If she doesn’t already have one, Linda Piepho sure could use a doctorate in psychology.
Piepho will become manager of the Macy’s store on State Street in February. One of her challenges will be to work through the initially underestimated anger and sentimentality lingering among Chicagoans still steamed about last fall’s name change from Marshall Field’s.
That anger may have contributed to holiday sales declines at the store of as much as 11 percent, one analyst said.
Some call the name change the biggest marketing mistake since the New Coke debacle of 1985.
Back in 2005, when Federated Department Stores Inc. bought Marshall Field’s and announced the name change to Macy’s, Federated’s chief executive officer claimed “two-thirds of those surveyed in the Chicago market felt neutral to positive–largely neutral–about the name change from Marshall Field’s to Macy’s.”
Cincinnati-based Federated grossly underestimated Chicagoans’ possessiveness of its traditions and institutions. We can be parochial, clinging to anything uniquely ours. We internalize everything that makes Chicago Chicago–and not Orlando or Topeka or Houston.
Reeking, windowless neighborhood bars into which we’ve never set foot? They enhance our gritty sense of self. Putrid rivers of yore aflame from so many discarded stockyard carcasses? The charm lingers. A ruthless gangster with tax problems? Sure, he’s ours. A perennially losing baseball team in ivy-coated confines? Go Cubbies. Museums filled with art and dinosaurs and discoveries that we haven’t visited for, oh, gee, 20 years? Their very existence confers often unearned depth and meaning on us, and we are as placidly grateful as sheep at feeding time.
We want the landscape of our childhoods to endure, partly to support the conceit that the distance between then and now is not so far. So we cling mightily to our illusions, even if those imaginings convey something other than reality.
Let’s be honest; the Walnut Room’s flavor resides in the store restaurant’s longevity, not in its food. And sure, people may have shopped at Marshall Field’s because of its venerable name and history–but not enough people. Stores such as Nordstrom provided too much competition for higher-end goods. Discounters such as Target and Wal-Mart often dusted Marshall Field’s when it came to buying leverage.
Lest we forget, romance can rose-color our memories. Even before Federated’s arrival, Field’s hadn’t been locally owned for decades: In 1999, other absentee owners outsourced 157 Frango mint candymakers, some of whom had been confecting the famous sweets for half a century.
No matter. Loyalists will continue to rally in the spirit of Henry V before the Battle of Agincourt. In this case, their defiant cries will be to never carry a bag with the red Macy’s star.
So Linda Piepho will have to work a miracle–this time on State Street, tougher turf than 34th.
