dangletech

When I first started out in the PR game, I worked mainly for a trio of seasoned practitioners in Halifax who used to relish the fact that business tended to slow down in the summer months. Then again, they were devoted sailors, who took every advantage of their reduced workload to drop tools, raise sails and take to the open waters.

Their actions were a consequence of the not-uncommon belief that, unless you peddle a hot-weather product like beer, summer-time marketing is a waste of time because everyone’s on vacation. I’ve just returned from the better part of three weeks off, thus accounting for most of my absence from this spot recently. I was certainly more interested in reading a tall stack of less-demanding fiction than I was in consuming the business and trade media that preoccupy my work days. Does that mean those seeking to catch my attention should also have gone on holiday? Not according to my colleague, Linda Forrest, who addressed this issue in a recent post to our own blog. She wrote:

There’s a common misperception that summer media consumption drops away to almost nothing and that your investment is better spent holding off until the Fall. This very topic was explored in detail last year at OCRI’s Zone5ive, by Veronica Engleberts of Vector Media, a media planning and marketing agency here in Ottawa. The presentation has really stuck with me because it provided effective proof points to support the idea that marketing needs to be a year-round activity and that those companies that go fallow as the mercury rises are losing momentum by sending their marketing efforts on summer holidays.

Consider this, from Veronica’s presentation: “If every one of your prospects took a vacation at some point in July or August, it would amount to an average of 11% of prospects in any given week. Can you afford not to advertise to the other 89%?” Excellent point. Yes, people do take holidays, but not all your customers or prospects are away for the entire season. Why miss the opportunity to make some noise when perhaps your competitors are taking the summer off from getting their messages out?

Despite this insight and stacks of additional research along the same lines, we regularly get queried by clients wondering if they shouldn’t hold off on their product launch or other big announcement until after Labour Day. Our consistent experience over the past 10 years has been that while contacting specific reporters might take a few extra calls during the summer months, there are no barriers whatsoever to conducting effective media relations campaigns in July and August.

Indeed, the largest project we ever did, the global launch of Scottish company Touch Bionics’ i-LIMB Hand, kicked off July 19 last year. The story went worldwide, garnering coverage from media on every inhabited continent, in more than a dozen and a half different languages, on four out of the five U.S. television networks and on national broadcasters in eight countries. The only opportunity we failed to get because of the season was Oprah, which was on hiatus. Was anyone paying attention? The company later reported that sales and revenues 90 days post launch were running about 50% ahead of projections.

I like kicking back in the summer just as much as my sailing buddies down east, and I relished my time off with my family these past weeks. But the business world continued to turn, and companies that choose to maintain the marketing pressure probably saw their revenues turn with it.