Positioning a Retail Analytics Company as the Expert Source on Holiday Shopping Trends
The Opportunity
The holiday shopping season is undoubtedly the busiest time of the year when it comes to retail. Shopping crowds and retail sales numbers are consistently a hot topic in the media, with many Americans beginning their shopping even before Thanksgiving. RetailNext’s in-store analytics is a collection of systems working together to organize, analyze and visualize massive amounts of diverse retail data. Retailers use this software to increases sales, reduce theft and eliminate unnecessary costs. With so much media coverage focused on retail trends during the holiday shopping season, the data collected by RetailNext presented the perfect opportunity to position the company as an expert source in the retail analytics industry before, during and after the holiday shopping season.
“RetailNext, an analytics company, predicts that Black Friday will be the second-busiest shopping day of the year, with only the second-to-last Saturday before Christmas drawing more store visits.”
The Washington Post
The Assignment
- Complete competitive audit of strategies and messaging on past holiday announcements/predictions, timing, exclusives, coverage and data
- Determine which strategies were effective in securing news coverage
- Create announcement plan around audit results, key story lines and data that could affect holiday shopping: Election, Black Friday, online shopping popularity, etc.
- Provide press with RetailNext’s data that could affect holiday shopping and shoppers and expert commentary around key storylines
The Deliverables
The first step in the campaign was to develop a multi-pronged plan to “own” the holiday shopping season’s share of voice against RetailNext competitors. After conducting a thorough audit of competitor strategies and messaging on past holiday announcements and news coverage, Tanis utilized experts from RetailNext to provide commentary to targeted press on shopper tendencies and trends such as busiest shopping days, when promotions are likely to occur and what types of items are driving sales. Tanis also utilized results from RetailNext’s Harris Poll, a nationally projectable survey of over 2,000 Americans that uncovered several key insights into Americans’ shopping intentions entering the holidays, including where they will be shopping, when the best deals are and how the 2016 presidential election would affect their holiday shopping habits. This year, RetailNext made the bold prediction that Black Friday would lose its title as the busiest shopping day, which captured news headlines and media interest, and became true.
As a result of the campaign, RetailNext dominated the industry with more than 400 more press mentions than its closest competitor during the holiday season. The number of media exposure received by RetailNext produced positive momentum and positioned the company as an expert source in retail for the future.
The Results
- 135 articles and 1,604 total press mentions over four-month holiday shopping period
- Secured coverage in targeted business publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the New York Post, Forbes, Fortune, The Washington Post, USA Today, Fox Business, MSN, USA Today, The Today Show, Newsweek, NBC News, CNBC, CBS Money Watch and Business Insider
- Secured coverage in targeted retail trade publications including Women’s Wear Daily, Retail Dive, Retail Touchpoints, Chain Store Age, PYMNTS and Bankrate.
For More Information
Tanis Communications, Inc.
Silicon Valley Headquarters
800 W El Camino Real, Suite 180
Mountain View, CA 94040
Tel: +1 650-731-0554
www.taniscomm.com