With a busy Q4 underway, and what looks to be a record breaking retail start to the holidays, SCS is grateful to have our hands full in finishing out the year. Thank you to our clients for your collaboration and trust in your business. And while we focus on wrapping up 2022, are eyes are ahead to an uncertain 2023 and ensuring our clients are armed with the tools, technology, data, and insights necessary to grow their brands. This month, check out our first report on omnichannel shopping, learn how to adjust marketing strategies for economic turbulence, and see how World Cup frenzy is engaging North American consumers in entirely new ways.
November Update
Q4 Picks Up Speed
With a busy Q4 underway, and what looks to be a record breaking retail start to the holidays, SCS is grateful to have our hands full in finishing out the year. Thank you to our clients for your collaboration and trust in your business. And while we focus on wrapping up 2022, are eyes are ahead to an uncertain 2023 and ensuring our clients are armed with the tools, technology, data, and insights necessary to grow their brands. This month, check out our first report on omnichannel shopping, learn how to adjust marketing strategies for economic turbulence, and see how World Cup frenzy is engaging North American consumers in entirely new ways.
BATTENING DOWN THE OMNICHANNEL HATCHES
In a post-COVID world, omnichannel shopping experiences have crystalized into the new reality. To better understand how shopping has changed, SCS recently commissioned an omnichannel shopping study and discovered a number of significant trends. Today, 45% of in-store customers are likely to look up product details while shopping and 40% will search for lower pricing elsewhere. SCS’s Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Roach presented these new omnichannel shopping behaviors at Digital Summit in Kansas City this month where he explained why customers are mixing digital and in-person shopping like never before. Read the article and download the deck to learn more.
SMART BRIEF: UNCERTAIN TIMES? CHANGE YOUR MARKETING FOCUS NOT YOUR SPEND
While it’s tempting to trim your marketing budget during economic turbulence, it’s also a time of enormous opportunity. From moving into the territory of retreating competitors, to investing in breakthrough innovations, it’s not all about cutting and saving. This month on Smart Brief, SCS's Sr Director Brand Strategy, Tyler Hartsook, shares five proactive ways marketers can refocus their marketing approach to turn down-turns into opportunity. “... in every recession since the 1970s, companies that increased marketing spending in a downturn outperformed those that slashed. While industry leaders reacted with fear, challenger brands saw opportunity. They felt properly prepared for the moment, which empowered them to pivot to an advantageous position.”
MEDIA POST: HEY GOOGLE, WHAT’S THE FUTURE OF ANALYTICS
With the impending launch of GA4, Google has given the whole marketing world an ultimatum: change with us or lose your analytics. Right now, over 70 million websites and 50% of US businesses use the current GA3 software, and those who don’t switch over will lose service if they don’t move as early as July 1, 2023. This month, SCS’s VP Strategy, Jason Prance, writes about the new features and advantages of the impending switch for Media Post’s The Marketing Insider. “If performance metrics for your brand are dependent on year-over-year comparisons and deltas like most, now is the time to be migrating onto something new if you haven’t already, and run it on a parallel path with your existing Universal Analytics.” If you’d like to better understand this universal change to analytics and how to get the most out of the transition to GA4, please email us.
DIGIDAY: HOW BMW CREATED A MIXED REALITY BRAND EXPERIENCE WHERE DRIVERS GET BEHIND THE WHEEL – WEARING A VR HEADSET
To create the ultimate driving experience for the ultimate driving machine, BMW developed a futuristic augmented reality overlay for their track where drivers were able to get behind the wheel of an M2 with an AR headset. “It’s a masterpiece of mixed reality,” says SCS Sr Director Innovation & Digital Strategy, Sean MacPhedran. MacPhedran explained the futuristic backdrop isn’t just a “a cool step up” from how people already pay to drive luxury cars around a track, but also a great way to telegraph the car’s advanced features to consumers. Check out the article to learn more about how automotive OEMs are driving new forms of consumer engagement through AR.
THE WEDNESDAY WEB3: FIFA PARTNERS WITH ROBLOX FOR WORLD CUP
The World Cup is 2022’s biggest sporting event drawing almost 1 million people to spectate in person. But for hundreds of millions more watching from home, FIFA partnered with Roblox to create a digital experience for fans. FIFA World is an interactive, themed land to explore, complete with minigames, celebrity football players, and even livestreams of FIFA events from large in-world screens. Learn about the World Cup came to the Metaverse and more in the FIFA edition of Wednesday Web3. “Takeaway: Roblox is becoming a very large and thriving 3D social community on mobile, laptop and console. For many brands, it’s an ideal entry point for testing the waters in the metaverse space.”
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