S3
Episode 9
Forecasting a Successful Weather Targeting Campaign
About This Episode
Learn what weather targeting is, weather targeting strategies, and how you can leverage this tactic to tap into the influence of weather.
Bobbi Whyte | Senior Paid Media Manager, BIG Partnership
Transcript
Episode Introduction (00:00:00)
There was a study done into box office sales in comparison with weather. And it found that when the weather was really cold, tickets for feel-good films, rom-coms kind of rocketed. And that’s really meaningful and say if you’re someone like Netflix for what kind of titles you’re going to promote, if you’re using weather-based targeting, then creative that resonates with the current conditions are going to perform best.
How Agencies Thrive Introduction (00:00:23)
But then you think about the social landscape. The research data is hugely significant when we combine all of these different touchpoints. So that long-term loyalty and then diving into the clicks to leads to sales, gotten to a point where it can drive better results in audience targeting, and really is what’s going to set you apart you’re tuning in, you’re turning in, you’re tuning in to the How Agencies Thrive podcast.
Matt (00:00:48)
Hello, and welcome to the How Agencies Thrive podcast. My name is Matt, and I’m on the Education and Development team at StackAdapt. And today, we have a very special episode centered around weather targeting, and mainly how you can leverage weather data to make your programmatic campaigns hyper-relevant to your audience. On this episode, we have Bobbi Whyte from BIG Partnership, which is a full-service agency based in the UK. As always, we’re going to have our guests introduce themselves. So Bobbi, it’s great to have you on the episode. To help our listeners understand who you are, we’d love to hear a little bit more about you, your agency, your role, and your areas of expertise.
Bobbi (00:01:24)
Thank you for having me. So yeah, I work for BIG Partnership, as you said, and we’re a full-service marketing agency. And when I run an integrated agency, we work across PR and creative digital. I work within the digital team, and I am the paid media manager. So I take care of all kinds of digital advertising, any sort of advertising that you pay for your placement. So all things across social, YouTube, Google and programmatic, which is kind of what we’ll cover today. And I’ve worked here for three years, before that I was in-house, but most of my experience from digital comes from working here at back in service and our kind of a wide range of clients from third sector corporate consumer coverage, a little over three years have been here.
Matt (00:02:13)
Fantastic. Well, it’s great to have you on the episode. It’s kind of cool to see. Because when when I first started working on the podcast, and two years ago, we were only working in North America. So it’s awesome to have somebody from the UK joining the episode. So for anyone that listening to this, the general structure of the episode will go through a number of questions, we’ll take a break halfway through. But let’s go ahead and get started. So, Bobbi, just to bring everybody up to speed for somebody who’s never heard of this, who’s never heard of weather targeting? How would you define this technology? And what do you see the key benefits being?
Bobbi (00:02:53)
Yes, so weather targeting is just another form of kind of refining what your ads are seen. So anyone that works in digital marketing will be used to refine and that based on audience targeting, if we do that based on kind of browsing behaviour and interests in location-based targeting based on geography, we even do like ad scheduling for when the ads are shown. So where they’re targeted is just kind of another layer to that to allow you to define when ads are seen based on another element, which is the weather. So that means you can show different creatives for different weather conditions, or you can only serve your ads in certain weather conditions. Or it can offset your ads in certain weather conditions. And this is kind of great since it has come to digital I think traditionally we’ve seen out-of-home quite a lot. You’ll see that with like supermarkets and things. They’ve kind of changed their billboards that are outside their stores. If it’s for in the summer, that will be like a slowly suncream things like that, even when it’s winter or drizzly weather that changes to you know, conference and things like SIP. So it was great to kind of see this now and been able to do digitally, and where we can reach a kind of a much wider mass while also applying other audiences targeted matrix.
Matt (00:04:09)
Yeah, well, you know, when we’ve been talking about weather targeting on our side, there’s definitely been a lot of data around how the weather impacts consumer moods. And as we’ve watched, programmatic growth over the last couple of years, this wasn’t something that even I had thought about. But now that this technology is out, and it’s thriving, it’s so straightforward that this is a great tactic for anyone to use to serve hyper-relevant messaging. So what I am interested to know is, you know, your experience using weather targeting, you know, how has it been a part of your overall strategy and some of the campaigns that you’ve been running on your side?
Bobbi (00:04:47)
Yeah, so it’s fairly new to us as well. And as you see, there’s kind of loads of ways that we’re the targeting can be relevant in terms of how it affects us psychologically and things like that. And the most recent time I’ve used it as part of a sort of larger campaign that we were doing before the charity called Northwest Cancer Research. So every summer, the attention sort of switches to skin cancer. And with the reason being that if you’re from that part of the UK, you’re 27% more likely to develop skin cancer, which is pretty surprising, because they’re notoriously is kind of, whether they’re sort of notoriously un-summer like, you know, it fairly translates. It’s not, we’re not in like parts of Europe, where we usually experience what we kind of associate with sun tan and things like that. So with that people can allow into this false sense of security in regards to sun safety. So our sort of objective of this campaign was to sort of turn up the volume on UV protection, sun safety and sort of kinds of incentives for skin cancer because of this fact. So as an agency, we ran as I say, it was a much larger campaign, we had PR net of home elements, we done like a sun cream cartoon across the UK. We love the Blackpool Tower, and we went into schools and things like that in but we also can realize that we need to activate this digitally due to its kind of ability to reach people at mass. So that’s when we used StackAdapt. And I’ve recently heard about the weather-based targeting and naturally, this is quite a good fit for it based on how skin cancer develops. So we use this as like a digital display campaign using weather-based targeting. So we didn’t have a great deal of other audience targeting, apart from an ash region and the northwest of England. But because then cancer can affect anyone other than that audience targeting was really wide to anyone. So that’s where we played and where those affected instead. So that allowed us to kind of upscale our ads when the weather was really sunny. So this year, we had multiple heat waves. So that was really good, and allowed us to kind of dial that up a really strong message, a really high frequency of ads being served at that time as well during the heat waves in but it also let us kind of tap into this false sense of security with a cloudy weather and change our messaging for using the cloudy weather. So kind of messages like you can still burn through clouds. Even if you don’t burn, you can still be affected by the sun. And the ability to do that really, it’s just kind of speak to the audience where the charity recognized that was a reason that people kind of neglected sun safety was because of the weather. So that should be hyper-relevant with the weather that we’re currently experiencing. And speaking to that about why sun safety was so important.
Matt (00:07:32)
Awesome. Yeah, I remember reading about this specific campaign when we were getting started on a case study. And I think it changed things for me in the way that I look at weather targeting, because I was like, this is probably one of the most straightforward and impactful ways that I’ve seen it being used. Just because on the academy side, you know, we look at features, almost theoretically, but then looking at it in practice with a campaign like this. It was really interesting. So what I am interested to know about is kind of expanding on this campaign a little bit. You know, you mentioned some of the strategy and kind of what you assumed going into it and how everyone responded. But what was the general response? Were people very receptive to these creatives? Did it help the brand, get their agents to get their messaging across? And kind of what was the general consensus on how the campaign went?
Bobbi (00:08:26)
Yeah, totally. And I think what you’re seeing as well with those other campaigns, and it’s maybe a more sort of theoretical, psychological almost use in the way other people can draw better comparisons of movie sales rising, when the usability is targeting well as the objective of this campaign is obviously different than that there’s no sort of conversion orientated goal in terms of sales or, you know, striving signups or anything like that we weren’t looking for an action in the whole point of it was to raise awareness and educate. So with that, as well, it’s a little bit harder to measure because, you know, there isn’t a metric that you can pin that on. But we were really happy with the results and thought that weather-based targeting aligned so well with the campaign being directly related to weather and the research that the charity knew about people’s thoughts with weather and sun safety. And, you know, we tried it with our form elements as well, when we would and the initial sort of planning stages of it, we can consider choosing our home billboards and things like that. And there was just so much logistical and cost implications of that. We weren’t able to implement it. And I think that would have been otherwise disappointing, but because we were able to do it digitally. And that really helped us kind of drive up the awareness that we were really able to deliver. And in the end, we reached hundreds of 1000s of users with a really kind of fairly small budget as a charity. So it’s a finite budget and that we had and the frequency and the sarafan that we were able to use over them over the heat waves were so beneficial as well, even something that aligned so closely with our clients’ goals. So yeah, really, really happy with the results. And so as the client, as I say, not as tangible to measure with things like uplift, because we’re talking about such a large topic of sun safety. But we were really pleased and looking at things like the engagement. And that was all really positive.
Matt (00:10:21)
In your experience in terms of creatives and formats, what has worked best for a weather-targeting specific campaign?
Bobbi (00:10:29)
I think if you’re using weather based targets, and then creative that resonates with the current conditions are going to perform best. So any sort of marketing messaging that can relate to what a consumer is currently experiencing, is going to have the most sort of impact. So for example, if someone’s outdoors and it’s snowing, and you’re advertising for a new type of jacket, you can kind of focus on the warmth and properties of that. Obviously, retailers are going to be advertising things like jackets and winter anyway, seasonally, but with the weather-based targeting, you can kind of make that even more relevant to the conditions that are experiencing so snow, there can be snow featured, and the creative can mention the snow that we are currently experiencing. And the kind of properties or benefits of the jacket that directly relate to your warmth or waterproof can be used as part of the conditions. And I think that’s always where you’re going to get the most sort of benefit from using this as a format is to really tap in and be hyper-relevant to what the user is experiencing. In terms of formats, I’ve not really found one that I would say is definitively better than the other. There will be data out there for that. But I think with this is always going to depend on your audience, what you’re promoting, what the objective of the campaign is. And I think you’d always best just to test and kind of work with as many formats as you can and refine it down. Rather than try and work off other people’s datasets. As I say, for the one we spoke about was display, but that was more born out of it worked better with our creative ideas, rather than with the weather-based targeting. And I think if you look at it from more of a holistic view, that’s where you’ll get the kind of better answer there. In terms of actual kind of ad formats.
Matt (00:12:24)
Awesome. Now, in a more practical sense of a listener who might want to get started with weather targeting, I kind of want to pick your brain a little bit on not only what some of the best practices would be for getting started, but also any limitations and kind of the best way to mitigate those limitations so that you can succeed with this format.
Bobbi (00:12:47)
Yeah, I think there’s no point in using technology for technology’s sake. So we spoke about you mentioned at the start that there’s loads of examples where weather influences behaviour and things like that. So always use those kinds of data points to steer what your campaign messages will be. For example, I’ve seen a brand, and luckily, I can’t remember the name of the brand, because I probably shouldn’t name and shame them. But they’ve kind of done a campaign that was like a rising discount with rising temperature over summer and the product have nothing related to weather or anything like that. It was just a sort of, to me, it felt gimmicky, that it was just like a marketer knew that the feature had discovered this feature and and made use out of it, and also slightly in bad taste, considering we’re going through the climate crisis. But that didn’t see me see meaningful or good use of data for weather-based forecasts. But that being said, like you said, I wouldn’t underestimate there’ll be no link with weather, other than the state of the economy as the biggest influence on consumer buying behaviour. So it affects if you know, you’re going to walk into town or get a taxi, if you’re going to go out to a restaurant, or if you’re gonna order takeaway, you’d be where you’re picking holidays and things like that. And I also read that there was a study about when we can have that physical need for warmth, when it’s colder. We also have a psychological need for warmth. So there was a kind of study done and to box office sales in competitive with weather. And it found that when the weather was measurable, and windy and cold, the tickets for kind of feel-good films, rom-coms, all kind of rocketed. And that’s a really meaningful and say, if you’re someone like Netflix for what kind of titles you’re going to promote, and that’s maybe not so obvious and safe, but there is a clear link there in that. So it’s vocabulary in your consumers and working with your data and finding those data points where they are not just using it as a sort of gimmicky feature because if you can cause it’s available.
Matt (00:14:54)
Yeah, so it’s almost not even about kind of objectively looking at the weather and how that might impact things it’s really about going into the weeds with the consumer psychology and understanding based on how the weather is where people are going to be at, what are they going to need? And it’s yeah, it’s definitely an interesting piece of technology. And it’s unique to some of the things that we’ve seen in the last couple of years. So what I wanted to do is was asked you, you know, it might not even be a campaign that you’ve personally worked on. But in terms of a unique use case for this technology. I mean, you just mentioned a great one about box office sales, and, that psychological need for warmth, but are there any other ones that you’ve seen that have kind of been a standout as a really cool use case for this technology?
Bobbi (00:15:46)
Yeah, one that I’ve seen that it’s maybe not, you know, the most out of the box, but I think it works really well. And it had really tangible results. And that was in the Egyptian Tourism Authority. So they’ve done a big case study with Google actually, was that they use the kind of third party tool in for the weather targeting. But basically, they wanted to look beyond their sort of usual tourism campaigns of things like the pediments that they’re so famous for, and they wanted to draw upon the fact that they’re one of the sunniest countries on the planet. And that was specifically aimed to British travellers, again, kind of play an antic. In fact, we have measurable weather here. So they made the focus of the campaign, their temperature, their climate. And they didn’t want them to kind of, and the juxtaposition that against the UK’s weather. So in a similar way, they use the current weather conditions and cities across the UK. So the drizzle, if it was drizzling in London, they would show a drizzling creative, all other creatives powers there and that one was enabled to kind of coincide with the weather conditions there. And then that was offset against in sort of sunny skies of Egypt that they would experience in at that moment, as well. And kind of West, all the familiar into the spots at the pyramids and things like that. And that kind of tapped into that escapism, and again, the psychological or practical and that’s the way that you’ve experienced it, as that sort of psychological doesn’t that look much nicer there what you’d experience right now if you’re an agent compared to what you’re experiencing right here in London. So I thought that was really clever, and kind of different from the traditional. And looking at the results from that they had a really tangible result, which was that the searches for holidays to Egypt from the UK, were up 134% year on year, which I think is just a really amazing result as a clearly a direct result of that campaign.
Matt (00:17:43)
Fantastic. Well, Bobbi, I’m not going to try to put you too much on the spot at the end, because this question is a bit of an audible, but for anyone listening who’s looking to stay on top of trends and tips for success, pretty much anything programmatic. What are some resources that you personally use and some resources that you would recommend for anyone who’s trying to stay on top of the industry?
Bobbi (00:18:08)
I think staying on top of trends button is the main thing. There’s kind of this move, I think, with consumerism in general to these sort of deep communities, rather than this sort of trying to reach the masses, which is often mean done, because people want to reach a large number of people, you know, they’re always going to go for mass. But more and more that’s not the weekend, consumers are moving with things. If you look at things like TikTok and, you know, Twitch and Discord and things, all these sort of platforms are becoming more and more popular due to the kinds of the deep communities that are being cultivated within them. So I think that is where the kind of future is headed for consumerism. And I think brands just now should be looking at kind of speaking to these multiple communities in different ways and given these communities different experiences, rather than the kind of usual appealing to the masses.
Matt (00:19:03)
Fantastic. Well, Bobbi, thank you so much for joining. For anyone who’s been listening to this episode, we hope that you took away some key insights on weather targeting, we hope you have a much better understanding of how this works and what some of the benefits are. So again, Bobbi, thank you so much for joining. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode.
Episode Outro (00:19:25)
Thank you so much for tuning in. This has been the How Agencies Thrive podcast. If you like what you heard, then there’s three things that you can do to support the show. Number one, subscribe. Number two, leave us a review. And number three, share our podcasts on social media or with anyone who might find value in this content. If you have questions or feedback or just want to learn how agencies and brands work with StackAdapt, you can us at stackadapt.com. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
