Lively Return
At the end of last month, the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Parade made another spectacular return. So far, the parade has been around for 96 years and is the most highly anticipated grand parade in the United States every year. The parade is often regarded as a symbol of the arrival of the American holiday season.
According to NBC, this year's Thanksgiving Parade in New York can be said to be the most exciting event in history.
Next, let’s take a look at those interesting live pictures!
The parade kicked off in a performance of "Don't Rain On My Parade" by Lea Michele, a Broadway actor. The most eye-catching thing about
is of course the balloon array. There are 16 giant balloons this year. In previous years, the image balloons such as "SpongeBob SquarePants", "Pikachu", "Wangwang Team", "Wukong", " Mickey Mouse ", and "Pikachu" have also met with everyone this year.
In addition, the little soldier Stuart in " Despicable 2" was added, the dinosaur Sinclair returned with the dinosaur baby, "Miaomiao Dog Brie" and the protagonists Greg Heffley, "Baby Shark" (Baby Shark), etc. were added; during the World Cup, there is also a giant balloon to pay tribute to the American men's football team this year.
The official float of Lego Group is unveiled again. This vibrant float features the oversized LEGO building blocks transformers, with part of its body being a turkey and part of it being a dragon.
As for the IP copyright issues that everyone is concerned about, companies like Disney are actually very willing to cooperate with Macy's.
In addition, there are 28 floats, 12 bands, 700 clowns, 10 performance groups, and Santa Claus.
event also invited many celebrities to help, including Broadway musical actors such as "The Wonderful Girl", "Beautiful Noise", "The Passionate as Fire", " Lion King ", the "Rocket Girl" group of Radio City Concert Hall, as well as talk show host Jimmy Fallon, dynamic queen Paula Abadu , famous singer Maria Carey , etc.
Christmas Queen Maria Carey is the finale performer. She sang "The Christmas Gift I Want Is You" at Macy's Department Store in Pioneer Square.
Then Santa Claus came here to ring the festival bell.
According to Vilas, the head of media and public relations at Macy's Department Store, a total of 6,500 people participated in this year's parade, and thousands of staff also provided support and guarantees behind the scenes, fully returning to the scale before the epidemic, and the route was the same as in previous years. At nine o'clock in the morning, we start from the intersection of West and West 77th Street on the west side of New York Central Park , and walk south along Central Park West to 59th Street. Then turn east and go through Columbus Circle to 6th Avenue, then follow 6th Avenue all the way south, ending at Macy's Herald Square.
Last year, about 2.5 million people came to watch the parade. This year, more than 3 million people came to watch it. In addition to the unprecedented lively parade, it also shows that people's lives are recovering.
Macy's in history
In fact, this largest grand event in the United States originated from a marketing event.
Until Roland Haas Macy's death, in 1902, Macy's Department Store was acquired by the two brothers, Isis Strauss and Nathan brothers, and moved the department store to the golden area of New York, Manhattan Herald Plaza.
In the same year, in order to build momentum for the Christmas promotion "Black Friday", Macy's large-scale "Thanksgiving Parade" was launched on Thanksgiving. Employees dressed up as clowns, cowboys, knights, etc., from 145th Street in Manhattan to 34th Street where Macy's headquarters is located. The parade was large in scale, with floats and professional groups, as well as 25 animals borrowed from Central Park Zoo . The parade was formed by employees and animals to march on the streets. It was large in scale and fun. It attracted thousands of people to watch in the first year and caused an unprecedented sensation.
After that, Messi decided to continue the activity. The following year, the animals in the parade were replaced by giant balloons. Since then, the big balloon has become one of the highlights of Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, a move that continues to this day.
The first giant balloon of Messi's Thanksgiving Parade: Felix Cat
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Source Xiaohongshu Account: VINTAGE
Source Xiaohongshu Account: VINTAGE
In fact, the annual Thanksgiving parade costs more than tens of millions of dollars, and each parade takes about one and a half years to plan the celebration method. A nationwide survey will be conducted at the beginning to see which lucky bands can be selected to participate in the parade, and once the group is selected, it will return to the field of balloons, as each balloon can take up to a year to make.
but this is absolutely great value for money.
Today, Macy's Thanksgiving Parade has long become a culture in New York. Before the holiday shopping boom began, Macy's had expanded its brand influence through a series of activities, and the parade would constantly remind consumers to shop at Macy's during holidays.
Make brand marketing activities a national festival the highest level of marketing. Messi's wave a hundred years ago can definitely be regarded as the marketing ceiling.
To this day, Macy's is still a famous landmark in New York, attracting countless tourists to "check in" and shop there every year.
However, there is also a tragic legend about Macy's.
The Macy's
This year, NBC broadcasts the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade live broadcast this year. The ratings of 7.2 aged 18-49 were as high as 27.7 million viewers on each platform, directly killing Oscars (16.62 million viewers) and Grammy (8.93 million viewers), setting the highest entertainment program rating record in the past year, achieving three consecutive years of growth, and even setting the highest ratings of the Thanksgiving Parade live broadcast in the past five years.
However, the excitement is still there and the protagonist has no money.
According to BT Finance, Macy's retail sales on Black Friday hit a record low. This news is not surprising for Macy's in recent years.
From the macro perspective: US inflation rate continues to hover around its highs since the 1980s this year. S&P Global market data said that overall sales of US retailers are expected to grow by 34.5% year-on-year during the holiday season, and actual sales may fall by 1.2% after excluding inflation factors. Amazon founder Bezos even said recently: "Even if we are not in recession now, recession will come soon."
On the other hand, data released by Moody's Analytics showed that US households' expenses on the same goods and services increased by $433 in October compared with the same period last year, but the average hourly wage after excluding inflation factors shrank by 2.8% in the first 10 months of this year. To put it bluntly, under inflation, the prices of items are rising continuously, but consumers' income is shrinking, which directly leads to a significant decline in purchasing power.
This situation is not only for Macy's, but is extremely unfavorable to the entire retail industry.
Take Q3 in 22 as an example. Walmart net profit fell by 156.42% year-on-year, recording a loss of 1.767 billion yuan; Target net profit fell by 52.15% year-on-year; Macy's revenue fell by 3.84% year-on-year and net profit fell by 54.81% year-on-year to US$108 million; Best Buy revenue and net profit fell by 12.83% and 58.31% year-on-year respectively in the quarter.
The industry is in a difficult situation. It is obvious that it is biased to blame the company's mistakes entirely on itself, but Macy's recession was earlier than the industry.
If the epidemic is the last straw that crushes physical retail, then if we get rid of this straw, Messi's mistake is still obvious.
According to the 2019 annual report, Macy's revenue was US$25.3 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 1.6%. It is worth mentioning that Macy's operating profit has been declining year-on-year since 2015, and as of 2019, its operating profit has decreased by more than half. Operating profits from 2015 to 2019 were 2.327 billion, 1.892 billion, 1.554 billion, 1.485 billion and 1.162 billion respectively, with a very obvious downward trend.
According to foreign media reports: On March 31, 2020, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Macy's, the largest retail department store in the United States, will be removed from the S&P 500 index .
"Since 2019, Macy's operating conditions have deteriorated rapidly, with operating cash flow of US$1.6 billion the lowest in previous years. Macy's market value can better represent the small-cap market." S&P Dow Jones Index said in a statement.
In the same year, considering the damage caused by the new crown epidemic and its impact on demand, coupled with the poor asset and liability status of Macy's department store, rating agency Moody's has downgraded Macy's bond rating to junk level.
For the former leader in the retail industry, such humiliation is naked.
In recent years, the news surrounding Macy's department store has been negative: since it fully withdraws from the Chinese market in 2018, in 2020, Macy's department store announced that it would close 125 stores within three years. In the previous three years, they had closed 100 stores.
In addition, a large-scale layoff is carried out every year, making Macy's even more intimidating. Now Macy's stock price has fallen by more than 67% from its all-time high in 2015.
The fundamental reason is that it has nothing to do with the poor mobility of the enterprise and the inability to change according to the trend.
htmlIn the 290s, the number of retail stores such as warehouse-style membership supermarkets and Walmart increased by more than a thousand, and the stock price increased by more than 40 times in ten years. Faced with the rapid progress of retail companies such as Walmart, Macy's still maintains its horizontal expansion plan, intending to win by volume to find new growth points in performance, but has not sought ways to broaden channels.
Since 2014, Messi's net profit has continued to decline due to strong impact from online channels, and its net profit in 2016 was only 40.5% of that in 2014. Although Messi launched the self-operated e-commerce platform Macys.com as early as 1996 and gradually invested more than 2 billion yuan, it has never been able to completely open the "all-channel" path. Messi's online sales revenue increased by 15% in 2015, while Amazon's growth rate was as high as 48% during the same period.
In addition, Macy's management model is not perfect.Macy's, which should have entered the transformation stage, chose a price reduction promotion, and in the end, not only did it not significantly increase its revenue, but it missed the best transformation time.
Messi's prosperity and decline reveal the changes in the US retail industry, and the weakness of the traditional department store industry may be a foregone conclusion.
Then the question is, if Macy's disappear one day, will this Thanksgiving parade that has been passed down for a hundred years continue?
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