What Messaging Works Best for This Father’s Day?

4 Min Read

A solid Father’s Day campaign is equal parts knowing your audience (and setting the right targeting and campaign parameters that will best reach them)—and one part locking down the right messaging and creative. This means being intentional about your messaging, and consistently representing your brand’s promise and mission, no matter the advertising format (but especially on television). As Simon Sinek says, understanding your “why” is the core of being able to communicate your brand in an effective way. After all, your brand represents the feeling and values associated with your company, too.

Four Weeks ‘Til Father’s Day

There is roughly a month until Father’s Day, so during this time your branding and awareness campaigns (i.e. prospecting) should be switched on. However, to add another layer of complexity, it’s important that the value of your content is established within the first three seconds. A study by Facebook and Nielsen on video content found that up to 47% of the value of a video campaign was delivered within the first three seconds, and up to 74% of the value was delivered in the first 10 seconds. So, what’s the best way to attract Father’s Day shoppers in the first three seconds? 

Your goal is to keep the viewer watching beyond the three seconds, since this correlates with increased brand awareness. Include these elements and you’re set:

• The opening scene needs to be compelling and relevant for them to want to watch more. Think bright colors and familiar faces (if you have a celebrity sized budget) that relate to your audience. Or employing other visual elements like typography to do the double duty of delivering your message while also having a visual impact. 

• Leading with a compelling soundbite that starts with a question, is one way to get viewers intrigued. If you’re tempted to lead with music, think again. A study by Google found that music might discourage prolonged engagement, especially if it’s the first thing viewers hear. Overall, ads that didn’t contain music in the first few seconds actually performed better than the ones that did.

• Include a logo, but don’t lead with it: A google study  found that opening with a logo or similar branding elements promotes brand recall, but negatively impacts engagement.

• Crafting a CTA—even if it doesn’t result in conversions right away—will result in a brand lift and stronger brand awareness. At the brand awareness stage, you can use this opportunity to promote new collections that tie into Father’s Day verticals, and ‘higher-touch’ messaging instead of going in for the hard sell. 

Two Weeks ‘Til Father’s Day

Your retargeting ads should be ready to go, and now it’s time to really ramp up your messaging and offers. Remember, while you’re running your retargeting ads, you should also have your prospecting and brand awareness ads still running in parallel. 

One way of doing this is through sequential messaging, which uses a sequence of ads to tell a story across multiple formats, and guide the user through the conversion process. This can be achieved through MNTN Performance TV in one of two ways:

1. You might have your Connected TV prospecting ads all set up and running with messaging about your brand and what products or services it offers. As these campaigns progress, you’ll surface data that will help you refine these ads so you can repurpose creative across other platforms and devices. Visually, it’s important to maintain the same look and feel on your retargeting ads cross-platform, but you can use this opportunity to drive home your offer. Last minute shoppers will be browsing online at this time, so if you want to get them to convert, heavy discounts and loyalty rewards (like Buy One Get One Free) might just do the trick.
   
2. Serve retargeting ads directly on Connected TV for maximum impact. Ideally, you will have identified different audience categories to serve these TV ads—think cart abandoners, users who have viewed certain pages on your website and recent customers for starters. Take this up a notch by creating separate sets of creative and messaging for each of these types of users. Leveraging our partnership with QuickFrame and also our recently launched Creative-as-a-Subscription™ speeds up the creation process through always-on production of new CTV ads to fuel compounding growth for brands.

This wraps up our Father’s Day seasonal content series. Be sure to check out our web experience for all of the high-level highlights—and if you have any further questions about seasonal best practices, feel free to get in touch with us here.