It’s raining in San Francisco today. It rains a lot here over the winter months, the city bound in by fog. And when that happens the entire populace tends to look down when they walk. It is a subtle shift in behavior, but there is something about the fog, and an inability to see the sky that just naturally moves the populace to seek for comfort. That comfort is the ground in front of them.

Why am I mentioning this in a blog about advertising and marketing? Simple, does weather affect advertising?

If you happen to live in a place that rains like Seattle, snows like Minneapolis, fries your skin like Phoenix, or fogs in like San Francisco are there ways that you can use the weather to increase your ad effectiveness?

Take San Francisco for example: 3 months of fog and rain the winter. With everyone looking down is it better to buy spot TV than outdoor during this time?

Is print more effective on rainy days in places like Seattle.

When it’s a scorcher in Phoenix can you be smart enough about your outdoor buys that you’ll buy them in places where people will stand in the shade?

Is a billboard even remotely useful in Minneapolis in winter where drivers have a number of days being way more conscious on the roads because of snow? or is it the exact opposite in that the higher increase in accidents has people dirving so slowly that they’re stuck looking at your billboard for a mile barely moving?

As long as the weather is a predictable season you can use it to your benefit. It’s the consistency that you can use, and the expectation of the local populace to adhere to certain patterns during that time.

What all of this is dealing with is human nature behavior patterns to their environment. What surprises me is that I have been unable to find a study on it, and I think I know why.

Offline advertising is inherently unmeasurable. It influences the consumer is such small ways that what caused their purchase behavior is as much art as it is science. It is the reason why the best offline media buyers when buying outdoor will buy the advertising at constrictor bottlenecks… places in the traffic patterns where a car is stuck moving poast it at 20 miles an hour. Exit ramps in major cities where they know at rush hour everyuday traffic slows to a crawl and what do people do? They look for a distraction. An entertaining billboard. Anything to take their mind off of driving.

There may be another billboard the same price two miles down the highway, but by then the cars are moving at 80. You see, the billboard is priced based on the amount of traffic or cars that pass by it. The number of eyeballs that can potentially see it… and the demand for the space.

The n00b media buyer who tells the client they got a great deal because their billboard is 10% less than the one a mile closer to the city, and the same number of people see it! They understand the numbers, but not the art of advertising. Their client will be oblivious to it and often actually reward the client for that behavior. They both miss that the ad effectiveness has decreased by much more than 10%. Why? The same number of people had the “potential” to see the ad, but it had one major thing working against it.

the speed of the car, and thus length of “time opportunity” to see it

In the end it’s the offline media planner/buyer who is using art, intuition, and science to make decisions, decisions that help their client in numerous ways that go unnoticed. Occasionally a client takes all their advertising in house and is often confused by why, although they may get an initial boost, their ad effectiveness is dwindling over time… why? because they do not understand that…

Mother nature hates outdoor…