Holiday Shopping Starts Now

Oct 7, 2008 by Mark Maier

Economic turmoil has retailers looking at various strategies this year to capture the dollars that are available as early as possible.  Ad Age published an article that stated Wal Mart would have it's Christmas displays up October 10th to capture the 36% of consumers who do their holiday shopping before Black Friday plus the retailer is engaging in $10 toy wars.  Wal-Marts ad spend is way up for the holiday season as it is using the time to capture market share....something us and others have been preaching for some time as this is the time to advertise, not draw back.
Joining Wal Mart is a list of national chain restaurants that are seeing the writing on the wall as it relates to expendable income, they are looking for ways to show value for the dollar and enforce the brand. In each case their ad spend is also up for the season. 
What are you telling your clients?  Are you letting them draw back or are you sharing with them the lessons learned by retailers in the past?  Are you reminding them of what happened to K-mart several years ago? (scroll through the blog entries for the K-mart articles Sean used as case studies of what not to do with your advertising several years ago that are still relevant today)  The meek will tuck their tales and accept the "we're cutting back" logic, if you really care about your clients now is the time to show it by sharing research of what others are doing to weather the storm, they are not closing the hatches but instead they are rushing directly into that storm and taking market share with them.
To read the complete article click here
To see the chart of advertising tactics outlined in Ad Age, click on the pdf link below to download.File Attachments

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