How to use media to convert spontaneity into spend for Christmas
31 August 2023
As brands finalise Christmas media buying plans, don't overlook the importance of dynamic initiatives to maximise spontaneous spending.
Trend forecaster The Foresight Factory1 highlights ‘Moments of Hedonism’ as a major trend this year as consumers break out of self-restraint caused by an increased cost of living by purchasing experiences of items that bring joy. This behaviour is likely to be amplified during Christmas and New Year when traditionally consumers behave more spontaneously.
Rupert Bean, Our Media Director, provides five ways you can tap into and encourage consumer impulse to benefit your brand:
- Provide joy in the everyday through stunt-focused Out of Home (OOH): Foresight’s research shows that 43% of people globally say they like to have a mini-celebration every day. Tactical media buying can help make consumers smile and bring joy in the everyday. Initiatives range from giving commuters an early morning boost by providing food or drink samples on their way to work or by creating an interactive stunt such as creating a work of art in public - which is what we did for the Design Museum to launch its Amy Winehouse exhibition. This helped them sell 3,000 tickets to the show in just two weeks. (The timelapse video of the work being created has been viewed 2m times, and the work secured 25 earned national news stories). The key to success is providing a genuine - and unexpected - intervention that makes people smile.
- Connect with consumers on the ground: Christmas and New Year will see consumers out and using their phones to connect, plan and route find. This provides increased opportunities for brands to use hyperlocal mobile targeting to provide targeted advertising messages on the phones of people within a specific location (down the nearest 10m2). Such content can prompt action, encourage spontaneous visits and get people to try something new. This was how we helped the Museum of Freemasonry, increase its first-time visitors by 66%.
- Appear in unexpected places: Encourage consumers to be spontaneous by booking media that breaks your brand out of the norm - consider street stencils or legal fly posters as well as the traditional six sheets. Pavement art and fly posters bring a sense of the unexpected and playfulness to the brand and have been effective for our clients such as the Serpentine and Art of Banksy.
- Be dynamic on digital OOH: Digital OOH provides increasing flexibility and dynamism for brands as messages can change during the day depending on circumstance. A simple variation of this is to theme messaging based on the weather so different content runs if we have sunshine/rain or snow etc., or better still if you can tailor your brand content to breaking news, with the content that provides reasons to purchase with humour and insight that helps make your brand even more memorable.
- Be joined up: Sounds obvious but is often overlooked; connect your media planning and buying into your wider communications activity. Make sure your messages, content and call to action are all aligned across all your channels. Deliver the plan in an integrated manner so activations appear in a plan and are coordinated to fully benefit your brand and deliver a significant ROI.
Connect with Rupert:
Drop Rupert an email or select a time for a call that works for you.
More media planning buying advice:
You may also like...
