Retail Trends for Halloween

October 2, 2015

Halloween retail sales for costumes, candy, household decorations and greeting cards are expected to reach USD 6.9 billion with 157 Million Americans celebrating the holiday at the end of the month, according to the National Retail Federation’s Halloween Consumer Spending Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics.

Most Consumers, 67.8 percent, plan to celebrate by handing out candy , or dress in costume 43.5 percent, with 41 percent of people planning to carve pumpkins. Nearly one-third of consumers 32 percent plan to throw or attend a party with friends and family.

More consumers have decided to head to stores or shop online early to pick out costumes and decorations. More than three-fourths of the shopping will be completed in the first half of October.

Nearly 32 percent of customers will find costumes online, and 27 percent will head to stores before they make a final decision. Nearly 68 Million Americans plan to dress up for the holiday with an average of USD 27 being spent by each family. According to the National Retail Federation’s Annual Halloween Consumer Top Costumes Survey, adults will spend a total of USD 1.2 billion on their costumes, with USD 850 million on Children costumes and USD 350 million on Pet’s costumes. Minions and “Star Wars” characters each made an appearance on all three top costume lists – adults, children’s and pets.

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Taco Bell Rolls Out New Brand Experience “Ta.co”

October 2, 2015

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Taco Bell has rolled out a new In-line and online, Brand Experience for customers with the launch of ta.co, which it has termed it as the brand’s Flagship virtual restaurant which allows customers to customize the menu, view nutrition facts and place and pay for their order in advance. Ta.co has been designed with millennials as the core target audience, with rich media images. According to the press release Ta.co gives consumers the keys to Taco Bell kitchen the way consumers want it – On Mobile, Laptops Desktop and Tablets.

“Innovation has always been a part of Taco Bell’s core, and ta.co is our latest promise to make the brand accessible whenever, where ever and however consumers want it,” said Taco Bell CEO, Brian Niccol. “At Taco Bell, we’re rooted in delivering delicious, craveable and affordable Mexican-inspired food. We use technology, design and a heavy dose of creativity to deliver on that promise, all while making our brand more relevant to digital savvy customers.” The new website Ta.Co is a step ahead of the app “Live-Mas” that was launched earlier that allows for customization of the menu.

Taco Bell Vice President of digital innovation and on demand compares the use of new web address to a more resonant way od ordering comparing it to an Emoji, “It’s like using an emoji,” Lieberman said, noting that the full www.tacobell.comURL will also bring users to the same website. “We think ease is the new loyalty.”

With about 5 million users visiting the website each month, the company’s goal was to bring them the same elevated experience the app offers, which will ultimately redefine the e-commerce experience for quick service, Lieberman said.
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Five Ways To Optimize Your Facebook Advertising Campaign For Holiday Season

October 1, 2015

Facebook recently announced the availability of Carousel Video ad format allowing advertisers to combine video campaigns with direct response ads. Now Facebook will offer TRP based buying to complement the TV advertising. Facebook has announced the new TRP Buying product to help television marketers more easily raise awareness of a campaign through video ads. TRP is a metric used by the TV industry to refer to specific audiences within a larger, impressions-based campaign measurement. TRPs are calculated using the denominator of the total target audience, and the numerator as the total impressions delivered to this audience x 100. (As in 1,000,000 impressions among the target audience / 10,000,000 people in total in the target audience x 100 = 10 TRPs)

Facebook’s new product allows advertisers to use TRPs to plan and buy video ads and integrate the ads with their linear television campaigns.

According to Facebook’s blog post,

TV has long been one of the best platforms for marketers to build their brands. And new Facebook-commissioned custom research conducted by Nielsen shows that boosting TV campaigns with Facebook video ads drives incremental reach, increases efficiency and improves effectiveness.

Incremental Target Audience Reached: Measured across 42 US campaigns, when TV and Facebook were combined, advertisers saw a 19 percent increase in targeted reach versus TV alone. When Millennials were the target audience, incremental reach increased to 37 percent.
Efficiency: Across the same 42 campaigns, Facebook impressions were two times more likely to hit their target audience than TV impressions. This means advertisers spent less to reach their target audiences.
Effectiveness: A study by Nielsen of seven recent campaigns showed that, compared to people who saw TV alone, people exposed to both TV and Facebook demonstrated a 3.2 percentage point increase in ad memorability, 11.5 percentage point increase in brand linkage and a 22.7 percentage point increase in likeability linkage.

Moreover, advertisers can now optimize video for brand awareness or direct response campaign objectives. Brand awareness optimization is designed to help advertisers find the audiences most likely to recall their ads. It takes two primary factors into account: attention and reach. By analyzing hundreds of brand campaigns Facebook, found that the longer someone spends with an ad, the more likely they are to remember what they’ve seen. Brand awareness optimization will be available when buying in the Ads auction, as well as through the Reach and Frequency tool in Power Editor. It will be available on Facebook and Instagram this October as a limited release, with full availability in the coming months.

Promoting your brand on Facebook with video posts is likely to boost engagement for your campaign, according to Nanigans, here are the leading trends for Video Advertising.

Video continues to attract greater portions of Facebook ad spend, with video enabled units accounting for 16 percent of total spend in Q2 2015. This is up from 13 percent in Q1 2015.
In June, video ads captured their highest share of Facebook ad spend ever observed through Nanigans software, at 22 percent.
Mobile video has been particularly attractive to advertisers on Facebook, with 21 percent of total global mobile ad spending going toward the format in Q2 2015, compared to 15 percent the previous quarter.
Mobile video grew by 44 percent in Q2 over Q1 2015 as compared to 23 percent growth for Video ads.

Here is a slide-share for different metrics for Facebook advertising:

The Holiday season advertising on Facebook tends to trend with the highest CPC and CPM coinciding with peak holiday season days,

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Ten Ways To Drive Brand Engagement With Email and Social

October 1, 2015

Planning your social media campaigns to grow your subscriber base can be an added bonus for brands as an email subscriber base provides an opportunity to engage audiences for campaigns on an ongoing basis. The open rate for emails on mobile devices is as high as 45 percent and for some categories there has been an increase in the open rates according to an Epsilon research report.

Macy’s All-School A Capella Challenge targeted at young audiences enters contestants with a video uploaded to YouTube that automatically subscribes the users with a YouTube linked email account.

“Millennials turn to social media platforms to understand what’s hot in fashion,” said the Macy’s spokeswoman. “It’s imperative that we as a retailer stay on top of how fashion trends are being communicated on those platforms and use that awareness to shape our publishing strategy.” For example, Macy’s regularly taps trending hashtags like #ShoesdayTuesday and #ManiMonday to push its styles, and customizes its social messaging based on local events and trends.