In July at the Omni-Channel Experience Forum, Jay Dunn presented on how retail marketers need to think like movies and TV shows when it comes to promoting their brands on all the digital channels that we use. He pointed out how the movie itself is a story, but instead of telling the same story over and over again as it moves through Twitter and mobile and Facebook and on and on, movies use those channels to expand the story, creating additional engagement that either satisfies the already-highly-engaged customers or draws in potential new customers.

There are two sides to the impetus behind this approach. First, if a TV show only focused on the content it was going to play on TV, then they’d give too many spoilers away and people wouldn’t have to watch the show. So they almost by definition need to focus on “extras ” that surround the show itself – teasers that build anticipation without giving away the show itself. Second, each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses. Twitter does not make for good television. If it did, we’d all be watching Twitter right now. But we’re not. However, Twitter is great for enabling viewers to converse with each other – before, during and after the show. Which is why so many shows now come with hashtags.

Jay used AMC’s The Walking Dead as his case study. I’m not a fan of the show (zombies aren’t my thing), but if you’re unfamiliar with what they’ve been doing in digital channels, then I definitely encourage you to check it out.

Jay was making the case that retailers need to do the same thing for their brands. Intellectually, I agreed with him when he said it. However, I’ve since spent some time looking at how retailers do in creating a consistent brand image across their disparate digital communication channels, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the straits are more dire than I realized. In other words, I not only agree with Jay, but I think the problem is worse than he thought.

You’ll see more about our branding comparison study in the run-up to Shop.org, but it has made such an impression on me, that I feel compelled to write about it now. When we first started our comparison, my expectation was that we would look for consistent branding – logo for sure, but also tag line kind of messaging, imagery, what the retailer was promoting, and how easy the retailer made it to connect their “story ” back to items that a consumer would conceivably purchase.

I now realize that while these still hold true, there’s something larger at stake. A lookbook shouldn’t be just a glossied-up version of the website. Twitter should not be a repeat of all the promos that are featured on the homepage. Jay made the case that these channels need to be used differently to tell more of the story – and it’s true. The story is the retailer’s brand as told through the assortment it offers. That’s the TV show that you ultimately want to drive viewers to. So Twitter and Facebook shouldn’t be parroting that story, they should be enhancing it. Using the TV analogy, that means providing the behind the scenes interviews, the games, the out-takes, the peek into the set designer’s notes.

For retailers, it’s not that far of a leap into their world. It’s all of the thinking and consideration that went into the decisions that ultimately resulted in the product and brand story that retailers want to tell, whether that changes season to season, or remains the same year over year. What colors were almost the hot colors? Why this theme? Why lace and not zippers? What do design teams think are next? What do their inspiration boards look like? Which products or designs ultimately didn’t make the cut and why? What happened behind the scenes at the photo shoot? Which ad was option #2?

When I look at retailers’ digital properties – and for the purposes of the study we focused on retailers that deal in image-rich, high-engagement branding, so no grocers or dollar stores in the sample set – I see two extremes. At the one end, retailers parrot the same things over and over in every channel. I suspect they see low engagement in some of their newer channels, like maybe Pinterest or Instagram, and I suspect it’s because they don’t really offer anything new there. I don’t need to follow you on Pinterest if you spam me with emails chock full of the same exact content.

At the other extreme, there’s absolutely no consistency. The Twitter page has a completely different branding look and feel than Pinterest which is completely different than Facebook. The tag lines are completely different or outright contradictory. Instead of expanding consistently on the same story, these channels tell completely different stories. It would be like trying to follow a TV show when every channel tells the story of a different character. You’d have to engage with all of them to get the whole story, and it would come in disjointed pieces that would be left up to you to fit together into a satisfying character journey. That doesn’t work either. And if you have consumers that engage with you in one channel, they may be confounded by your other channel presences – “that’s not who I thought this retailer is ” kind of reaction.

There needs to be a happy medium. The products are the story. In retail, they have to be. There has to be an over-arching reason why you picked these products and put them together in this collection. And ultimately, you won’t last long in retail if customers don’t buy your products. Branding is part of that story – brand is the theme, and the products are the characters and the plot. But each channel needs to provide its own spin on that story. Not to carry a unique part of the story that you can’t get anywhere else, but to expand on the story in a unique way that you can’t get anywhere else – a way that leverages the unique strengths of that particular channel.

Alas, I fear that retail has a long way to go before we get there. But that also means that the retailers who get it have an opportunity to differentiate. And that’s always a good thing.