A sunny summer outlook for retail: Colum Harmon, marketing director PML Group, with this week’s Out \ Look on Out of Home.
A Sunny Summer Outlook for Retail
Pent-up consumer demand for travel and other experiences during the past few years could culminate in summer 2022. According to an IBM Summer 2022 Behaviour Survey, consumers are more excited about the upcoming season than in years past, and factors including summer weather will motivate their choice of activities. For marketers, it will be critical to harness this excitement in real-time locally at scale and support consumers’ celebration of the summer season.
Weather can predict consumer behaviour and influence shopper decisions
Respondents to the survey say it’s important to understand the weather across multiple categories.
Food and beverage
- 68% of people say summer weather impacts their food choices
- 41% say summer weather affects alcoholic beverage purchases
- 32% choose healthier meals and snacks during summer
Gardening and home improvement
- Over 80% of people say summer weather impacts their gardening, yard work or home-maintenance projects
- 48% will prepare outdoor living and/or grilling spaces once summer weather is in their forecast
- 44% of people will plan or tackle DIY or home-maintenance projects once summer weather is in the forecast
Outdoor activity
- 48% of people will exercise outdoors once summer weather is in their forecast
- 92% say summer weather impacts how much time they spend outside
- 58% will plan outdoor excursions once summer weather is in their forecast
Health and Wellness
- 77% of people say summer weather impacts their health and wellness needs
- 33% are more aware of their health during the summer
- 71% say protecting their skin from the sun is more important in summer
Digital OOH enables flexibility with media and creative copy – to deliver the right message at the right time in the right places for audiences. It offers tactical opportunities in daily and daypart planning while technologies such as our proprietary Liveposter platform allows for contextual messaging based on live data triggers including weather. This is highly impactful and helps brands build a dialogue with their audiences in real-time – and in real-life.
WATCH – March OOH Overview
March was another busy period for OOH. As we’ve seen on these pages in recent weeks and months, mobility is back to normal levels after the shock of the pandemic and other aspects of people’s lives, such as socialising and working, are returning to more a more normal state also. This has been beneficial for OOH obviously and is reflected in a strong start to 2022. PML Group will be publishing a full Q1 market report in the coming weeks.
For March though (cycles 5-7), the top ten advertisers feature three supermarket groups – Lidl, Musgrave, and Tesco. Retail accounted for 16% share of the OOH sector for the month, compared to 9.5% for the Finance category in second place. The Telecoms category is also among the top five, with Sky and Virgin Media also among the top ten advertisers for the month. Diageo remain top of that list with Guinness 0.0 their biggest spending brand in March. Financial institutions featured heavily across the month with AIB Group (EBS Mortgages) and Bank of Ireland (Rugby) going big on the medium.
Cycle 7 (28th Mar – 10th Apr) was the last full cycle before easter so perhaps not surprising to see Cadbury so active, with Mondeléz having the third biggest display value for the month.
Figures are drawn from PML Group’s WATCH market intelligence service, based on monitoring of all OOH campaigns every cycle.
Planet OOH
As today (April 22nd) is Earth Day we thought it appropriate to showcase a couple of purpose campaigns from around the world.
The city of Copenhagen has elevated its public benches to raise awareness of rising sea levels.
The Danish have taken a new approach to climate change communication by installing benches that would withstand rising sea levels.
City benches of the future have been places around the city of Copenhagen in order to make it visible to the Danes what the future will be like if we do not act now.
Benches have been elevated to match what the UN considers to be a realistic rise of the sea-level in the year 2100.
A plaque on the bench reads ‘Flooding will become part of our everyday life unless we start doing something about our climate. According to the latest UN Climate Report sea-levels are expected to rise with up to 1 meter before 2100 if the global warming continues.’
Ecologi unveils carbon-sucking billboard in latest campaign
Environmental organisation, Ecologi has debuted a carbon-draining billboard on Kingsland Road, Shoreditch, as part of its new Earth Day (22 April) campaign, titled “The power of possible”.
The billboard measures 161m² and will suck four tonnes of CO2 from the air. It reads: “A climate ad that sucks as much as this one? Possible.” According to Ecologi, the billboard will leave a net emissions removal of 2.1 tonnes, after accounting for production emissions.
The banner incorporates a technology called Pureti that uses natural sunlight to break down harmful emissions. The billboard will be on display from 18 April to 29 May and can remove up to 40% of the pollution that it comes into contact with. After six weeks, PVC waste from the billboard will be burnt at high temperatures to generate superheated steam to drive a turbine and produce electricity. Metal from the combustion process will be recycled and ash will be used in road building and construction.
