Destination Rotorua’s winter campaign
September 1, 2021
Meet James, our Head of Creative
December 15, 2021
NEWS / EVENTS
WHY KEEP ADVERTISING IN A LOCKDOWN
While you might be inclined to push pause on your advertising spend during a lockdown, evidence suggests now is the perfect time to make your business, products and services top of mind.
Since the recent COVID-19 lockdown, our routines have once again been disrupted due to self-isolating at home. That means your advertising activity needs a little disruption too.
Some advertisers might feel that a lockdown is the time to pause your marketing activity, however our consumers’ needs are the opposite:
- 70% of Kiwis want brands to continue communicating during the crisis – particularly those helping customers.
- 74% of Kiwi consumers approve of brands providing funny / light-hearted videos or content to entertain people.
Where to advertise?
As you’d expect, working from home has led to a sharp decline in foot traffic and exposure to OOH channels, so we have to relook at the way users are accessing media.
During the first lockdown in 2020, we saw an increase in streaming platforms and expect to see a similar trend this time too. This is a great opportunity for clients to place their video/ audio ads in a highly engaged environment.
Since lockdown started, local news sites such as NZ Herald have been consistently delivering nearly three million web sessions a day. That’s more than 11 million page views in total! Needless to say, going online is the way to go as that’s where your audience is.
We recommend our clients use lockdown as an opportunity to be flexible, to invest in live streaming activity such as OnDemand videos, social, digital, radio/ podcasts etc.
Online audit
Now’s the perfect time to check that your e-commerce and website health are up-to-date, and ensure your SEO is performing well. Also, consider the messages these channels are releasing into the market – are they appropriate for the current situation?
Brand versus buy-now
While there might be a delay in immediate payoff or conversion rate, our audience can afford to spend more time researching products (a prolonged dreaming phase).
Brands need to take this opportunity to be informative, offer community support messages and bring the industry together via smart partnerships to satisfy customers’ appetite for feel-good messages during these uncertain times.
Some topics that resonate well with the general public currently include affordability, health, planet, society and experiences.
As always, KingSt is humming along, trying to help clients reach audiences with new ideas as media habits change during this period. If you want to chat through any of these tips, or gain some strategic thinking tailored to your business, give us a call.