In the heart of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood on Sunday, the streets were busy with people visiting a variety of shops, bars and restaurants as well as the popular Farmers Market. In the city that’s home to Amazon’s massive e-commerce operation, brick and mortar was seemingly doing just fine at getting people outside and offline.
But another tech giant has staked a presence in the neighborhood. With its own unique spin on e-commerce, small business, a physical storefront and digital marketing, Facebook is looking to attract passersby on Ballard Avenue Northwest and get them back to browsing — and shopping — on their phones.
The company launched its so-called “Good Ideas Shops” last week in Seattle, New York and Fort Worth, Texas, as part of a new U.S. advertising campaign designed to provide a boost to small businesses during the busiest shopping time of the year. Another location will launch in Los Angeles in December specific to Black-owned businesses as part of Facebook’s #BuyBlack Friday initiative.
In Ballard, Facebook created a window display for 10 separate Seattle-area businesses, each with their own QR code to draw shoppers beyond the storefront and onto Facebook and Instagram. Small diorama-style boxes featuring various products from each shop are meant to look like a miniature streetscape. There’s a cutout skyline and trees; a model car and bus move around the entire display on a track. A small sign marks the intersection of Good Street and Ideas Street and it’s all open 24/7 — because it’s the internet after all.
“The Good Ideas Shops campaign highlights how Facebook can help small businesses get discovered in their local communities and beyond,” a Facebook representative told GeekWire via email. The out-of-home campaign is in addition to print ads like one that ran in Sunday’s Seattle Times, with the goal of driving people to visit and shop the Facebook and Instagram shops of small businesses.
Facebook didn’t open an actual store in Ballard, but it did take over the windows at what used to be a Patagonia retail location. That shop closed in April after four years and has been vacant ever since on a street that is home to a wide variety of retail. Some businesses have stayed closed since the pandemic and some new ones have moved in.
In a February blog post discussing the “Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found” initiative, Facebook said at the time that it was critical to spotlight small businesses because many are “facing the greatest challenge of their lifetimes, with 47% saying they might not survive the next six months.” Facebook called personalized advertising and digital marketing a lifeline.
The highlighted businesses at the Ballard display, which didn’t have to pay for the placement, included such names as Radmor Golf, The Seattle Barkery, Kornerpocket Billiardz, Wunderground, and Mylle — makers of “the most beautiful inflatable pools in the world.”
Wunderground launched its brand of mushroom coffee in June. The business is the brainchild of Jody Hall, who started at Starbucks when the coffee giant had just 30 stores. Hall is also the founder of Cupcake Royale and the cannabis business Goodship.
Facebook reached out and Wunderground worked with them on brand guidelines and vision and trusted the company to put together the window display.
“We love this way of discovering us,” Wunderground brand director Kathleen Tarrant told GeekWire. “We found out today that we are one of the most scanned QR codes so far, and that’s incredible.”
The QR code points to a Wunderground Facebook shop, with the option to purchase on the Wunderground website. But it won’t be long before there’s physical retail — Wunderground Cafe is opening on Capitol Hill at the end of October.
Better than an empty space
GeekWire chatted with several people on the street as they passed the location on Sunday. Some slowed or stopped to take it all in and try to figure out what it was about. None of the people we spoke to wanted to share their last names — perhaps because the Facebook and Instagram algorithms have already figured out too much about where they shop.
Charlie and Natalia said it was weird to come to the neighborhood with the intention of visiting brick-and-mortar stores and be hit with a display that prompts you to shop online.
“If you’re coming here, you’re probably wanting to do something a little more tangible than shop online,” Charlie said as a number of people passed the display to head next door to Ballyhoo Curiosity Shop, which “fits somewhere between a natural history museum and an antique store,” according to its website.
“It’s a better use of space than leaving it vacant, I guess,” said Charlie. “At least you’re seeing more businesses that may have otherwise not been able to be seen,” Natalia added.
Asked whether it was bothersome to be hit with a physical ad on the street when they’re already targeted while scrolling Facebook or Instagram, Natalia said she didn’t mind ads.
“They know what I want,” she said. “I feel like [the algorithm] knows me better than some of my friends.”
Morgan and Joseph stopped because they “notice everything,” and Morgan was wearing a Patagonia jacket that he bought in the store that used to occupy the spot.
“I buy a lot of stuff on Instagram,” one of them said as they joked about needing a new lamp recently, so they just said “lamp” near their phones several times to supposedly trigger lamp ads to surface on their social media.
“It looks very corporate, like it could be at the airport,” Morgan said of the text-heavy window display. “It doesn’t connect enough to the neighborhood,” Joseph added.
Neither man took out a phone to activate any of the QR codes.
Heather and Matt called the display “bizarre” but also agreed that it was better than boarded-up windows — something the neighborhood saw a lot of during the early days of the pandemic.
“It feels like a big mall display,” Matt said. “But then you stop and read it and see that it’s small businesses and you feel bad.”
Told that she’d have to scan a QR code with her phone to launch a Facebook or Instagram page for the businesses, Heather balked.
“I’m just not gonna do that. But I’m old,” she laughed.