Weather marketing with data-day relevance
Our increasingly unpredictable weather is impacting our purchasing habits says The Weather Channel UK’s Lindsay Wiles – allowing advertisers to communicate and exploit opportunities outside of the traditional need and buying cycles…
Pick up today’s paper and there’s likely to be some sort of reference to the weather in the UK. Perhaps Britain is set to be ‘hotter than Greece’ or that spring has arrived ‘with a wintry blast’, consumers always want to know what’s coming.
But it’s not just consumers’ plans that the changeable weather affects – it’s the entire advertising and marketing industry, and the campaigns that come with it.
We all know the UK’s weather is temperamental; 2013’s March was the coldest in 60 years, but fast forward to March 2014 and Brits were flipping burgers on the BBQ. So, how do you plan around this, what do you do if you are a business whose products have seasonal or weather dependency?
Such unpredictable weather creates a challenge for the industry as marketing plans change; summer products may well need to be advertised in March and winter clothing could be in demand in the middle of spring.
There’s an increasing importance to target and reach your audience with relevance – give them what they need, when they need it. How can marketers ensure they are fully prepared and not missing these opportunities when it comes to weather marketing? Enter big weather data.
With the four terabytes analysed by us each day, the massive amount of weather data we have available is phenomenal. Weather data has always influenced the retail economy, and we have long sold forecasts to airlines and energy traders, but now data can be combined with consumer behaviour to create a marketing platform with a USP unlike any other, for practically every brand.
When you drill-down into this ‘big’ weather data, the information it can tell us about consumers and their behaviour is priceless. There’s a remarkable variety of nuances involved in weather-related consumer decision-making; tapping into this, and fully understanding this, is key to every marketer.
The opportunities that weather data provides are only getting bigger. Now it’s not just about activating weather-triggered adverts at certain temperatures or specific weather conditions – it’s about a new set of weather-triggers that understand consumers’ feelings around the weather. Weather can spark consumers to act in a different way; for example, a study from The Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services showed sunlight has a “massive effect” on consumers’ willingness to pay.
Think about the recent weather we’ve had, with sunshine and barbecues following weeks of torrential rain and flooding. The actual temperatures we experienced weren’t necessarily as hot as a July summer’s day, but the fact we experienced temperatures of 19 degrees after a rainy, cold period influenced consumers to want products that could be seen as traditional summer purchases.
When it’s relatively hotter or comparatively colder than expected, consumers are triggered to behave differently to the typical conditions they experience; they immediately want to partake in outdoor activities or they are keen to stock up on winter warming foods.
In August last year a sudden cold spell – an eight degree drop in temperature – after a hot July saw Waitrose report increased demand from consumers for more winter relevant foods such as stocks, whisky and stews. At 23 degrees, the weather was still relatively warm, but transitioning from an average temperature of 31 degrees on the previous week, made consumers feel cold. Clearly August is not winter, but the change in weather had an immediate impact on consumers and their purchasing habits.
Occurrences like this allow advertisers to communicate and exploit opportunities outside of the traditional need/buying cycle, and with that comes the importance of being prepared for all conditions. For example, the cider brand looking to build awareness when the first hotter than average spring weekend occurs or the retailer capitalising on consumer demand for winter style products when a colder than average week hits in summer.
The big weather data we have at our fingertips today gives marketers the capacity to both widen the product’s seasonal life-cycle and heavy-up advertising in peak periods. It enables them to anticipate when typical conditions are accentuated in such a way that it changes consumer behaviour and buying habits, making their products and services more relevant outside of seasonal averages.
These new relative condition triggers are based on varying levels of normalised weather conditions to encompass how the weather “feels”, in other words very hot or very cold. Relative conditions are defined by varying levels of standard deviation, from postcode and seasonal normalised averages, which allows advertisers to activate messages against a mix of conditions. This pushes consumption and brand association, driven by consumer need, rather than explicit conditions.
This year, the close proximity of a late Easter and May Bank Holiday produces both an opportunity and challenge for marketers to anticipate and react, should the weather be hotter or wetter than usual.
The key is to be prepared and to be ready with contingency planning. The data is available, the opportunity is open; it’s a case of marketers fully understanding the importance of weather in marketing and the need to offer relevance that meets the needs of consumers, whatever the weather.
Lindsay Wiles is the strategic sales director of The Weather Channel UK.