Many happy returns: targeting ‘horizontal’ events

Stick on your party hat as ZenithOptimedia’s Richard Shotton uses new research to quantify the impact of birthdays on spending.

One of the key principles of marketing is advertising to consumers at the right moment. At its simplest that means advertising at moments of high seasonal sales. These sales uplifts are often due to vertical or horizontal events.

Vertical events are those which happen at the same time and affect all consumers. Obvious examples include Christmas or car registration periods. Since these moments are well known and easily targetable there’s often a lot of clutter. So, for example, a quarter of all retail ad spend is in November and December. This means that it’s hard to generate the highest level of return on investment.

Horizontal events, in contrast, are ones which impact all consumers but at different times through the year, such as birthdays. Since birthdays occur every day their importance to brands as a sales driver is often hidden. This means that many brands don’t target their broadcast media to take account of horizontal events. For the canny brand this leaves an opportunity to advertise at a propitious moment without clutter.

Since this is an under-researched area ZenithOptimedia decided to quantify the impact of birthdays on spending. We talked to 1,000 people about occasions they’d bought goods for themselves in 12 categories.

In all categories consumers were more likely to have made a purchase for themselves around their birthday than at smaller vertical events like Easter or Mother’s Day. In three categories, namely clothes, jewellery and watches, birthdays were a bigger driver of sales than Christmas. Since people feel their birthdays are a special time they are far more likely to give into the commercial temptations that they might normally ignore.

Of course, not only do consumers purchase more on their birthday but they are given gifts too. According to a Mintel study of 1,365 adults the average consumer spent £28 on Valentine’s Day, £25 on Mother’s Day and £20 on Father’s Day.

In contrast, we asked 466 adults how much was spent on their birthday presents and the average figure was £136. These gifts are of interest as according to our survey 60% of consumers specify the products they receive for their birthday to some degree.

The case for targeting consumers around their birthday is not just a theoretical one. Experian monitored 50 e-mail birthday campaigns in 2014. These campaigns were significantly more successful than their promotional email norms with a 342% growth in revenue per e-mail.

Nor is the birthday opportunity limited to CRM. Over the last couple of years, numerous digital opportunities have emerged. For example, Facebook data can be used by advertisers to target users within one week of their birthday.

This is far from a niche approach: in the UK there are 760,000 people reachable by Facebook around their birthday. Facebook’s purchase of Atlas means that through its ad serving technology, brands will soon be able to use this data to target ads across the internet. The combination of Facebook data and more impactful ad formats will make a heady combination for brands.

For brands who are prepared to think differently about the moments they target there could be many happy returns from focusing on birthdays.

Twitter: @rshotton