Marketing

Navigating the new normal and challenges facing retailers this holiday season

Rachel Mauck, vice president and director of client management for Posterscope USA, shares insight on why Out Of Home (a one-to-many, mass medium) is one of the few remaining channels that retail brands can use to convey a simple, fraud-free, unfiltered and authentic message.

Photo by istock.com

December 1, 2020 by Rachel Mauck

With fall in full gear and consumers navigating through the season of "pumpkin-spiced lattes" season, it can only mean one thing: the arrival of the holiday shopping season, a make-or-break time for retailers in a normal year.

Of course, 2020 is far from a normal year.

The COVID pandemic continues, with projections of increased infection rates as the colder months arrive. While most stores and malls are open, the threat of additional shutdowns looms should spikes occur. Many Americans are out of work and struggling financially. Many may not feel comfortable visiting physical store locations.

Suffice it to say, retailers are facing a shopping season that promises to have a much different look and feel. They are adjusting accordingly, and the changes are evident.

Consumers are seeing holiday deals much earlier than usual. Target launched holiday sales in October and introduced Black Friday pricing throughout November. The Thanksgiving Day shopping experience is going by the wayside, as Walmart, Kohl's and J. C. Penney are among those keeping their stores closed to protect shoppers and employees.

Retailers are also going to great lengths to ensure stores are safe for those who do want to venture out, ensuring social distancing and mask wearing is observed, upping their cleaning game and creating outdoor shopping areas and pop-up locations. And for the many who will stick with online shopping, retailers are introducing new innovations, like virtual "try-on" capabilities.

Along with these adaptations and adjustments, retailers are further challenged with determining how best to deploy their precious advertising dollars allocated for this all-important time of the year. 'Out of Home' has long been a critical and effective tool in a retailer's overall advertising strategy but with OOH having been impacted by COVID, it's fair to question how effective the channel can be for retailers in this highly unusual year.

Yes, OOH has not been immune to the impacts of COVID. But the suddenness of lockdowns and quarantines in the spring forced OOH to become a more agile and data-driven medium that retailers can leverage this holiday season, particularly now that traffic in a handful of markets has returned to pre-COVID levels. Here's how:

Flexibility with digital and dynamic

Given the ever-changing nature of the society and world, it's never been more important for a brand to have the flexibility to pivot and recalibrate its messaging at a moment's notice. While OOH used to be known for its static and rigid creative limitations, the advent, proliferation and emerging ubiquity of digital screens has changed that game dramatically. Dynamic creative capabilities across digital screens provide retailers with the ability to display contextually relevant content and change content, with greater ease, in an instant.

For example, retailers can highlight a different product or pricing promotion every day, or even every hour, appealing to consumers who may be more cost-conscious this year than ever before.

Boosting ROI with programmatic
Like American consumers, retailers themselves have faced financial hardships as a result of the pandemic. Never before has it been as important to ensure that every marketing dollar is working as hard as possible to generate maximum return. Programmatic buying in OOH allows retailers, particularly smaller ones, to ensure that their dollars are delivering ROI. With programmatic, retailers can establish the specific conditions and variables during which they want ads to be displayed, ensuring their messages are seen by the right audience at the right time. Campaigns can target hyper local audiences with precision and can be turned on and off with no long-term commitments.

Amplifying online and mobile
Consumers have been eschewing the mob-filled stores and turning to online for holiday shopping needs for some time now. As one would expect, online commerce activity is due to increase even further this year, particularly on mobile devices. Some projections estimate as much as a 25% increase in online shopping activity this season. OOH is a well-established complement to online and mobile activity and a driver of click-through rates. Studies have shown that mobile CTR increases by up to 15% when supported by OOH, and that simply pairing OOH with mobile can increase engagement by nearly 50%. New innovations, such as incorporating QR codes in OOH ads, drive even greater conversion and make it even easier for consumers to respond to retail messages and enticements.

A new data-driven approach
COVID has forced a major shift in traffic patterns, habits and the daily journeys of consumers. But with access to real-time mobility, location and traffic data that is now a staple of OOH campaign planning, retailers can find reach their targeted audiences and deliver an impactful message. Physically speaking, consumers may not be in the same place as last year – airports, gyms, commuter trains, etc. — but they're still out there, and OOH planners can find them.

Trust
At this moment in time, consumer perception of a brand's behavior and social posture may be just as important as the quality of its products or prices. Consumers are closely watching how retailers treat their own employees during the pandemic, how they are in responding to multiple social crises and how active they have been in supporting their local communities. OOH is a one-to-many, mass medium, but it is also one of the few remaining channels that retail brands can use to convey a simple, fraud-free, unfiltered and authentic message, creating a degree of consumer loyalty and trust that can last long after the holiday season, and the pandemic, are gone.

Rachel Mauck is vice president and director of client management for Posterscope USA.

About Rachel Mauck

---

Early on in her career she was part of the team that won Media Plan of the Year for an OOH Yahoo! Campaign. Most recently she lead the team that won the OAAA Silver Media Plan Awards in both 2016 (Nestle Haagen-Dazs) and 2017 (Nestle Perrier) as well as the Cynopsis Media Social Good Award in 2017 (Nestle Arrowhead).

Connect with Rachel: