, for some, price isn't everything. And for those for whom it is, well, perhaps those aren't the most profitable customers to sustain growth.

Today's consumer imperative isn't just know thy customer-- it's know thy customer segments. Then buy, merchandise, and communicate to the most profitable ones-- all on parallel paths. For a retailer like Wal-Mart, that's a formidable task given the one size fits all price/value positioning that has sustained them so long. There's not a lot of higher order benefit in there.

On the surface, it would appear that all Wal-Mart needs is some of that cool Target mojo and all should be well with the world, right?  But brand image is a fragile thing built over time, and Target's unique brand of aspirational advertising, combined with a careful "designer" merchandising of the in-store environment, isn't easily replicated or even relevant to Wal-Mart shoppers. 

What's an Arkansonian to do? Well, for starters, get smart marketers on your team. That part Wal-Mart seems to have already done right, by bringing on some of the industry's most highly respected players.

But, before one Creative lifts one pencil, there are big questions to be answered. How many customer segments to appeal to? How profitable is each one? What are their wants and needs? Can the Wal-Mart experience pay off those wants and needs without completely re-merchandising the store? Is it really an advertising problem or a positioning problem? If the company re-positions for more profitable customer segments, will it ring true? Or will it overshoot the brand permissions and brand elasticity?

These are tough questions-- and few of them have much to do with an Advertising Idea. After all, the last thing Wal-Mart or the customer needs is what Tom Peters refers to as another "Overpromise/Underdeliver" campaign.

I'm certain that in the next several weeks there'll be plenty of agencies whisking the curtains away on their Big Brand Ideas destined to put new sizzle to Wal-Mart's advertising and a $500+ million.dollar piece of business on their books. But, as a cross disciplinary creative director, I would start with the Brand Experience and customer segmentation. For therein lies the grail.

As marketers, the more you can brief your agency's creative team on precisely which customers you're appealing to, (in this case, is it the C and D County price shopper, or the more discriminating occasional suburban shopper, or both?) the more relevant the communication will be across the board -- from in store to online -- and all screens in between.

As for the retail environment, it's a tricky one. Brand experience designers and merchandisers can easily overshoot the many in search of the new few, which is another reason why Wal-Mart's challenge is so unique.

From my armchair, here's the play I call -- save the TV campaign for last -- there are bigger problems to solve, starting with smart customer segmentation and then creatively bringing that segmentation to the in-store experience. Assuming there's some wow factor playing back from that, then it's a matter of carefully coordinating efforts between merchandising and marketing to ensure that new advertising is slightly more aspirational than the store environment….but doesn't way overshoot it.

For the mass marketer in these chaotic times, customer fragmentation can too easily be framed as a negative. But for the smart marketer, it's just a new opportunity to re-aggregate customers in clever more relevant ways. In Bentonville and beyond.

Alan Schulman is chief creative officer for Brand New World. Read full bio.