Second of two articles about how brands leverage positive editorial reviews. Last time we looked at Consumer Reports ending its decades-long ban on mentioning ratings in ads.
Wirecutter loves me, Wirecutter loves me not.
So went the petal-plucking melodrama for UrbanStems, which was declared the best online flower delivery service by the New York Times product review team in 2021…only to be dethroned the next year over what Wirecutter called “dilapidated deliveries.”
Megan Darmody, VP of marketing at UrbanStems, acknowledged to Retail Brew that “we had sort of gotten ourselves in a pickle” with a bouquet that sometimes was delivered looking less impressive than on the company’s website. The problem, Darmody explained, was the bouquet photo showed Free Spirit roses, which have a striking blend of orange and red, but because some farms UrbanStems partnered with couldn’t source Free Spirits, were being substituted with—gasp!—standard pink roses.
“We really pride ourselves in ‘what you see is what you get,’ and Wirecutter was totally right: The bouquet that they got didn’t look as good as it did on-site,” Darmody said. “We vowed to never let that happen again.”
So UrbanStems regrouped.
“This wasn’t just a marketing initiative,” Darmody said. “It was like a full, company-wide goal to get this title back.”
In April, Wirecutter published this year’s rating. And guess what UrbanStems came out smelling like?
UrbanStems “nails all of the perks of a modern digital florist: an easy-to-use website, clear and accurate photos, and timely deliveries,” Wirecutter wrote in crowning the brand its top pick again.
Winning “both times was a huge accomplishment” but “the second time even more so because…it does take a lot of collaboration to really try and move the needle on quality and on value for money,” Darmody said.
Petal to the metal: Along with boosting morale, being picked for Wirecutter goosed UrbanStems’s bottom line. As fans of Wirecutter Google as they’re shopping for, say “Wirecutter flower delivery,” the article is effectively evergreen—until next year’s edition, that is. Shoppers who click the prominent link on the article, for which UrbanStems pays the New York Times a commission in the form of an affiliate fee, spend 4% more per order than the average UrbanStems customer, according to the brand.
Since the article was published, Wirecutter has accounted for 22% of the brand’s affiliate channel revenue, more than any other. And in the 60 days that ended July 24, Wirecutter click-through customers’ lifetime value (LTV), essentially the sum total of their orders, was 68% higher than the average of customers who came from elsewhere.
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Unlike when they were the top pick previously, this time, UrbanStems inked a licensing agreement with the NYT to use the “Our Pick 2024” badge on its landing page and in marketing promos including emails.
The badge is “a very quick sign for a discerning consumer who only has a finite amount of funds to spend,” Leilani Han, executive director of commerce at Wirecutter, told Retail Brew.
Han said the licensing deal options are a la carte, so even a small brand on a shoestring could license the badge solely in its social media channels for a fee “in the four-figure range.”
Times’ stamp: Wirecutter’s is “the most sought after badge in the industry,” according to Michelle Myers, global CRO at Wright’s Media, which along with being Wirecutter’s licensing partner, represents other outlets in licensing their recommendations, including Condé Nast, Hearst, CNET, CNN Underscored, and Forbes Vetted.
What distinguishes Wirecutter is that the “intense testing that they do around their products gives a trust factor to consumers,” compared to “an ‘editor’s pick’ that just could be the editor’s favorite product,” Myers said.
“One of the things that we hear from [license] buyers about Wirecutter is the fact that it’s the New York Times,” said Myers, noting that the NYT’s iconic logo is prominent in the badge. (Full disclosure, and to grasp at some of that credibility: This reporter has been a contributor to the New York Times.)
Among the options for brands is to license the use of pull quotes from Wirecutter recommendations, which are particularly popular in Google ads, Myers said. Among the creative licensing executions Myers noted was Lone River, which after winning best hard seltzer from Wirecutter displayed a badge and pull quote (“A drink that tastes impressively fresh and natural.”) on shelf talkers; Purl Soho, which produced a postcard with a badge after its Learning to Knit kit was a pick; and Riley, which highlighted its percale sheets being a pick on turnstiles and kiosks in the New York subway.
It’s hard to determine return-on-investment with licensed material because it’s so contextual.
“The lift may not be good because they don’t have good ad creative, or their marketing strategy is not right,” Myers said.
But she’s bullish nonetheless.
“Our business with Wirecutter grows substantially year over year, and it wouldn’t if it wasn’t doing something for brand lift.”