January 7, 2025
Behind the Scenes of Sports Experts’ Holiday Campaigns
Équipe de rédaction Touché! Touché!'s redaction team 3 mins
  • Insight and Strategy
  • Activation and Performance
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The Black Friday and Boxing Day campaigns represent key moments for retailers like Sports Experts, providing the opportunity to capture consumer attention and generate significant sales. To understand the strategic approach taken and how Touché! supports its clients, we spoke with Marc-Antoine Lavallée, account supervisor for Sports Experts.

 

Changing Consumption During the Holidays

During the holiday season, consumer habits shift. Not only are people more inclined to shop, but their media consumption habits also change. As Marc-Antoine points out: "Consumer behavior is very different during the holiday season. There's a real shift in their purchasing behavior, but also in how they consume media. A concrete example of this is the increase in listening to holiday music, Christmas movies, and even radio listening due to travel during this period. All of this creates unique opportunities to reach consumers."

This evolution in behavior allowed Sports Experts to adopt a more contextual strategy to capture the attention of Quebecers when they are most receptive.

 

A Contextual and Targeted Media Strategy

To respond to these changing behaviors, the Touché! team focused on specific media placements in popular outlets during the holidays, such as on Netflix and Noovo for Christmas movies, Spotify ads for festive music, and radio placements throughout the province to reach Quebecers who are more frequently on the move during the holidays.

The goal of the campaign was to ensure that Sports Experts captured attention at the moments when consumers were most engaged and receptive. Marc-Antoine explains: "We opted for high-impact placements during key moments, like a homepage takeover on La Presse, to be omnipresent. Black Friday and Boxing Day campaigns are very short, so it’s crucial to stand out in a short time. The focus was therefore on frequency and impact."

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The success of these campaigns rests on a balanced media mix, combining radio, television, digital, and outdoor placements to ensure that Sports Experts reaches consumers across multiple channels. This approach ensures constant visibility and strengthens the impact at every stage of the consumer journey. Marc-Antoine adds: "It’s not enough to just be present. This diversity of placements allows us to speak to the right people at different times, maximizing engagement to ensure we are seen and heard during this very noisy advertising period. Hence the importance of having a strong ecosystem and good synergy between tactics."

The Importance of Collaboration with Local Media

One of the key strategic choices for these campaigns was the collaboration with local media. Sports Experts wanted to highlight placements on Quebec-based media to capture the attention of a local audience with distinct preferences and behaviors specific to Quebecers.

"Sports Experts is a source of pride for Quebecers, and during the holiday season, it’s essential to connect with this audience through media they are familiar with. That’s why we prioritized placements on local platforms like La Presse, Radio-Canada, and Noovo," explains Marc-Antoine. This approach helps strengthen consumer engagement while seamlessly integrating into their usual media environment.

Creating an Ecosystem Between Black Friday and Boxing Day

Although the Black Friday and Boxing Day campaigns were distinct, the strategy was designed for them to work in synergy, creating a true holiday campaign ecosystem.

On Black Friday, the team on the account monitored and optimized performance in real-time. This approach allowed for immediate adjustments to maximize results, with notable improvements compared to the previous year. "Thanks to a SEM and programmatic strategy focused on conversion, we were able to retarget a large pool of qualified consumers to generate maximum sales. We saw a 30% reduction in cost per action (CPA) compared to last year. The real-time monitoring and optimizations carried out by our team on Black Friday were crucial in achieving such results. At the end of the day, the number one objective of these campaigns was to generate sales."

During the Boxing Day period, the team took into account all the learnings from Black Friday to achieve even better results. As a result, the team recorded outcomes up to 70% better than the previous year!

 

Redefining

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