The Power of Seasonal Events

“It isn't Easter without one or two (or a dozen) Creme Eggs… so why not indulge and nab some Creme Egg Easter eggs for all the family?”, this is Cadbury’s Easter messaging on their? Direct2Consumer (D2C) eCommerce webpage. Creme Eggs are milk chocolate eggs with a soft fondant centre and are a popular treat sold during the 'Creme Egg season' from January throughout the Easter season.?

In 2022, Instacart conducted a study to rank America’s favorite Easter candies, and it found that Cadbury Creme Eggs were the most popular Easter confection, with a 50% growth increase in the two-week period ending on Easter 2021. Creme Eggs are a product released specifically for Easter, and are unavailable, or at least, much harder to find, at other points during the year, and this data from Instacart clearly indicates that this is a highly successful product despite its seasonal limitations. ??

Their popularity is so high during the Easter season, Cadbury have even turned to another holiday to boost sales of creme eggs throughout the year, creating Goo Heads for Halloween, updating the foil wrapping to create 'spooky' Halloween themed characters. Whether it's Easter, Halloween or whatever holiday Cadbury go after next, the Creme egg relies on seasonal events for sales.

Similarly, Advent Calendars are an extremely seasonal product, only available in the winter months, specifically designed to be purchased before the 1st of December. Confectionery manufacturers capitalize on the demand for advent calendars by producing their own varieties, which are increasing year-on-year offering more competition and more choice for shoppers.

Seasonal items are simply more popular during their season or event than at other times of the year, but why is this and what can we learn from seasonal product content??

Advent Calendars and Easter eggs are products linked to today’s seemingly endless list of retail events, ranging from the more traditional and seasonal – like Easter, Valentine’s Day, Christmas or Halloween – to more ‘manufactured’ newcomers, like Black Friday. Some of these events are public holidays – which increase leisure time and boost sales – whilst others rely solely on promotional or themed activity.??

Sports events are now become seasonal phenomenons in themselves. While some are yearly and some run every 4 years, they are becoming increasingly powerful and lucrative opportunities for companies to market their products.

Retailers and brands now run large campaigns for sporting events like the Super Bowl, World Cup, Rugby World Cup, Olympics and more, creating updated product packaging, providing deals on specific categories of product and even releasing special varieties of existing ranges.

In our latest thought leadership report we've learnt that 99% of Americans consume chips/crisps during the Super Bowl, and while chips are a regular shopping basket staple, chip companies have a captive market once a year every February that they need to capture.

Events-based retail plays a vital role in achieving growth for both brands and retailers. Events are a powerful way to tell the brand story and promote products that link to the relevant events. Events are essential to encourage shoppers to spend that bit extra needed to drive growth, especially when considering the cost-of-living crisis the world is facing, as shoppers are more careful with the money they do wish to spend.?

However, between retailers’ own-label Easter eggs, branded peanut butter chocolate eggs, staples like chocolate bunnies, and newcomer favourites like white chocolate Easter treats and more, shoppers have almost too much choice over which treats to purchase.?

There is a lot of competition during seasonal events, and brands need to make sure they stand out on both the physical and digital shelf, so shoppers choose their products over competitors.??

So how can brands win the digital shelf?

One way brands are ensuring they stand out during an event, is leveraging seasonal content. Creating marketing content that focuses on a specific event to promote products, can attract new shoppers to your brand, increase engagement and push them into your sales cycle.??

You might ask yourself where can you implement this seasonal content best??

Retailers’ product pages are an important step in your brand’s seasonal marketing strategy. With the increase of ecommerce, shoppers have more and more choice when shopping online, and what they see on product pages will help making up their minds.??

You can make sure that your products stand out during a particular event by making your product pages are as complete as possible on all channels. Using enhanced content can make this easier as you can add recipes, images, videos, sponsored content, linked to the event directly on retailers’ product pages.??Updating it to match the current season is another way to keep shoppers engaged with your product pages.

Find out more about our rich media solutions and how we can help you improve your product pages ahead of this years seasonal events ??