NRF's Optimistic Holiday Shopping Season | Walgreen's CMO Pat McLean On Marketing Covid-19 Vaccines | Ford Hires eBay's CMO

Plus: How A Zoom Thanksgiving Celebration Will Impact Black Friday

Happy almost Thanksgiving from the Forbes CMO Network,

While ad spend has taken a hit this year, it looks like the tide may be turning in time for the holiday shopping season. During the week of November 9, retail ad spend was flat year-over-year compared to 2019, according to MediaRadar. That may not sound like much, but the firm says it was actually the best since the pandemic began. The top five retail advertisers during the first two weeks of the month were Walmart, Amazon, Target, Best Buy and Macy’s, which spent a total of $180 million. (Retail brands overall spent $415 million on advertising during the first half of November across TV, digital, print, podcast and elsewhere.)

Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation has found more signs of optimism for retailers looking for a strong fourth quarter: According to its holiday forecast, holiday sales are expected to grow between 3.6% and 5.2% year-over-year to a total between $755 billion and $766 billion. For comparison, holiday sales in November and December of 2019 grew 4% over 2018 and the average annual growth for the past 5 years has been 3.5%. (E-commerce sales continue to skyrocket and were up 36.7% during the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year.)

The NRF, which released its forecast earlier this week, also said that 42% of consumers started their holiday shopping earlier than usual this year, a trend that helped propel October sales to increase 10.9% year-over-year. (Officials also say the accelerated spread of Covid-19 could "pump the breaks" on growth during Q4, but that promising news of a vaccine could make shoppers more willing to spend if there's an end to the pandemic on the horizon.)

Last week was the third episode of our ongoing Forbes CMO Summit Virtual Series, which focused on internal and external partnerships. If you weren't able to join us, check out the videos of each discussion. Watch CMOs from BET, the Boston Red Sox and the WWE talk about the future of entertainment, or catch the CMOs of Snap, Cadillac and Roku talk about video trends for 2020 and 2021. If you're interested in learning about growth marketing, listen to the CMOs of Carhartt, Accuweather, 7-Eleven and Teradata talk about how they've navigated 2020. We also had fireside chats with Citi CMO Carla Hassan and Salesforce CMO Stephanie Buscemi. (The fourth and final episode of our CMO Summit Virtual Series will take place on December 10 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. ET.)

If you have story ideas or news tips to share, feel free to email us. Otherwise, until next week, enjoy the holiday and stay safe.

Marty

Creativity

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CMO Profile

“There's going to be a really heavy emphasis on content development, and then targeting that content development at the audience based on whatever insights we have about what the need state that individual is in. So it's really right at the heart of our mass personalization strategy to make sure that we're putting relevant information or getting communication in front of customers, depending on what specific needs they have.

Let me give you a real concrete example. One of the biggest insights we have in the early days here: Almost half of the country is not ready to take the vaccine…And so a big part of our job is not just promoting and marketing Walgreens, but actually promoting and marketing the integrity of the vaccine itself and the process and the safety of the vaccine itself. So it's going to be a very different type of marketing exercise because there's a role we play on a national level. The communication and marketing efforts to get people both aware and comfortable that the value proposition of the vaccines is sound.”

"Almost half of the country is not ready to take the vaccine…And so a big part of our not just promoting and marketing Walgreens, but actually promoting and marketing, the integrity of the vaccine itself and the process and the safety of the vaccine itself. "

Pat McLean

Chief Marketing Officer, Walgreen's

Leadership & Strategy

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