In old black and white Westerns, the shopkeeper who runs the general store is at the heart of storytelling in the community.

As Clinton Cards collapses, what are the PR lessons from retail failures?

In amongst the chat is gossip about his products, which goods do the job, which are a bargain, which to avoid.

The one-store operation has given way to a national and global chains, but the basic human needs are the same. The stories that a business shares with its customers are crucial to the brand’s success. People simply aren’t as prepared to buy things if they don’t come with a story. People crave context.

Consider some of the retail corpses of the last five years. What were their stories?

Borders, Barratts, Alexon, TJ Hughes, Jane Norman, Habitat, Focus DIY, Officers Club, Oddbins, Adams Childrenswear, Stylo, Allied Carpets, Past Times - what did they say to their customers that gave them a sense of what their businesses meant to their lives? I don’t mean deals or POS or inserts or advertising - I mean stories that explain why the shop and what it sells is relevant and essential to the lives of its customers.

Take the story, apocryphal no doubt, about the power tool business that in the 1980s found itself under pressure from a competitor. With market share eroding, management took an away day to think about the business. “What do we sell?” they asked themselves. “Drills” came the usual answer. Then someone suggested it wasn’t drills, but holes - a realization that unlocked new and critical insights about how to view the world through their customers’ eyes.

Today, this is more important than ever. The retailer that doesn’t think about the meaning and utility of its products to its customers - and explain it through PR - will struggle, especially in a world in which opinions travel via 3G or at fibre-optic speed. As I said before, people crave context.

I’ve worked with retail business for more than 20 years and I am amazed at how few of them recognise the importance of PR. Those that don’t use PR to tell their story - entertainment retailers, booksellers and countless others - are decaying or have already become the gaps on our high streets. 

Back in the mid-noughties I worked at Dixons on a series of stories about the demise of various items of consumer technology, from the video recorder to the floppy disc. Each of these stories generated acres of press coverage and hours of broadcast. 

The central point wasn’t the demise of one technology - it was the arrival of the next big thing. And Dixons did extremely well out of it. It also positioned Dixons as a business that understood technology and its role in our lives better than any of its competitors at the time.

Telling your story through PR is essential, but too few do it. Take Clinton Cards, a business that seems doomed as the pressures including the internet and e-greetings kill its market. Now consider the concerns of middle Britain - declining levels of politeness and civility, poor manners, how difficult it is to balance an e-card on a mantelpice. This creates the perfect storytelling opportunity for a business that is fighting with its customers against the decline of tradition and manners. But where was Clinton Cards on this? Nowhere to be seen.

Telling stories that resonate with customers is actually pretty easy for retailers. The ones that do it well - Asda, Debenhams, John Lewis for example - reap the rewards. Customers believe that these retailers understand them and the way they think and live their lives. These stories engender a sense of belonging in a way that deal offers alone simply don’t. Topicality, front-of-paper stories, buzz on Twitter, are what shops need.  

When I polled some retail analysts, the majority said that front-of-paper press coverage was an essential guide to a retailer’s prospects. The late Richard Ratner once told me: “A retailer that doesn’t press his belly to the counter and help the customer to make sense of the world is himself not long for this world”. Prescient analysis indeed. Another veteran analyst told me that a retailer with a good front-of-paper run of stories could expect to add a couple of points to its PE ratio.

PR might be called unnecessary flannel by some retail CEOs, those who would rather spend their days in endless meetings, obsessing about POS, gondola ends, supply chain refinements. 

But in a world in which opinion, gossip, reputation and recommendation count, I’d say they’re plain wrong and if they continue to hold that view they will simply steer their brands to the knackers yard.

In the old black and white Western, the gossip might have stopped at the boundary of the town. People still crave context, but the boundaries have all but disappeared.