The shops are stocked up on Christmas gifts and decorations – does it feel like it gets earlier each year? Same old story but rather than sounding like Scrooge perhaps we should take note from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and listen to the ghosts, or voices from Christmas past and present to help us make a positive difference for this future Christmas, New Year and beyond.
One of the many great attributes of social media is the ability to look back at various time periods, and seasons, to see what issues were relevant at that moment and what topics were top of consumer’s agendas. Common sense would surely suggest that we can learn from our past and heed our present, although we also know that common sense is not a common virtue!
We don’t need any help to know that brands and agencies will be pushing out the same old bland numerous press releases over the coming weeks, covering best and worst Christmas gifts, who you will or won’t visit, what copious amounts of food and drink you’ll consume, then followed by how you’ll feel guilty, before leading to more forgettable releases on New Year resolutions, diets, health and fitness**
Not only do we have the capability to hear consumers talking about what products, services and promotions have previoulsy been well received but we can also understand their reasoning too. Beyond social listening, we can use research-led analysis of social data to interpret conversations and opinions and reveal what influences your customer’s emotions and behaviour. That insight should be a valuable (and affordable) resource for planning, marketing and PR.
Using the knowledge of not only what matters to consumers but also why, we have the opportunity to create content that resonates, develop marketing strategies that engage and drive interaction and an ability to evaluate and modify campaigns in real-time as we monitor and measure in the moment.
It’s better to give than receive so why not give your audience what they want rather than what you’d like to offload on them. We’d have to be complete muppets to not only ignore the information available to us but ignore the insight it holds and not learn to use it to change our ways.
Feel free to talk to us for outside the (gift) box thinking…
**Previous research studies have shown….
- UK average spend per Christmas gift: £36
- Shoppers in Britain have an average spend of £499 on presents
- Brits receive up to 14 presents per person
- 15% of people in the UK will go into debt to pay for Christmas
- 32% of Brits plan to make New Year resolutions of which 22% want more exercise and 19% healthy eating
- 59% of Britons admitted to breaking their resolutions