Summary
The importance of creating an emotional bond with consumers, over and above tactical promotions and price cuts, is the main argument of this presentation by Ruby Anik of JCPenney, to the 2009 Association of National Advertisers Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference. Reported by Warc's U.S. editor, Geoffrey Precourt, Anik emphasises the 180-year-old retailer's continued use of emotional communications, even when many brands are solely emphasising value in an effort to drive up volume sales during recession. Anik considers JCPenney's nuanced approach, mixing emotion with value, to be crucial when attempting to improve consideration levels among a multicultural audience, and needs to extend beyond advertising to numerous other elements of the marketing mix, including digital platforms, the fashion ranges offered in stores, as well as the overall "experience" shoppers enjoy when visiting the company's outlets.

Summary
The J.C. Penney Company, Inc., had been a fixture in the retail world for nearly 100 years when sales started to drop in the late 1990s. The Plano, Texas, company realized that Americans had lost interest in J.C. Penney and developed a five-year strategy to bring it back from the brink of financial failure. In 2000 Chicago-based advertising giant DDB was engaged to replace Dallas-based Temerlin McClain, which had been J.C. Penney's agency since 1991. DDB had launched the "It's All Inside" campaign by the fall of 2000, setting the stage to rebrand the company inside and out.The $200 million advertising effort reached all levels of media, from television to print, and also included using in-store signage and updating the look of the company's catalog, stores, and online shopping site. "Fresh and contemporary" was how Bob Scarpelli, DDB's chief creative officer, described the new J.C. Penney look in a September 2000 article of Adweek (southwest edition). Television spots debuted that same month and were carefully crafted to prompt core female consumers—who had either deserted the chain or ignored it altogether—to rethink their perceptions of the merchandise as well as of themselves. One commercial that typified this mission depicted an attractive every-woman whose clothing and personal style changed to reflect her moods as she went about her day. The song "Never the Same Girl Twice," by the band Supreme Beings of Leisure, underscored the sentiment of a J.C. Penney that had something for everyone.J.C. Penney's debt had decreased by 50 percent at the end of 2004, keeping one of the nation's oldest retailers alive and kicking. The new logo, a red square with a crisply written "JCPenney," was the cornerstone of a new image for Penney's, and although ad slogans evolved, the tagline "It's all inside" remained integral to the logo (it was placed directly adjacent to the red square) throughout the five-year restructuring period. Under the new leadership of retail veteran Allen Questrom, J.C. Penney consolidated its product buying, redesigned stores, and began repositioning itself in the national mindset. Sales growth over the next five years met or exceeded the company's goal of 2 percent each year.