January 24th, 2023, Hoang Nguyen
The festive time of the year is full of joy, laughter, shopping and creative advertising. The end of year celebrations offer a chance for brands to get into the holiday spirit and win over consumers with messages of togetherness and giving.
But not all holiday commercials were equal this past holiday season, and a few brands did better than others at garnering the attention of consumers. In this analysis, we look at the grocery retailers that performed best when it came to advertising penetration during this period.
The data comes from YouGov BrandIndex - a daily brand tracker that measures consumer perceptions towards brands and companies - and looks at Ad Awareness for major household names such as Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Kroger and Amazon Fresh between November 1st and December 25th.
Ad Awareness is a measurement of whether consumers have seen an ad for a brand within the last two weeks.
Among all grocery stores in the US tracked by YouGov BrandIndex (a total of 33 brands), Aldi ranked highest in Ad Awareness between the start of November and Christmas. During this period, German-owned Aldi managed to gain the attention of 21.6% of US consumers with their marketing.
Shadowing Aldi closely is Kroger, with an advertising penetration rate of 20% amid the holiday season. There’s roughly an 8-point gap between the first and second runner-up, with Amazon Fresh coming in third after the brand captured 11.8% of Ad Awareness among US consumers. Whole Foods Market (11.6%) and Publix (10%) round out our top five Christmas advertisers in the grocery sector.
The ability to track and monitor brands on a day-to-day basis in YouGov BrandIndex reveals that though Aldi, Kroger and Amazon Fresh all performed well, they achieved it in different ways and at different times during the holiday season.
Aldi’s Ad Awareness, for example, sat below that of Kroger’s at the start of November but grew steadily to overtake the brand and peak at a score of 23.6% in early December. Kroger, on the other hand, maintained its high level of Ad Awareness throughout the entire holiday season.
Ad Awareness for Amazon Fresh ticked up steadily week by week with no slowdowns in Ad Awareness until it reached its peak score of 13.3% on Christmas.
Aside from winning the holiday season with their advertising, Aldi and Kroger also won in the eyes of consumers when it came to Value. Americans felt the squeeze this holiday season with the ongoing cost of living crisis, but many still planned to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Data from BrandIndex shows that among all grocers, Aldi topped the list with a Value score of 34-points. That’s nearly twice that of Kroger, which came in second place with a score of 17.2. Trader Joe’s (13.1), Save A Lot (9.7) and Publix (9.3%) also performed well with positive Value scores this holiday season.
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