Mamamia’s Danni Wright, head of strategy, writes about how brands can take advantage of shifted consumer and media behaviours across the upcoming summer and Christmas season.
One of the most frequent questions I was asked as a media strategist was how media consumption changes across seasonal occasions like Christmas and summer.
A question that was alarmingly challenging for me to answer with the standard agency toolkit. A toolkit that does well for drawing out generalities in media behaviour, like what most of the target audience is likely to be consuming, most of the time. But not so well for capturing the nuance in when, why and how media behaviours shift. I’m mainly talking about Roy Morgan, and its proprietary appendages, which are limited to an annual, or at best, quarterly moment in time.
The problem with this is that critical retail periods like Christmas, aren’t reflective of the average. For most retailers, winning Christmas means winning the year. And for most consumers, winning Christmas means starting earlier and earlier every year.
The millions of data points that we have shifted through at Mamamia tell us that this year has begun earlier than ever before. It’s only the start of October and we can see that our audience are already in the festive mindset; leaning into content that provides inspiration around gifting. This is corroborated by search data which shows that the demand for gifting has started its seasonal climb.
Last year the ABS reported that, in seasonally adjusted terms, November consumer goods retailing increased by 2 per cent more than expected. This year it is predicted that we will see November overtake December for consumer retailing value for the first time ever.
This won’t be a surprise to most marketers, with the runway to Christmas mapped months in advance, and the trade-off between the cut through of ‘going early’ and the requisite to secure a ‘fair share of voice’ across the most critical trading stretch, painfully evaluated.
What might come as a surprise however, is the opportunity that lies beyond the Christmas milestone. Whilst this period has long been viewed as a time of soft consumer demand, with discretionary spend constricted as a hangover from Christmas spending, the impact of brought forward Christmas purchasing is an impetus for reevaluation.
In fact, half of our audience told us that they spend more money over the summer period. Which makes sense in the context of shifted behaviours across the season as most say goodbye to the daily grind and hello to holiday mode; 80 per cent of our audience told us that their routine changes substantially between December and January with 2 in 3 saying they have more time. More time to consume content in a highly disrupted period for regular content.
Regardless of whether the season brings vacations, staycations, or simply surviving the extended school holiday childcare juggle, the result is the same- more moments for consumerism and more time to consume leaned in content as the regualr media routine fragments.
This, combined with softer advertising demand across the post-summer Christmas period, presents a strategic opportunity for the savvy marketer both in terms of advertising cut through and the propensity for short term business impact.
To help marketers and media planners capitalise on this advantage, we set out to understand how media consumption shifts across the summer season. What we found was even more pronounced than we expected.
Podcasts are clearly the standout channel for the season, offering advertisers the chance to reach people in a heightened state of immersion in a lean in , low distraction media format. Not to be confused with digital radio streaming, which bears a distinctly lower cut through environment in view of extraordinarily high ad loads. I’m talking locally produced podcasts, with trusted voices, relevant content and established audiences.
And this summer, podcasts are getting a glow-up.
Welcome to Hot Pod Summer.
In an industry-first counter programming move, whilst other audio and video media activate their own holiday mode pulling back on content, we’ll be doubling down. Additionally, we will be launching the biggest marketing effort we have ever deployed across our network to support it.
Mamamia will be pushing out over 100 hours of audio content. Content will be thoughtfully curated around topical seasonal themes and the cultural zeitgeist of the year that’s been. Designed to satisfy the appetite listeners have to catch up, discover, and escape, by immersing themselves with their favourite podcasts. Our flagship podcast, Mamamia Out Loud, will be coming back nice and early too! Our ‘Outlouders’ wouldn’t have it any other way!
If I had a dollar for every time a marketer asked how to cater to seasonal shifts in media behaviours; Hot Pod Summer would be the investment I would be making with it.
If you want your brand to be part of Hot Pod Summer, reach out to Mamamia: [email protected]
Mamamia is Australia’s largest podcast network and the world’s largest podcast network for women.
