The holiday season is upon us, but consumers are celebrating differently than they have in years past as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to evolve. Vaccine availability makes a big difference this year from the 2020 holiday season. However, uncertainty about gatherings lingers under the shadow of the delta variant.
As many people might put off holiday celebrations for another year, people are looking to brands for inspiration for creative ways to celebrate. Always part of holiday preparations, consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies now have a particularly influential role in how people shop and celebrate this season.
The most innovative CPG brands have recognized the need for data-driven marketing to evolve with these sweeping changes. Leveraging consumer signals from gcash database Google, they are getting their brands in front of consumers with the right messages at the right time this holiday season.
☛ Go big and prepare early
Shopping: In the U.S., Food & Beverage is the most frequently purchased category around seasonal times. For example, 87% of people who shop during Thanksgiving buy in the category. For New Year’s festivities it’s 79%, and for Halloween it’s 61%.
As excitement grows for the 2021 holidays after a relatively quiet 2020 season, brand marketers have a lot to look forward to. While 47% of U.S. consumers say COVID-19 will impact how they shop for the holidays, many are already planning celebrations — and they’re doing so early.
During the summer, year-over-year Google searches for “how many days until Halloween” increased globally by more than 80%, while year-over-year searches for “costume ideas” and “how many days until Christmas” each increased by 60%.
And as of August 2021, 61% of US holiday shoppers say they will plan their purchases in advance to avoid items running out of stock.
Spooky spider and jack-o'-lantern. 80% increase in Google searches for “how many days until halloween” YOY.
☛ Halloween reinvented by Hershey
Given the uncertainty surrounding how (or if) people would celebrate Halloween 2020, Hershey turned its attention to the holiday earlier than usual last year to ensure KitKat bars would play a role in Halloween festivities. The brand wanted to bring joy to consumers during an otherwise tame holiday and help them celebrate Halloween in a safe and fun way.
To accomplish this, Hershey worked with Google to understand consumer trends in the U.S. market for Halloween 2020. They developed a custom insights model that leveraged Google Search data to assess how people felt about trick-or-treating.
“With this data, we were able to understand which markets would traditionally celebrate Halloween or celebrate with a modified approach at home ,” explains Charlie Chappell, VP of Media at The Hershey Company. “ This allowed us to not only understand consumers, but also design creative that resonated emotionally with them .”
Hershey reworked its creative, running one ad in markets more likely to trick-or-treat and another ad in markets less likely to trick-or-treat. It then reached out to custom audiences on broad-reach platforms like YouTube.
The result was Hershey’s “best Halloween ever” from a sales perspective, according to the company. From a brand awareness perspective, the new creative outperformed last season’s creative, driving record numbers in both ad recall and consideration, and delivering positive results across the marketing mix model.