Supply-chain woes pull Christmas ads forward
Hi, welcome back to Insider Advertising. I'm Lara O'Reilly, Insider's media and advertising editor. Before we begin, some news: This is the last edition before our newsletter goes on hiatus.
Thank you so much for reading. While we're on our brief pause, you can keep up with me on Twitter @larakiara or you can also send your feedback and tips to loreilly@insider.com And to get "Insider Exclusives," our email alerts - sign up here by topic.
Insider will be in touch soon with some newsletter updates. In the meantime, please take this brief survey to help us improve our newsletters.
But until then, let's get right to this week's big advertising news:
- Supply-chain crisis pulls holiday ads forward
- The buy-now, pay-later ad-spending spree
- Facebook readies a rebrand
Never get high on your own supply
It may feel as if the holiday season comes earlier and earlier every year, but this year it's undeniable. As Insider's Lindsay Rittenhouse reported, supply-chain disruptions have caused some leading retailers - including Zulily, Amazon, and the British e-commerce site Very - to run holiday campaigns earlier than usual.
While hearing the soft tinkle of jingle bells in October might rankle some consumers, it's nowhere near as annoying as leaving the Christmas shop too late and coming away disappointed if products are unavailable.
Adobe's latest US online-shopping forecast, which analyzes more than 1 trillion visits to retail sites, found that the presence of out-of-stock messages had increased 172% heading into the holiday season.
What's more, Adobe says discounts are expected to be in the range of 5% to 25% this year, versus the usual average of 10% to 30%. And consumers are set to be squeezed even tighter on everyday purchases, with both Procter & Gamble and Nestlé announcing price hikes.
Still, where there's disruption, there's opportunity:
Buy-now, pay-later brands are having a moment. As Insider's Tanya Dua reported, players like Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, and PayPal collectively increased their ad spend between January and September by 130% year-over-year as they duke it out for a greater share of the booming $91 billion BNPL market.
That jump in spending is sure to continue into the holiday season as shoppers look to spread out their payments. (Indeed, Adobe found consumers were increasingly using BNPL for less-expensive purchases.)
Much like crypto and sports betting, BNPL is a new fast-growing client category for ad agencies.
New York, concrete jungle where ads are made of
Insider's deputy editor for media and advertising Lucia Moses reports:
Live events are back! Thursday is the last day of New York's Advertising Week, where attendees got a taste of what it's like (for the vaccinated) to return to pre-pandemic times. The event was still available virtually, though, a feature that's likely to endure at live events.
The supply-chain crisis was a prevalent theme this week.
Roku shared a stat saying one in four parents started their holiday shopping in August. And Craig Brommers, the chief marketing officer of American Eagle, declared the traditional shopping season over as sales events like "fall-iday" and "gift-ober" become the norm and said brands would have to constantly retell their story to survive. "It is definitely not for the faint of heart," he added.
He pushed back on the idea that physical retail is dead, though. "Gen Z are social creatures," he said. "They want to be out and about again."
- More from Advertising Week: Media owner Byron Allen has threatened further legal action against Madison Avenue and claims his lawsuit against McDonald's is moving forward
Facey McBookface
As The Verge's Alex Heath reported, Facebook is preparing to unveil a new company name in the coming days, intended to convey that the company has grown to become far more than just the big blue app - from WhatsApp, to VR, to the mysterious "metaverse."
So which names might be in the mix? Speculation has centered on the words "Meta" and "Horizon," a reference to its social virtual-reality platform.
Whatever Facebook settles on, what'll arguably be more interesting from a marketing perspective is the branding codes the company decides to use. Will the visual assets tip their hat to its heritage? Or will it attempt to do away with the past entirely?
The 90-second slot
In this semiregular corner of the newsletter, we bring you a rapid-fire, 90-second interview with the industry's most influential executives in this week's advertising news.
This week, I spoke with Natalie Placko, the general manager for global marketing and brand at Intrepid Travel. The tour operator this week rolled out a new brand identity and a refreshed set of trips designed around "ethical and responsible experiences."
Are you backing the rebrand with any paid advertising?
We've been a little controversial, I guess. Most brands would go out with a really big brand campaign. We're a travel brand coming out of the most crazy pandemic. So we have undertaken the first part of the rebrand. We've gone live across all of our own channels, and we'll be doing a bigger brand campaign in quarter one.
Why now?
We really feel there is a huge opportunity now for travel brands that have been in hibernation for a long time to come out of this pandemic refreshed, reenergized, revitalized. We didn't necessarily plan it - it was a work in progress, and we feel like the stars aligned. We feel that coming out of the pandemic we'll be a better business than we were before, and we were a great business before the pandemic.
How have you adapted your approach to marketing planning given the prolonged uncertainty around travel?
There's a new definition to planning and I think we have to be extremely flexible, fluid, and agile. We just haven't been able to do a lot. We're already planning for 2022, so it's almost like 2021 is done. We've had to be really tight, we've gone into a slow mode, but we're coming out of that probably quicker than we were expecting.
Recommended reading:
PayPal is considering buying Pinterest at $70 a share, or about $45 billion - Bloomberg
Amazon is more than doubling the price of holiday livestreaming campaigns to $85,000, and it's offering email data to entice brands to buy in - Insider
7 advertising pros share why they quite the agency world and what advice they'd give former colleagues - Insider
Amazon and Starbucks held talks about launching a cobranded lounge that combines cashierless Go stores with a café - Insider
Opinion: Scott Galloway thinks fraud will take down digital advertising. He's wrong. - Insider
Omnicom reported an 11.5% lift in organic revenue growth in its third quarter. CEO John Wren said supply-chain issues weren't causing clients to cut marketing spend. - Ad Age
See you again soon - Lara