TV

Is Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Still Advertising Paradise?

Maybe the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats just look expensive, or perhaps the social media marketer in me thinks it’s gotta be harder to communicate brand values via a float than a TikTok. 

But either way, is the 96-year-old parade still a smart investment for brands in 2020?

Short answer: Yes. 

Long answer

Let’s talk about viewership. 

• Last year, the parade garnered an impressive 22.1 million TV viewers on its native network, NBC. Many assumed Covid-19 would lower that number.
• To translate, that makes it much larger than a Bachelorette season premiere, but much smaller than the Super Bowl.

But it turns out, Covid didn’t hit the parade’s viewership as hard as it hit the rest of Thanksgiving. 

• Thursday’s event captured 20.7 million viewers.
• Despite being mostly pre-taped with a shortened parade route, “the telecast is more popular than ever with advertisers. NBCUniversal sold out its parade inventory sooner than usual this year,” per Adweek.

Family matters

Cool, so Covid-19 didn’t kill Macy’s TV numbers. 

But that still doesn’t answer the question: Why is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade still so popular when there are more cheap and reliable digital alternatives than ever?

This does: The parade “is our Super Bowl of family viewing,” NBCUniversal’s President of Ad Sales and Partnerships Mark Marshall told Adweek. 

• The parade's viewership may be lower than the Super Bowl, but it reaches a different, kid-friendly audience.

“What the Thanksgiving Day Parade has over the sporting events is this connection to a beloved, national holiday,” Landor’s Global President of Consumer Brands Mary Zalla told Adweek in 2016. “It just binds everybody, so from a marketing standpoint, that's kind of a dream.”

SOCIAL MEDIA

Me Convincing Myself to Redownload Snapchat

Exactly a week ago, when Thanksgiving still seemed a million years away, Snapchat launched Spotlight—an in-app feature highlighting Snap’s best user-generated content in a TikTok-like feed. 

The “how to use Spotlight” articles already made the internet rounds last week, so let’s dive into what they were really saying:

For brands: “At first glance, Spotlight doesn't look like it will become a major challenger for TikTok, but it's impossible to say without seeing how it's developed. It also may not have to become a significant rival for TikTok in order to be considered a success. It'll be worth keeping tabs on either way—and for brands, it could be another element to factor into your planning,” wrote Andrew Hutchinson in Social Media Today. 

For publishers: “In the absence of publisher content—and, for now, any kind of advertising—some publisher sources worried that Spotlight could potentially cannibalize some of the time Snapchat users were spending watching their content,” wrote Max Willens in Digiday. 

For agencies: “Snapchat is not on the radar of the majority of our clients…but this could potentially be a gamechanger,” agency Connelly Partners’ Director of PR and Social Media Alyssa Stevens told Adweek.

SPONSORED BY SAILTHRU

We Don’t Usually Spill The Marketing Beans...

Lots of folks wanna know how we got where we are today—which is from a shabby-chic college dorm room to a media powerhouse that’s making business news sexy. 

We would love to say Morning Brew has more than 2.4 million subscribers purely because of our media business acumen, comedic wit, and news writing genius. 

But that’s only part of the story. 

The other part has to do with Sailthru—the integrated marketing solution that helped us become a bona fide media company (and not end up in spam folders). To learn more about how Morning Brew utilizes Sailthru, we chatted with Jenny Rothenberg, our Head of Growth and marketer extraordinaire.  

So if you are wondering how to best connect with today’s audiences, give our article a read. You’ll learn about the ways we use Sailthru—and what their platform can do for your business.  

Sail into our article with Sailthru here.

BRANDING

Written in the Cards

Marketers across industries predicted that you’d shuffle a deck of cards this holiday season. 

• Louis Vuitton recently started selling a $600 deck of cards—because if you can’t afford an LV wallet, maybe your wallet can handle a card deck. 

But wider profit margins make the smaller direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands following suit a bit of a mystery. Among others, “blanded” beverage brand Recess introduced a $15 pack of cards the week before Thanksgiving. 

So what’s behind the trend? Playing cards are “likely not a revenue driver, but more of a way to build the brand, while bringing you back to the lifestyle and eventually, the product,” Clorox Brand Manager Avish Sood told Marketing Brew. 

• “For DTC brands, cards and toys are a small way to deepen the customer relationship. It’s not going to drive revenue, but it might boost AOV [average order value] and affinity,” Emily Singer of branding newsletter Chips + Dips told Marketing Brew. 

Zoom out: “Blanding” can’t sell everything and anything on its own—DTC brands rely on merchandise like these cards to create brand affinity. 

That said, “The key to doing branded merchandise right is to make the product your own, and not just another thing to slap your logo on,” Creative and Brand Strategy Consultant Aja Singer told Marketing Brew. 

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Twitter is bringing back account verifications in early 2021, so make plans to get your brand a blue checkmark.
• Motel 6 tapped Barkley as its new agency of record post-Richards Group scandal.
• Facebook asked the Supreme Court whether or not tracking logged-out users violates wiretapping laws.
• Facebook also is reportedly offering millions of dollars in refunds to advertisers after finding a bug in its measurement software last week.

SPONSORED BY VALIDITY

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FRENCH PRESS

Marketing tips to make you fancy

Graphic design: This infographic outlines the top 11 graphic design trends in the making for 2021. 

Retail: A new study from Nosto shows that Gen Z and Millennial beauty product shoppers are reluctant to buy unfamiliar products—here’s why. 

Content marketing: Noah Kagan, founder and chief sumo of AppSumo, makes YouTube videos sharing business and marketing tips. He recently did a breakdown on the content formula to go viral every week. Subscribe to his channel here. 

Giveaways: Speaking of Noah Kagan, today is the last day he’s giving away his Tesla, $10K cash, and other prizes to 30 winners. Check it out here.

CMO SENTIMENTS

Sign up here for Morning Brew CEO Alex Lieberman’s CMO Series on LinkedIn, in which he chats with the most important marketing leaders in the industry. Then read on for three questions that’ll help you get to know these marketing leaders a little better.

While you were probably taking some much-needed Thanksgiving PTO, Nik Sharma, CEO and founder of Sharma Brands and king of DTC brands, chatted with Alex about what Black Friday means to marketers, how to get smarter with your product marketing, and these three very important things. 

Alex Lieberman: Favorite book you’ve read this year?

Nik Sharma: The Ecommerce Marketing Handbook by Privy.

AL: Least favorite marketing word?

NS: Community.

AL: What is one brand that thinks differently about marketing that we should all keep an eye on? 

NS: I personally think it’s the luxury brands, like real luxury brands, the LVMH brands, [etc.]. 

Watch the full interview here, then gear up for this week’s CMO Series chat with Jack Appleby, director of creative strategy at Twitch.

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Marketing Brew stories from the last few editions.

• Anti-Black Friday messaging was in vogue this year
• The pandemic didn’t kill influencer marketing after all 
• A post-2020 guide to getting hired in the marketing industry