CAMP raises online profile to get kids (and their parents) back in stores

The Future. Kid-focused retailer CAMP took a hard left turn into e-commerce territory last year and found great success, but now it plans to use that raised awareness to drive more visitors back to its brick-and-mortar locations. Having already hosted over 50,000 customers per month across its five stores back in 2019, CAMP believes it can convert online shoppers into physical loyalists… and if it succeeds it could make a strong case for using e-commerce mostly as a marketing tool.

Kids just wanna have fun
After surviving a temporary shift to digital partnerships, the retail-first “toy store meets indoor activity hub” CAMP is prepping a brick-and-mortar return… with a little online help.

• In 2020, CAMP shifted strategies to a B2B model, partnering with companies like Walmart and Apple on virtual events like summer camps and birthday parties.
• During that time, CAMP bolstered its online presence, and now plans on using it as a marketing tool to get people back in stores.

For example, the website is “populated with content around art, cooking and other activities that don’t necessarily link back to any purchasable products.”

Playing around
Bucking modern wisdom, CEO Ben Kaufman said that “e-commerce is very isolating and pretty boring; you search for something and you buy it [...] The level of digital stuff we’ve done is amazing, but we do think that the brick-and-mortar and the experiential is going to come back in a very big way, post-pandemic.” Ironically, Kaufman used to be the chief commerce officer and chief marketing officer at BuzzFeed.

But switching to a mostly online presence (at least for a time) definitely contributed to a huge upside; CAMP saw a 300% increase in revenue compared to 2019, and is projected to generate half of the company’s business this year.

CAA signs new trainee program

The Future. Creative Artist Agency’s (CAA) new agent trainee program, dubbed CAA Elevate, puts the focus on data, analysis, inclusion, and a wider view of the representation businesses. The change shows that CAA believes that it needs to create a new agency culture in an evolving media landscape where film and TV, social media, and sports carry equal cultural weight and ambitious crossover talent.

“Mini MBA”
In Hollywood, even the agent trainee program is getting a reboot.

• CAA announced the creation of CAA Elevate — an training program that lasts up to three months that aims to give trainees a “360-degree overview” of the agency’s business.
• The program will be made up of 10-11 person cohorts that have a set “curriculum” that’s taught by CAA agents and execs.
• Other elements of the program include “inclusion training,” and a company-wide intranet that makes the entire application process transparent.

Motion Picture Group co-head Maha Dakhil said that the program is built to be a “holy grail for everybody across the board and has a more academic, business-minded approach as opposed to the old-school, ‘pay your dues’ approach.”

Such RANGE
While the focus on inclusion and transparency are expected, the real surprise is how the agency business is changing from building hyper-specific talent silos to encouraging full-on holistic media operations for top clients.

CAA has always been ahead of the curve when it came to that global cultural view, but the past couple of years brought the creation of firms like RANGE Media Partners that focus on building companies for clients, the crossover of sports stars to film careers, and the explosive rise of social media talent. With Elevate, CAA is acknowledging that the A-list business is evolving... so they need to evolve too by creating some agents that the marketplace needs.

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Pact wants you to subscribe to social justice

The Future. A new app called Pact is bringing the subscription economy to grassroots charity. Hoping to create consistent givers by reducing the friction between opening your wallet and donating, Pact’s success may show that the subscription economy is the best system for creating passive customers, no matter the industry.

The case for charity
Grassroots micro-donations aren’t just for Bernie presidential bids anymore.

• An app called Pact, which is run by a collective of six women in Brooklyn and Austin, chooses one nonprofit organization a month to highlight for donation.
• Subscribing users can choose a donation tier of $3, $5, $10, or $25 to support selected organizations.
• The donations are then delivered as one lump sum at the end of the month.
• At the end of each month, the company releases a newsletter that tells subscribers “how much was raised, where the money went, and how it’s being used by the selected organization.”

Pact has selected For the Gworls — a collective of black, trans women helping other black, trans women pay for rent and healthcare — as the highlighted charity this month.