The Grocer – 10 August 2019

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comment & opinion

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64%

No deal

15%

Leave with a deal

21%

No Brexit

polling station

They need to capitalise on the

opportunities the weather can

give them and should be smart

about how they react to the vola-

tile British weather.

With the rise in programmatic

ad buying and digital marketing

channels, technology gives us all

the tools we need to be sophis-

ticated with weather-targeting

campaigns. These enable brands

to recognise those moments

that can boost their sales (and

increase their marketing spend

to capitalise on them) – as well as

those where they can avoid wast-

ing spend.

Take Stella as a great exam-

ple: by mapping out historical

weather data against sales met-

rics for Cidre, Stella discovered

a two-degree temperature rise

above the monthly norm trig-

gered a sales rise. Based on this,

digital out-of-home posters were

Matt Lee is managing director at

Capture

Why weather heats up sales

L

ast month it was reported

that grocers saw a

decline in their sales for

the  rst time in three years. This

is no surprise, given that last year

we hit record-breaking tempera-

tures and experienced one of the

best sporting summers ever – UK

grocers had all the ingredients

they needed for trading to soar.

So why does the weather

play such a vital role in gro-

cery sales? It goes without say-

ing that hot weather improves

people’s moods, in uences pur-

chasing habits and drives signi -

cant sales for categories such as

barbecues, ice cream, beer and

cider, as people have more ‘get

together’ occasions. On top of

this, research shows the weather

is the biggest impactor on con-

sumer behaviour a er the econ-

omy [BRC] and influences the

amount spent per item.

Given the e ect the weather

has on British grocery trading,

brands and retailers would be

foolish to ignore it when plan-

ning their marketing activity.

talking shop

identi ed as the optimum chan-

nel, due to their proximity to

store. Stella ran the campaign on

a cost-per-minute basis, which

activated only when conditions

were right to impact purchase

intent.

The results? Stella reported

a signi cant 65.6% increase in

year-on-year sales during the

period, and because ads were

only shown during optimum

conditions there were no wasted

impressions, meaning they made

up to 50% cost e ciencies vs a

standard digital OOH campaign.

Stella’s campaign proves that

it is not just extreme weather

conditions that trigger success

in weather-targeted campaigns,

but more so understanding how

your audience responds to each

condition.

Now that the UK has almost

recovered from its recent heat-

wave, it will be interesting to see

which brands and retailers pre-

empted this in their marketing

activity and used the weather

to their advantage – and which

ones missed the trick.

“Weather has the

biggest impact

on consumer

behaviour”

Matt Lee

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Volume: 241 Issue Number: 8418