Month: September 2021

Crafting supplies retailer Michael’s, for example, put out a press release on August 24 announcing plans to hire over 20,000 retail workers ahead of the holidays. That’s two weeks earlier than when Michael’s put out its holiday hiring announcement last year. Similarly, Apple posted job openings for seasonal retail employees in mid-July, while Aldi announced plans last week to hire  20,000 workers ahead of the holidays.

The push to move up holiday hiring is indicative of the staffing crunch retailers have been in for much of 2021. In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, tens of thousands of retail workers were furloughed or laid off permanently. But the resurgence of brick-and-mortar sales hasn’t ushered in a corresponding rebound in retail employment: some retail employees who worked through the pandemic quit due to burnout, while a tight labor market means job applicants can be choosier.

In response, retailers are baking more time into the hiring process for new roles, raising wages, and offering short-term hiring bonuses to attract applicants. Still, this may not be enough come the holidays, when nearly every retailer will be fighting over an increasingly small talent pool.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, retail employment is down by 270,000 since February 2020. Part of that is due to bankruptcies and store closures — roughly 49 retailers went bankrupt last year — and part of that is due to large swaths of retail workers quitting, after sticking it out through the pandemic last year. Some 640,000 retail workers quit in April, the largest one-month total in nearly 20 years.

That’s left retailers — particularly those that were hoping to take advantage of cheap rent prices this year to expand their store fleet — with a large number of jobs to fill. And that’s good news for workers, who have found themselves with room to be choosier.

Retailers have responded, first and foremost, with monetary incentives, both to new applicants, and to keep existing workers on through the holidays. Walmart gave a temporary pay raise of $1-5 more per hour to its warehouse workers through January 2022, depending on the location. In late July, Tapestry, owner of Coach and other luxury brands, announced it was raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour, with CVS announcing that it was doing the same a week later.

Some retailers are also experimenting with new benefits for retail employees. Target, for example, announced a new tuition assistance program available to all full-time and part-time employees. Rebekah Kondrat, founder of consultancy Kondrat Retail, said she’s even seen a few retailers offer health benefits to employees of short-term retail pop-ups (ones that run six months or so).

Other retailers have tried broadening the scope of the job description to attract more candidates: athleticwear brand Vuori, for example, created a new role called “omni associates” last year.  These employees typically spend two days a week working in customer service, and three days working on the floor at one of Vuori’s nine stores.

“Our omni program continues to attract great candidates…because they see the value in working in two different departments,” Catherine Pike, senior director of retail at Vuori, said in an email. She also said that Vuori also tries to use its status as a fast-growing startup — the company was founded in 2013, and nearly tripled its revenue last year — as a selling point.

“We see that they are inspired by the potential for promotion and many of our associates have goals to move to new cities across the US where we are opening stores in order to be a part of bringing Vuori to new communities,” she said.

Still, it is taking Vuori longer to find enough qualified candidates. Pike said the biggest change Vuori has had to make to hiring in recent months is to simply bake more time into the interview process.

Those changes don’t address all the challenges that retailers face in convincing more people to take a job in retail. During the pandemic, some workers quit after facing hostility from customers that were asked to wear a mask or abide by social distancing guidelines. One former Target worker who quit last July, for example, previously told Modern Retail that the job started to take more of an emotional toll on her after some customers would lecture her about how the coronavirus was a hoax after she asked them to stand six feet away from her. “Retail is hard enough outside of a pandemic,” she said. 

And the fears of facing customers angry over Covid protocols haven’t completely subsided, particularly as the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. rises again, thanks to the Delta variant.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, said in an email that another challenge retailers face in recruiting applicants is the lack of flexibility and irregular shifts that have long plagued retail. Though some states like California have passed laws that curb retailers’ ability to only schedule employees at the last minute, at many retail stores, getting called in to work last minute isn’t out of the question.

“Higher pay is helpful but the big problem a lot of people have is irregular shift patterns and variable hours,” he wrote. “This makes it very difficult for people to plan things with families and other activities and it puts them off retail work.”

The next couple of months will prove out which retailers have the right mix of incentives. Target typically has one of the biggest holiday hiring drives, having hired more than 130,000 seasonal workers last holiday season, while many other big-box retailers typically hire tens of thousands of workers in the lead up to Black Friday. The more job openings a retailer has, the closer it gets to the holidays, the more likely it is that they will have to ramp up incentives in order to get those jobs filled.

For retailers who find themselves short-staffed over the holidays — it might not completely derail their sales momentum, but it will likely mean that they will have to pay overtime to existing employees. It might also result in longer lines and wait times for popular services like buy online, pickup in-store — which might lead some customers to go with another retailer for last-minute orders.

“With a recruiting firm that I was talking to, they’re like, if you don’t have jobs posted for holiday, now, you’re kind of behind the Eight Ball,” said Kondrat.

“While the economic damage wrought by the pandemic squelched a decade-long expansion that was building further momentum going into 2020, our research indicates that OOH media, and particularly DOOH media, is poised for strong growth in the second half of 2021, as the healthcare, transit, and corporate/education venue categories are expected to surge ahead with accelerating double-digit growth in 2022,” said Quinn in the report. 

JCDecaux, Clear Channel Outdoor, Focus Media, Stroer, Lamar and Outfront Media — representing the six largest global OOH media companies — all exceeded $1 billion in revenue in 2020, according to PQ’s report. This year, the report also notes, China will surpass the U.S. as the country with the largest OOH revenue generation, $10.84 billion in 2021 to the U.S.’ $9.37 billion.

Within the U.S. market alone, the story has essentially mimicked the global trends. Gordon Borrell, CEO of media analysts Borrell Associates, said that until 2020, OOH in the U.S. was the only traditional medium that had never seen total revenue decrease from year to year. “That was mainly because the industry had more signage to sell, especially when converting static signs to digital,” said Borrell, noting that digital signs can carry up to 10 ads, where a static sign only runs one. 

According to the PQ report, digital OOH ad revenue in the U.S. fell a slightly-less-precipitous 23 percent in 2020 over 2019, but like the global numbers, is projected to rebound in 2021, accelerate sharply in 2022 and rise at an 8.9 percent CAGR to $4.43 billion in 2025 for a 37.1% share of total U.S. OOH ad revenue. Categories noted for their growth include corporate and education digital place-based networks, expected to rise 19.4 in 2021, followed by healthcare (up 14.1 percent) and transit (up 13.7 percent). 

The rebound of out of home advertising has been fueled by moves toward digitization, said Barry Frey, president and CEO of the Digital Place-Based Ad Association (DPAA), which represents most digital OOH firms. “Specifically, digital platforms, data, targeting initiatives, video screens, digital systems and processes have enabled us to come strongly out of this pandemic situation,” Frey said, who added that programmatic selling of DOOH inventory has also driven up revenue.

“Programmatic has demonstrated the flexible and agile nature of [OOH media] to pause and push schedules, [and] move campaigns to where the intended audiences exist,” he said. “Additionally, the deprecation of the cookie and IDFA issues is starting to move ad monies to the reliable value of advertising in real world context.”

According to the latest census report, the Durham county community is about 37 percent African-American. 

In the responses Discover Durham received to its RFP, one local agency stood out among the others, said Lee. Walk West, a full-service agency in next-door Raleigh, had recently launched an offshoot called The Diversity Movement, which aims to educate and train clients on all matters around DEI, and caught the Discover Durham team’s eye and attention. 

“It fed into where we’re looking to head as an organization, and the ways we want to be working with partners who are more conscientious, more equipped, more understanding of both what’s going on in society with DEI,” said Lee, “but to also have that empathy and understanding of what’s happening in Durham.”

But Walk West also has strived to ensure its internal makeup reflects a diversity of not only race, but age, gender and experience. “Diversity attracts diversity,” said Abha Bowers, Walk West’s senior vp. “You have to live it and learn it. How do we live it? We start with our people. You have to look at age, educational status, social status — it goes beyond skillset. And when you combine all those things into one — it’s not common in a marketing agency — you provide innovative, unique work and prospects for your client.” 

The learning part fell under what The Diversity Movement had been doing with and for Walk West, whose chairman and former CEO Donald Thompson is also CEO of The Diversity Movement and an African-American entrepreneur. Bowers said employees have all gone through training and education with TDM, up and down the ranks of the agency. “It’s taking that moment in time to appreciate and respect what you have and what others may have,” said Bowers. “And it isn’t that much of a commitment but the value you get out of it is tenfold.”

The campaign launched last week, running through the fall, and its aim is to attract overnight and weekend visitors to the Durham area. Walk West is trying different elements, including putting the client into Pinterest, beyond the usual travel-related social and search destinations, said Mike Manganillo, vp of marketing who oversees the media and data work for Walk West. He said he’s also trying to play up the local foodie scene as well as unique landmarks including Durham’s minor league baseball club and field (modeled after the 1988 film Bull Durham). 

“It’s about being authentic, bold and diverse,” said Manganillo. “When we met with them it became clear that we were more of a marketing arm for them versus just a paying vendor that would not work with them again.”  

“Being able to work with an organization that both had a diverse founding story and also this ongoing tangible work they were doing in terms of having those trainings and partnerships, that was very attractive to us,” added Discover Durham’s Lee.

“It’s becoming more common to see agencies win business on the strength of their internal and external DE&I efforts,” said Simon Fenwick, executive vp of talent, equity and inclusion at the 4A’s, who noted that more RFPs commonly incorporate DEI needs. “[It] plays a role in determining an alignment of values between the potential client and the agency.

“In addition to Walk West’s win, for example, WPP/Mindshare was noted as retaining the Unilever business partially due to Mindshare’s new positioning of ‘Good Growth’ and its direct alignment of purpose with the marketer,” Fenwick added.

Key details:

• Advertisers feel the limits of host-read ads and are trying to expand contextual ad targeting capabilities, as well as the technology to support programmatic buying.
• Fragmentation is still an issue for podcast advertisers, who want to measure listeners across devices.
• A slate of podcast programming across genres like sports, news and multilingual were announced, coming this fall and next year.
• Revenue from brand focused campaigns represent 45% of all revenue in podcasting, approaching parity with performance and direct response, and dynamically inserted ads and host-read ads continue to dominate the podcasting space, according to Eric John, vp of the IAB’s Media Center.

The effects of fragmentation

While podcast advertising revenue is expected to be more than $1 billion this year, programmatic buying represents less than 5% of that revenue. A big reason for that is the issue of fragmentation, according to Hayley Diamond, evp of U.S. digital investment at Publicis. It was a topic that came up many times during the conference, and especially during the last segment of the day on programmatic podcast advertising.

People are listening to podcasts on smartphones, smart speakers and even “connected cars” (cars that can get 5G and have audio streaming apps built into their infrastructure), said Andre Swanston, svp of media and entertainment vertical at TransUnion. It’s a persistent challenge for advertisers in the audio space to be able to measure listeners across those devices. Multiple audio streaming platforms “makes things quite difficult,” Diamond said. 

“There is a need for technology to determine episodic-level targeting and viewer targeting and brand safety and suitability,” Diamond added. “Stitching together the different measurement requirements will help us in this space.”

The host-read holdup

Listeners’ “connection” to host-read ads is another challenge, according to Claire Fanning, vp of ad innovation strategy at SXM Media. Advertisers are struggling to maintain the “authenticity and intimacy” of the host-read ad but overcome the limitations of that native podcast environment (a host will read an ad in their own podcast — which is not a creative spot that can then be programmatically inserted into other podcasts, for example). 

Programmatic provides “flexibility, control and speed of execution,” said Regina Sommese, svp of paid media at Discovery. However, it also requires “sophisticated technology,” added Fanning. 

As a result, finding a way to combine the merits of host-read ads with programmatic buying processes sounds like it is still a work in progress. Ashutosh Gangwar, gm of inventory partnerships at The Trade Desk, said they are working with publishers like SXM Media to figure out new ways to “automate the process of ad insertion and buying.”

Oddly, for all the grousing about host-read ads’ lack of dynamism, the IAB reported in May that dynamically inserted ads accounted for 67% of podcast ad revenue in 2020 and that host-read ads accounted for 56%. That both dynamically inserted ads and host-read ads represented a majority of the ad dollars going to podcasting suggests that some sizable share of that money is being used to buy host-read ads that are being inserted dynamically.

Contextual targeting to save the day?

Executives said the key to drawing out more podcast programmatic ad revenue is “to expand from audience targeting to contextual targeting,” Fanning said, referring to the approach of buying ads based on what people are listening to versus who they are. Advertisers want to see what a listener’s mindset is when an ad is served, she explained.

While advertisers “can never walk away from audience targeting,” due to the importance of data like the demographics of a listener, “you’d be missing a huge piece of the pie if you were solely focused on the audience and not spending time thinking about the contextual alignment,” Diamond added.

New slates of shows coming in 2021 and 2022

Podcast publishers presented slates of new shows coming this year and into 2022, some of which include:

• New programming scheduled for this fall from WarnerMedia — which oversees brands CNN, TCM, TNT, Turner Sports, Warner Bros. — includes “Total Recall: California’s Political Circus,” which will be hosted by CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash on California’s 2003 recall election. A new series with Harry Enten, senior analyst for CNN Politics, called ”Margins of Error” will look at data supporting topics like phone phobias and belief in ghosts.
• NPR announced a new podcast with sports analyst and former NBA player Jay Williams on sports, entertainment and culture, and teased another new podcast that will be announced next Wednesday.
• LAist announced that Jacob Margolis — who hosted “The Big One” podcast on the massive earthquake due to hit Southern California — will debut another podcast called “The Big Burn” on the wildfires in California.
• Adonde, which produces Spanish and multilingual podcasts, will partner with Hrishikesh Hirway, the host of the podcast “Song Exploder” (which turned into a Netflix show) for a Spanish spin-off called “Canción Exploder.”

“I love YouTube! I’m a YouTube fanatic. I get up in the morning and get on YouTube.” This rousing endorsement didn’t come from a Gen Zer. It came from Joan, a 64-year-old who participated in research Google conducted last year into the digital habits of older adults (Google/Known, U.S., Digital Seniors, n=4,415 A55+, 2020).

And while marketers know about the spending power of boomers and that the leading edge of Gen X is now hitting 55, it’s sometimes easy for a youth-obsessed industry to fall back on demographic stereotypes or to assume that those over 55 haven’t evolved their media habits. According to the Pew Research Center, 75% of Americans 65 and over are online. Today’s 65-year-olds have spent much of their adult lives experiencing advances in technology firsthand: They were only 36 when the first internet browser was introduced in 1992 and 42 when Google was founded in 1998.

To better understand the digital habits and behaviors of today’s boomers and seniors, particularly as they relate to health and wellness, Google partnered with market research firm Known to conduct qualitative and quantitative research in summer and fall of 2020. .

By digging deep into their digital habits, the study found that the majority of online seniors — 86%, according to the analysis, which segmented seniors by their tech adoption and utilization — are enthusiasts who spend at least six hours a day online and own an average of five devices. These “digital seniors” are sophisticated, engaged consumers: 8 in 10 continued their education beyond high school, and 82% use their smartphone every day.

For many of the seniors Google and Known talked to, being online and staying up to date with technology isn’t a choice. It’s an imperative. “Digital platforms play a big role in our lives, and there are always new possibilities that come along. Digital is here to stay, and it’s good to learn all we can,” said Maude, 77. Jeff, 59, put it more bluntly: “I just don’t want to be a dinosaur, you know?”

These digital seniors go online for a vast array of reasons, from staying in touch with friends and family (91%) to organizing their finances (87%) to improving their health and wellness (73%) (Google/Known, U.S., Digital Seniors, n=4,415 A55+, 2020). And their enthusiasm, the same report showed, isn’t simply a reaction to COVID-19: 70% of seniors say that they’ll spend the same amount or more time online once they’re no longer concerned about the pandemic.

That said, lockdowns and social distancing have had direct impacts on the role that technology plays in seniors’ health and wellness. “I had my first telemedicine call with my doctor … [and] it was wonderful,” said Wendy, 66. “It gave us a little bit more time and was a better use of our time together.”

Marla, 73, was scheduled to have knee surgery and said that “before my … surgery, I did research on YouTube to find pre-exercises to get myself ready.” And Pam, 61, found a new medicine relevant for her condition. “It came up on the center of my screen. It was like ‘try this new medicine.’ It was a miracle for me.”

All of this digital engagement is coming at the expense of time seniors used to spend focused on traditional TV. EMarketer estimates that all baby boomers will watch 5.7% less TV this year than in 2020, with continuing declines into 2022, while Comscore reports that time spent watching YouTube videos among adults 55 and over grew by 10% from May 2020 to May 2021. (Google/Known, U.S., Digital Seniors, n=4,415 A55+, 2020)

Marketers who have traditionally relied on TV and print to reach older Americans have noticed the rise of the “digital senior” and are making changes to their strategies to meet the moment. Aetna, for example, has seen its Medicare customers become “more and more digitally savvy,” said Gannon Jones, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer. And it’s responding accordingly. “This can be seen in our investment in new tools and technology, as well as in our advertising strategy. To seize on the rise in digital usage, we’ve increased our investment in digital marketing with display, video, and search playing a critical role in our mix.” The pandemic has only sped things up, he added. “COVID-19 accelerated consumers’ adoption of digital channels, and we expect this trend to continue.”

With seniors’ digital savviness likely to only increase in the next few years, here are three ways marketers can begin reaching them.

1. Understand the consumer with data and insights, not outmoded assumptions and hunches.
2. Meet the audience where they are. As Google’s and Known’s research highlighted, YouTube plays a crucial role in seniors’ lives. Marketers should Increase their investment where seniors are increasing their time to build awareness and consideration.
3. Prioritize high-value audiences, rather than broad ones. Marketing teams can use the rich set of intent signals available on YouTube (in-market, newly retired, similar audiences and location) to reach their most valuable consumers at scale.

This article originally appeared on Think With Google.