The 30 second ad “Ship My Pants” was viewed over 18 million times, taking viewers from shocked to laughing. Due to cheeky clever wordplay, viewers believe they are hearing something a bit racy that sounds a lot like “Ship My Pants”. Free shipping is the focus of the advertisement which is an important growing trend for a retail store. Also its competitors Walmart and Costco had already jumped on the bandwagon.
A month after Kmart’s success with the release of “Ship My Pants”, they released and promoted another ad, “Big Gas Savings” which was viewed over 4 million times in its first week. The main point of these advertising campaign is to make people laugh, forward them on and help build brand recall for Kmart. The advertisements have generated a lot of traffic and spawned a trail of responses on the internet which certainly has worked out well for Kmart.
