With the clocks set back an hour and love island contestants turning on Christmas lights across the country, I was wondering if there was a change of mindset in the PR world that ties into the changing of the season?
In fact, people’s spending habits do change when the weather turns. New data from Ripple Research revealed that over half of UK consumers say they spend more on clothes (53%), home comforts (51%) and comfort meals or drinks (49%) in the winter months.
Do we change the way we communicate for pumpkin spice lattes compared to rose wine coolers, and more importantly, do audiences change the way they engage as the cold weather kicks in? Is it too easy to say that spring and summer marketing encourages playfulness, positive action and energy whilst autumn and winter comms goes big on comfort, cosiness and community?
Who is most affected?
Interestingly, Gen Z are the group most likely to change their spending behaviour in winter – across all categories – and women are more responsive than men to ads that evoke warmth and comfort.
My socials are full of ads for sofas, DIY, food kits and cream liquors: AI-influenced copywriters have raided their thesaurus app to go large on synonyms for comfort, cuddly, cosy and other c-led words.
There is a good reason for that, as our data showed that warmth (44%), comfort (42%), cosy (39%), and festive (37%), are the top words that capture consumer attention in winter adverts and campaigns.
As the nights draw in, marketers have decided that consumers have to be cosetted and wrapped in a cashmere blanket of communications. Are we really so shallow that when we turn up our thermostats our brains have become as mushy as autumn leaves and hot chocolates have replaced spritzes in our national conscience?
Maybe not shallow, but definitely susceptible: 53% of Gen Z say they’re more influenced by advertising in winter compared to summer, although many people (45%) insist they are not.
In reality, nothing has changed.
The winter is just another opportunity to squeeze money out of us with marketing messages that play into our easily manipulated psyches. Winter has become another tool in the playbook of marketing, with steamy mugs of hot drinks next to a real fire being as engaging at this time of year as an image of an ice cold beer on a beach is at the height of summer.
Perhaps it was ever thus, but with unlimited information being available to brands about our social and consumer habits at any time of the year, we seem to have become more susceptible to season-based creative work and more prepared to fall into the patterns that brands have decided suits them. Never forget that Santa was introduced into the consumer consciousness by Coca Cola in the 1930s and Halloween has transformed from a pagan celebration into a massive spike for confectionary companies that rivals Christmas and Easter as the financial highlight of the year.
By all means engage with the communications of our winter wonderland – I’m ready to mainline Baileys as soon as my Clubcard gives it to me at half price, but never forget behind every message of cuddly sincerity lurks a conglomerate searching for new ways to infiltrate our wallet.
