Seasonal TV Marketing How-To: Father's Day Ads

First things first: Father’s Day is June 16th! This might seem like an unnecessary reminder, but the holiday still lags behind Mother’s Day in overall customer awareness so the date might bear repeating. While it may not have quite the same amount of hype as other holidays, Father’s Day-focused advertising can be useful for a variety of reasons:

To be fair, Father’s Day has shown consistent spending growth YOY (even during the pandemic), with Millennials setting records as the biggest historical spenders during Father’s Day and continuing to outpace other generations across most categories. So let’s take a look at the trends, KPIs, and best practices to follow for your Father’s Day marketing strategy.

Father’s Day Shoppers: Last minute (or downright late)

While 80% of US shoppers report their intent to shop for Father’s Day this year, historical data indicates they will do so at the very last minute or even up to 2 weeks late. That means advertisers should build an omnichannel strategy that can accompany their audiences across customer touch points before, during, and after Father’s Day. 

More than anything, shoppers are looking for ideas for meaningful gifts that both stand out of the pack and are curated for their convenience. A successful Father’s Day ad should focus on targeted, concise, graphic messaging around a small selection of goods or services with a strong emotional arc to promote brand authenticity and product recall.

As inflation and digital retail continue to disrupt traditional retail mechanisms, brand loyalty continues to crumble. A recent study by consulting firm McKinsey reveals that a whopping 75 percent of consumers have tried new shopping behaviors in the last year, citing convenience and value as king. That means this Summer’s consumer sales are yours to win, with the right channels and strategies. 

Performance campaigns, ahem, perform better for Father’s Day 

Although impactful messaging and a positive customer experience can turn Father’s Day shoppers into loyal brand ambassadors, the major tenets of your Father’s Day campaign should focus on more traditional “performance” metrics and tactics extended a few weeks past the holiday so they can transition into Summer. Make it a one two punch so your fathers day creative can coherently lead into your follow up Summer campaign.  

Video advertising, whether on social media, digital display, DOOH (Digital Out Of Home), or streaming advertising is especially impactful for this type of emotionally charged, performance campaign. Just make sure you fully leverage every tool in your arsenal to both make an impact on holiday-specific sales and hang on to customers long-term. Here are the performance tactics that can help your campaign really shine:

Leveraging New Video Channels for Father’s Day

Digital Out Of Home

Out of Home advertising has come a long way over the past few years, thanks in large part to the rise of Digital Out Of Home (DOOH) billboards and geo-fencing. New self-serve providers like Blip, for example, now allow advertisers to optimize, target, and track campaign KPIs more efficiently and economically.  

This Father’s Day, control your cost and scale your campaign fast with programmatic digital billboard campaigns that can deliver relevant ads to targeted audiences at the perfect moment when they walk or travel past the digital signage, and respond coherently to your ads running on other, complementary channels. 

Connected Television

Today, in a mature streaming market with a large inventory of premium content, CTV ad platforms are bringing together the very best of television advertising - unskippable ads, engaged audiences, large screen with audio on, premium content - with the granular targeting and measurement capabilities of digital advertising. 

This transition is nothing less than a radical paradigm shift for both television and digital marketers, who will need to reexamine how they set campaign goals, target audiences, and measure ROI.

For your Father’s Day campaign this year, we recommend targeting your ads for shoppers between 35 and 44, segmented by gender. Historically, male shoppers have purchased fewer items at higher price points, while female shoppers have purchased items for three or more recipients at slightly lower price points. Keep that in mind when choosing which products or services to highlight for each segment!  

Your channel mix will have to reflect your product category and customer types of course, but here are some of the best channels to advertise on for Father’s Day according to data from 2022:

Ultimately, the type of campaign you decide to run for Father's Day will depend on the products and audiences your business deals with, but developing a strong performance-driven strategy with a focus on video, A/B testing, and hyper-targeting is a sure way to kick off your Summer season with a bang.