April 10, 2013
Ace Hardware’s Mobile Ads Change With the Weather
Retailers have not had problems blaming poor results on the weather in the past. Now, they have the opportunity to give the weather some credit for moving their business in a positive direction. According to an Adweek report, Ace Hardware and others have tested using mobile ads that vary offers based on local weather conditions.
For Ace, that meant pitching snow removal products before and after this winter’s storms. With the weather turning friendlier, it will now deliver ads based on the best time to make use of fertilizer and other products.
"We want to reach folks in real time and help them deal with the weather as it’s coming," Jeff Gooding, Ace’s marketing director, told Adweek. "Helping has traditionally been part of our brand, and it’s becoming a part of our mobile strategy."
Seeing an opportunity in the social arena, Twitter and The Weather Channel announced last week a new joint initiative that that will include the use of video for local forecasts, coverage of local weather as well as user-generated content. Twitter members, using the company’s Cards technology, will be able to see the local weather content within their personal Twitter streams. With this feature, Twitter and The Weather Channel are betting that big ad dollars will follow.
"The media buying community will see this as a different kind of innovating, leveraging another platform," Curt Hecht, chief global revenue officer for The Weather Company, told AllThingsD.
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Discussion Questions
What do you think of Ace Hardware’s use of local weather to connect with consumers through mobile? Are there other aspects of daily life that offer similar opportunities for retailers to communicate with consumers?
Poll
The Ace weather-related mobile application makes lots of sense to me. Instead of trying to grab attention occasionally with some random offering, Ace will make itself relevant and useful. With that strategy I believe consumers will consistently pay more attention to messages from Ace than other retailers.
There are probably other applications which can be transported from traditional promotions. “Back to school” for Target and “July 4th picnics” for grocers are two that come to mind. However, I think those messages will get lost if the retailer pushes out many messages all the time. In the mobile context, less might be more.
Definitely a smart way to “connect the dots” of Big Data. Now if they could just do that months in advance so buyers could avoid buying 200 snowplows for a winter snow that never shows up, it will be remarkable.
Using the local weather to connect with consumers is not a new concept. Warner Lambert did it for years with a number of their OTC products. Mobile is just another platform for reaching consumers.
Integrating ads with content will spread the word about products and services, but if the ads become too dominant, they could turn off consumers. Contextual advertising works when there is a natural fit between product and content, whether it’s television or mobile.
Weather is just one of many inputs retailers should be using to personalize their digital marketing efforts. Obviously, weather is particularly relavent in Ace’s category, so it’s a great place to start.
Ed Hampe used to explain the difference between a “merchant” and a “trader” to CPG sales teams in training sessions with the following parable.
“When it rains, a merchant goes to the rear of the store and brings the barrel of umbrellas to the front. He might even put them outside or put up a “Sale” sign on them.
When it rains, a trader calls up his umbrella supplier and says ‘Listen Joe, it’s raining here in Topeka today and I’m going to sell a hell of a lot of umbrellas. What’s the hottest deal you can make me on a truckload for delivery next week?”
“THAT”, Ed would say, “is why we refer to our customers today as ‘the trade’”
ACE has incorporated mobile into their philosophy of being a merchant. Bully for them!
The use of mobile adverts based on weather is a brilliant idea. Not just for seasonal changes (time to get fertilizer), but for daily changes (make sure to get the snow shovel for tomorrow’s big storm). If the customer trusts Ace, and gives them the ability to contact them through mobile, then Ace has once again confirmed that they are the “Helpful Hardware Place.”
The fact that this is unconventional in some way just shows the disconnect of marketing what companies think people want versus what they need. It seems like a no-brainer: it’s raining, there’s a sale on umbrellas. Really hot out? Water is 2 for $1.
It is good to see Ace getting in the game again. Even their TV ads have more appeal.
Broadcast advertising lead times are such that response to immediate weather conditions is not possible. Doing just that takes advantage of the immediacy of mobile marketing and is a good idea. Consumers can feel as though the company understands their concerns.
It’s the way to go for getting more real-time relevance. Linking to a customer’s own transactions to know whether they bought their snow shovel yesterday would be a sensible addition if Ace could collect this data.
There’s a lot of promise here, and what Ace is describing barely scratches the surface. Effective weather-based campaigns push the envelope on Granularity, Agility, and Measurability:
1. Granularity. The beginner buys by season, such as winter storm months. The expert buys by event, such as a winter storm warning.
2. Agility. The beginner plans a campaign to “swap” weather messaging in place of generic messaging. The expert buys opportunistically through impressions real-time on exchanges AND uses Twitter, Facebook and other post-based social media to provide near-infinite inventory.
3. Measurability. The beginner measures impressions and click-thru rates. The expert leverages location-based mobile capabilities to measure store visits.
Weather-triggered signals are a great idea for Ace Hardware since it offers a range of items with seasonal and emergency appeal. Using mobile apps to alert shoppers seems natural in the present era.
The Weather Channel and twitter present one way of accomplishing this. Ace could leverage its own frequent shopper program to authorize direct messaging too. Not clear from this story is how permission would be established.
I would imagine that a variation on this principle might work with respect to local sports teams—flash the score and offer the t-shirt. Or for some holiday promotions, such as to promote last-minute sell through of Halloween candy using flash sales.
Some years ago we did a very detailed study of the factors affecting promotions. We studied both controllable and non-controllable factors. Two non-controllable factors that had great impact on a promotion’s performance were the weather and competition. The ability to switch item in a short time cycle will increase promotion sell through.
Great use by Ace of the real-time immediacy that Mobile offers. I’m not so sure about the Twitter initiative. I have so many ways to check the weather these days, hunting through my Twitter feed for forecast updates seems like a waste of time.
I think Ace’s initiative is an innovative way to seed consumers with shopping ideas. We all know that our personal price sensitivity can be directly influenced by outside factors: for example, we are much less price sensitive with respect to umbrellas when it is raining, than on sunny days. Similarly, Ace can entice shoppers to visit their stores for weather-appropriate products by using weather-dependent mobile ads.
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The Ace weather-related mobile application makes lots of sense to me. Instead of trying to grab attention occasionally with some random offering, Ace will make itself relevant and useful. With that strategy I believe consumers will consistently pay more attention to messages from Ace than other retailers.
There are probably other applications which can be transported from traditional promotions. “Back to school” for Target and “July 4th picnics” for grocers are two that come to mind. However, I think those messages will get lost if the retailer pushes out many messages all the time. In the mobile context, less might be more.
Definitely a smart way to “connect the dots” of Big Data. Now if they could just do that months in advance so buyers could avoid buying 200 snowplows for a winter snow that never shows up, it will be remarkable.
Using the local weather to connect with consumers is not a new concept. Warner Lambert did it for years with a number of their OTC products. Mobile is just another platform for reaching consumers.
Integrating ads with content will spread the word about products and services, but if the ads become too dominant, they could turn off consumers. Contextual advertising works when there is a natural fit between product and content, whether it’s television or mobile.
Weather is just one of many inputs retailers should be using to personalize their digital marketing efforts. Obviously, weather is particularly relavent in Ace’s category, so it’s a great place to start.
Ed Hampe used to explain the difference between a “merchant” and a “trader” to CPG sales teams in training sessions with the following parable.
“When it rains, a merchant goes to the rear of the store and brings the barrel of umbrellas to the front. He might even put them outside or put up a “Sale” sign on them.
When it rains, a trader calls up his umbrella supplier and says ‘Listen Joe, it’s raining here in Topeka today and I’m going to sell a hell of a lot of umbrellas. What’s the hottest deal you can make me on a truckload for delivery next week?”
“THAT”, Ed would say, “is why we refer to our customers today as ‘the trade’”
ACE has incorporated mobile into their philosophy of being a merchant. Bully for them!
The use of mobile adverts based on weather is a brilliant idea. Not just for seasonal changes (time to get fertilizer), but for daily changes (make sure to get the snow shovel for tomorrow’s big storm). If the customer trusts Ace, and gives them the ability to contact them through mobile, then Ace has once again confirmed that they are the “Helpful Hardware Place.”
The fact that this is unconventional in some way just shows the disconnect of marketing what companies think people want versus what they need. It seems like a no-brainer: it’s raining, there’s a sale on umbrellas. Really hot out? Water is 2 for $1.
It is good to see Ace getting in the game again. Even their TV ads have more appeal.
Broadcast advertising lead times are such that response to immediate weather conditions is not possible. Doing just that takes advantage of the immediacy of mobile marketing and is a good idea. Consumers can feel as though the company understands their concerns.
It’s the way to go for getting more real-time relevance. Linking to a customer’s own transactions to know whether they bought their snow shovel yesterday would be a sensible addition if Ace could collect this data.
There’s a lot of promise here, and what Ace is describing barely scratches the surface. Effective weather-based campaigns push the envelope on Granularity, Agility, and Measurability:
1. Granularity. The beginner buys by season, such as winter storm months. The expert buys by event, such as a winter storm warning.
2. Agility. The beginner plans a campaign to “swap” weather messaging in place of generic messaging. The expert buys opportunistically through impressions real-time on exchanges AND uses Twitter, Facebook and other post-based social media to provide near-infinite inventory.
3. Measurability. The beginner measures impressions and click-thru rates. The expert leverages location-based mobile capabilities to measure store visits.
Weather-triggered signals are a great idea for Ace Hardware since it offers a range of items with seasonal and emergency appeal. Using mobile apps to alert shoppers seems natural in the present era.
The Weather Channel and twitter present one way of accomplishing this. Ace could leverage its own frequent shopper program to authorize direct messaging too. Not clear from this story is how permission would be established.
I would imagine that a variation on this principle might work with respect to local sports teams—flash the score and offer the t-shirt. Or for some holiday promotions, such as to promote last-minute sell through of Halloween candy using flash sales.
Some years ago we did a very detailed study of the factors affecting promotions. We studied both controllable and non-controllable factors. Two non-controllable factors that had great impact on a promotion’s performance were the weather and competition. The ability to switch item in a short time cycle will increase promotion sell through.
Great use by Ace of the real-time immediacy that Mobile offers. I’m not so sure about the Twitter initiative. I have so many ways to check the weather these days, hunting through my Twitter feed for forecast updates seems like a waste of time.
I think Ace’s initiative is an innovative way to seed consumers with shopping ideas. We all know that our personal price sensitivity can be directly influenced by outside factors: for example, we are much less price sensitive with respect to umbrellas when it is raining, than on sunny days. Similarly, Ace can entice shoppers to visit their stores for weather-appropriate products by using weather-dependent mobile ads.