This Holiday Season, the Soft Sell

The viral clip featured a person in a giant mouse costume stuck on a mall escalator. Viewers initially assumed that someone had tragically failed to anticipate this potential hazard. But no: The clip was part of a retailer’s social-media strategy, designed to spur engagement and get laughs.

The big ad campaigns retailers have long relied on have become subtler this holiday season. Indeed, according to figures from the World Advertising Research Centre, firms are increasingly shifting their marketing budgets to social media, where ad spends are expected to grow by 14.9% this year, to $306 billion. And on social media, soft selling is the name of the game—especially during a season of both holidays and persistent inflation worries. “No one scrolling their feed wants to see, ‘Happy holidays—buy this!’” says retail expert Craig Rowley, senior client partner at Korn Ferry.

Rather than the in-your-face ads of yore, today’s brand-sponsored content typically includes clips of staged humor sequences, behind-the-scenes corporate meetings (just the funny parts), executives chatting with unsuspecting customers, and (as was the case this past October) staffers in Halloween costumes. “They’re often promoting the company’s great culture,” says consumer markets expert Renee Whalen, senior client partner at Korn Ferry. The underlying aim is brand awareness: to express that the brand is cool, and why.

To be sure, brand presence on social media is in its third decade. And experts say it is not always effective. While most studies support the strength of social-media branding, some have pointed out that the landscape is so vast that a product can get lost. Others note that consumers may not have the attention span to finish reading a given post. Still, amid a tight job market and uncertain economy, firms are relying more on the social-media play; it’s projected to account for an estimated 40% of all new ad-spend dollars. (Overall, social-media buying accounts for roughly 26% of all ad expenditures.) The latest AI developments—specifically, an improved ability to use precise tracking of shopper habits and purchases to tailor messages to highly specific groups of shoppers—have pushed brands deeper into social media.

In the process, a new playbook seems to be emerging: While mass media is the optimal vehicle for enormous nationwide brands such as restaurant chains, social media is the best medium to communicate, through the use of precise, seemingly individualized messaging, that a brand really understands the customer. This is because 50% to 70% of large retailers’ profits come from just 20 to 30 million shoppers; specialty retailers often earn most of their income from just 3 to 10 million customers, says Rowley. Yes, direct-sale offers are still sent to those loyal customers, but via text or email, not social media.

Experts note that smaller upstarts present themselves on social media in a very different way than well-established companies do, with behind-the-scenes clips that might feature executives shaking hands or expressing their point of view from an auditorium stage, sometimes even blurring their own personal brands with that of the company. “In more established companies, the C-suite doesn’t go near social media,” says Whalen. 

Rather than delegating the online marketing strategy, experts advise firms to engage and involve the C-suite. “The bottom line is that a lot of these organizations need to lean into social media more, because that’s how things are moving and selling,” she says. 

Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Organization Strategy capabilities. 

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