From: Pottery Barn Kids
Subject Line: Rock-A-Bye Baby! Design your nursery seating.
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2006

From: The Land of Nod
Subject Line: Preferred Seating
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2006

Pottery Barn Kids and The Land of Nod (of Crate & Barrel) - two brands competing for the same customers - competed in a very specific manner today. Both sent out Nusery Seating EDMs! Eerie. This makes a great opportunity for us to compare two different executions of the same concept.

I think both messages started out equally rich in assets. The product and photography are comparable. The copy is quality in both cases: more authoritative and direct for PBK, cuter and quirkier for LON, which is appropriate to each brand. Unfortunately, the LON message is wider than best practice standards by 165 pixels, requiring must of us to scroll right in order to read the cute copy.

PBK's execution is tighter and more effective. They underline a direct call-to-action, and include carrots at the end of each product name and price, making it clear that they're clickable. Additionally, for those shoppers not interested in nursery seating, they created a clever "sibling seating" submessage that links us to chairs for older kids.

I would *love* to be able to compare the results on these. I wonder whether both will fall below forecast because they competed directly with one another on the same day.

If you were purchasing a Nursery Rocker, which would you buy from?