As we get closer to the summer season in the GCC, the imminent drop in advertising spending starts to haunt us. It is more probable to see marketers and media planners, busy with their summer vacation planning versus preparing any major campaigns during June, July & August. Media vendors also tend to get more restless during the few weeks prior to the summer vacation, in hope to secure any booking or opportunity during those typically ‘slow’ months and catch key decision makers before they leave the country. Historically, the dip in summer season lasted for few weeks post the busiest season of them all ‘Ramadan’. In the past decade, Ramadan used to coincide at the close peripherals of Summer; the period post-Ramadan was perceived as a recovery interval that would lead into summer then retreat during the back-to-school time. Most yearly communication, entertainment and marketing plans were phased to accommodate for few weeks of summer vacation where most parties would enter a ‘radio silence’ mood. However, Ramadan arrived earlier this year and its gap with Summer will be growing year on year, resulting in an ‘extended’ summer period with more advertisers opting to stay below radar during that time, with most limiting their spending to always on digital media.
The main rationale for the summer dip was commonly attributed to many families deciding to leave for international vacation destinations or visit their home-countries, while major purchase decisions were minimized during that period and concentrated on travel and tourism – rather than household, retail, and cars. With the common perception that the GCC countries would be ‘empty’ during summer period, many advertisers decided to exclude this period from their active marketing calendar. This resulted in an average drop of 15-20% in advertising spending during those months (source: Statex by Ipsos).
To further understand the extent of the countries having less people, one should examine key metrics that would give a better perspective on the actual numbers versus the perceived ones. If we take Dubai International airport as an example, the pre-covid traffic during 2019 hit a peak during August at 8.2M passengers versus a mean average of 7.5M for other months of the year – recording around a 10% increase versus other months of the year (source: DCAA). When analyzing congestion levels of Dubai traffic in 2019, September recorded 23% while the average of the 3 summer months was 17% (26% decrease in congestion) – which translates that less people were on the streets during summer period leading to faster commuting time (source: TomTom). Yes, there are fewer people in the country, yet most tend to take 4-6 weeks off rather than the full 12 weeks of summer, the streets are surely less congested, yet there is still enough traffic to make an outdoor campaign impactful. Moving to the Saudi market, travel movements during the upcoming summer period are bound to several factors that need to be taken into consideration including: an increase in air tickets fares – averaging 20% versus pre-pandemic levels (source: CNBC) – due to increase in oil prices, as well as the newest travel bans imposed by the Saudi authorities on its citizens to top touristic destinations like Turkey among others, and the increase in efforts to promote internal tourism are all expected to have an impact on lower number of Saudis deciding to spend the summer holidays outside KSA. Those factors are expected to have a direct effect on the anticipated people who will be leaving the country during summer period.
The special ‘summer offers’ started coming in from various media vendors with some willing to give exclusively high discounts on their rate cards with additional added value and extensions. In general, vendors tend to be more lenient in their negotiations at the aim of filling their inventory during those 3 months. For many industries, advertising during the slower summer months might prove effective specially if their target audience and their behavior is not subject to major change given the summer months. Such industries are restaurants, malls, retail, entertainment, hotels, banks, and telcos. Cities like Dubai are also aggressive in terms of promoting the summer season at the aim of attracting tourists as well as driving citizens and residents to increase their purchases during the summer surprises season.
While summer is not included in many marketers’ calendars, yet the highly discounted cost of media, low clutter, and partial departure of residents – might prove tempting enough for few advertisers to run a summer campaign that can drive incremental revenue for the year. So, what are you waiting for to launch a summer campaign?
By Ali Berjawi
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