Marketers spend months planning for the biggest moments on the calendar. Events like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July drive tentpole campaigns across TV, streaming, social, out-of-home, and digital.
But there is one place many of those plans leave behind: the store.
It’s a strange omission given that these cultural moments carry into the grocery trip, shaping what people buy and when they shop. Ahead of Halloween, shoppers stock up for trick-or-treaters. Before Thanksgiving, they buy ingredients for the family meal. Around the Fourth of July, they prepare for summer cookouts and gatherings.
Yet in many media plans, the store enters the conversation only after the campaign has been built. That presents an opportunity to rethink how tentpole campaigns are planned.
The calendar changes how people shop
Foot traffic across Grocery TV’s network of roughly 6,700 grocery stores and 120 retailers rises sharply around major calendar moments. The day before Thanksgiving brings nearly 16 million shopper visits, 92% more than a typical day, according to Placer.ai. Traffic is also up 38% around the Fourth of July, 69% on Christmas Eve, and 31% the day before the Big Game.
The same events that shape media plans also change where and when people shop. That makes the grocery store a natural extension of a tentpole campaign. You can build awareness through TV and streaming, reinforce the message through social and digital, and reach shoppers in the grocery store as they prepare for the event itself.
The in-store opportunity extends beyond CPG. A credit card brand can get in front of shoppers with a cash-back offer as they stock up for the Big Game, a streaming service can reach shoppers planning a night in, and a telecom brand can connect with families gathering over the holidays. Each has a relevant reason to show up in the store while shoppers are already thinking about what comes next.
Relevance makes the message work harder
Calendar moments give brands a natural creative context, but the execution still needs to fit where the ad appears. Grocery TV surveyed more than 1,000 shoppers and found that they were 2.5X more likely to consider a brand when the creative matched the environment. Seasonal and relevant content also ranked among the types of content shoppers most want to see in stores.
We see the same principle in campaign performance.
One national delivery service brand ran holiday gathering creative in grocery stores during November and December, built around the message “Groceries delivered. More time with loved ones.” The campaign delivered a 33% lift in unaided awareness and a 13% lift in recommendation intent.
A national soda brand used creative centered on food, backyard grilling, and summer gatherings during peak summer grilling season. Running on screens above checkout coolers, the campaign delivered a 2X incremental iROAS and an 8% sales lift.
In both cases, in-store media gave the campaign another opportunity to reach shoppers in a setting directly connected to what they were planning, buying, and preparing for.
Why the store gets left out of campaigns
One reason the in-store opportunity gets overlooked in tentpole campaigns is how organizations plan for it. In-store media has traditionally sat within shopper and trade marketing, while national media and brand teams have planned campaigns across other channels. But Grocery TV’s research with IAB suggests organizations are more likely to fully leverage in-store media when national media, brand, or dedicated retail media teams have a role in owning it.
Among organizations getting the most from in-store, 39% give ownership to a national media or brand team, compared with 30% among those that underutilize the channel. Shopper or trade marketing shows the opposite pattern: it owns in-store media at 27% of organizations that fully leverage the channel, compared with 35% of those that underutilize it.
Integrating the store into the media plan
The shift in ownership reflects a broader shift in how marketers use and evaluate in-store media. The channel is increasingly being used across the funnel, rather than only for point-of-purchase impact. More than 90% of respondents in the IAB study rated awareness, consideration, sales lift, and loyalty as important or essential when evaluating these investments.
That gives marketers a reason to consider the store earlier in media planning: Where can we reach people in a context that advances the campaign objective?
For tentpole and always-on campaigns, the grocery store should be part of that answer from the start. The biggest moments on the calendar already influence how people shop. Building the store into the media plan allows brands to account for that behavior and show up where the campaign meets shoppers in the moments that shape what they buy next.
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Marlow Nickell is the co-founder and CEO of Grocery TV, the leading in-store retail media platform. Under his leadership, the company has grown to over 6,700 stores, reaching one in four American shoppers in grocery stores.