AGENCIES

(Super)marketers

Once upon a time, supermarkets like ShopRite and Foodtown would run local commercials reminding viewers at home that they, too, could “can-can” down the canned food aisle for a good deal. But with the shift to digital marketing (and the popularity of chains like Trader Joe’s), how do local grocers remind their communities that they exist?

Well, they advertise. And in a very novel medium: print. 

Enter: Harvesting Media, a digital marketing agency catering to independent, often family-owned grocery stores. It started in 2017 and now helps about 20 different clients, like Key Food, navigate this brave new world. 

Old school

While print is still dying, in the grocery game, it’s dying at a slower pace. The industry still relies on the print circular (newspapers that emphasize deals on spiral hams and buy-one-get-one Jell-O) to get the word out, according to Harvesting Media CEO Eli Langer. 

The hardest part of the job? “Honestly, educating an industry that's hundreds of years old on a new advertising medium.”

Harvesting’s job involves transitioning those advertising budgets—which range from about $250,000 to $500,000 a year, if a client owns two or three stores—into the digital world. Supermarkets' profit margins are notoriously razor thin, so those dollars need to stretch.

“They’re in the business of buying apples and selling apples,” Langer said. “They're not thinking, ‘How can we run a targeted ad campaign?’”

Where are they putting those dollars? Mostly Facebook and Instagram. People aren’t too hungry on Twitter, apparently. 

• Langer said Frank’s Market, a single-store client in New York City, saw online orders jump 166% over the course of a weekend when Harvesting ran a free delivery promo last summer on Facebook, Instagram and over email. 
• Maywood’s Marketplace in New Jersey saw weekly sales jump 31% from the prior week after a similar promotion.

Digital delivery

The pandemic sped up digital transformation for grocers, as home delivery and curbside pickup became more popular. Almost every digital campaign run by Harvesting directs customers to a store’s e-commerce site or an Instacart landing page. 

While Instacart is simpler for retailers, the delivery company takes a cut—and grocery stores aren’t privy to the customer data that comes free with every purchase. So many of Harvesting’s customers are advertising their own delivery services.

“I didn’t think we’d be where we are until 2023, 2024,” Langer said. “It went from a shiny object to a thing retailers needed yesterday.” — RB

AD TECH

The iOS 14.5 of It All

Apple’s iOS 14.5 opt-in update lurks just around the corner. If that sounds like gibberish to you, let us explain. 

• The software release will make it harder for brands to target iPhone users with personalized ads, by requiring every user to opt into sharing their IDFA (aka personal data) with each app.  
• If you’re already seeing pop-ups on some apps, that’s because some developers implemented them in advance. 

For marketers, there’s good news and bad news about all this

The good: Mobile attribution firm AppsFlyer did the math, and out of more than 13 million prompts shown in the past three weeks, users opted into ad targeting 41% of the time. For reference, experts expected that rate to be anywhere between 2% and 20%, AppsFlyer said.

The bad: That data set is relatively small and “may not represent the industry at large, so we need to wait to get the full picture after iOS 14.5 is rolled out,” AppsFlyer exec Shani Rosenfelder told Marketing Brew. 

Bottom line: When iOS 14.5 rolls out this spring, the IDFA might not be totally obliterated. — PB

SPONSORED BY TERMINUS

ABM Stands for A Big Moneymaker

Jk, it stands for account-based marketing, and it can pave the way to targeted, smart, and efficient revenue growth in a year when budgets are bike shorts-tight. Terminus’s comprehensive guide will show you how. 

It offers real insight, whether you’re an ABM vet or you think it stands for A Boisterous Monkey. That includes: 

• The benefits of adopting ABM strategy 
• Why Covid spurred a rush to ABM 
• How to optimize your ABM campaigns for B2B success

You don’t want your customers to feel like A Block of Meat. ABM can help by providing a personalized buying experience for your customers. 

Terminus’s guide will provide real support, whether you’re just starting out your ABM journey or need a bit of inspiration to do more with your go-to-market strategy. 

Download your copy to learn All the Beneficial Methods of ABM. 

D&I

Karen, Meet BECA

Here’s a not-so-fun fact: Black people make up 13% of the US population, but as of 2020, only 3% of Association of National Advertisers (ANA) CMOs. 

That’s why Jerri DeVard, former head of marketing at companies like ADT and Office Depot, recently founded the Black Executive CMO Alliance (BECA).

• The organization aims to address the “corporate diversity gap,” per a press release shared with Marketing Brew. 
• It’s made up of 26 Black executives from companies like Adidas, Netflix, Peloton, and Unilever.

Special sauce: BECA will use four “ships” as guideposts: internship, mentorship, sponsorship, and scholarship. Membership fees fund those initiatives, and some members plan to raise money for scholarships or provide internships to mentees.

• “We are building an inventory and a database of young marketing professionals who we believe have the promise, the intellect, the background, [and] the experience [to succeed in the marketing industry],” DeVard told Marketing Brew. 
• “We're providing rare access to these rockstar C-suite leaders who are going to talk about the playbook of how they overcame the odds,” DeVard continued.

Looking ahead: Organizations like AdColor and 600 & Rising are trying to address systemic inequities on Madison Avenue—and these C-suite marketers want to use their influence to take action, too. — PB

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• Nike has suspended its endorsement deal with Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson, who’s been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 20 women.
• Budweiser has released a Covid-19 vaccine PSA that it created alongside the Ad Council. 
• Publicis is the first major advertising holding company to support The Trade Desk’s alternative to the cookie, Unified ID 2.0, which will rely on anonymized emails to target people.
• West Elm has created an ambassador program for influencers, letting content creators test new products before they’re released.

SPONSORED BY COMMON ROOM

Patience was a virtue; now it’s time to celebrate. Common Room was a secret well worth waiting for, and they just announced their Series B. What’s Common Room, you ask? It’s the community journey platform that community leaders and product builders need to connect to their communities across platforms. Twitter? Slack? GitHub? No problem—they unify ’em all. Join their waitlist or join their team today.

FRENCH PRESS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren't those.

Spend wisely: Awareness is important, but so is revenue. Here’s how to maximize your return on ad spend. 

New channels: We love newsletters—and apparently you do, too. Here’s how to increase your newsletter’s subscriber list.

Backlink: Stay away from bad SEO. Audit your backlink profile with these steps.

METRICS & MEDIA

Stat: 45% of CMO appointments were women last year, a 5-percentage-point drop from the previous six months, according to a survey completed by the executive recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates. 84% of CMOs were hired externally.

Quote: “Obviously, with our business, you can’t really say you’re working 10am to 6pm and that’s it. But there’s got to be some sort of standard that’s set.”—an anonymous agency exec on work/life balance during the pandemic, for Digiday

ICYMI

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• Brand hypocrisy in Georgia
• Amazon surpasses 10% of all US digital ad spend
• What the ketchup shortage tells us about brand loyalty