From Spooky Spokespersons to Marketing Monsters: What Are Your Marketing Nightmares?

Happy Halloween! You’re probably wondering, What do scary costumes and trick-or-treating have anything to do with performance marketing or Connected TV? We wanted to put a spooky twist on this month’s poll by asking marketers to reveal their marketing nightmares — and their spookiest would-be brand ambassador. Plus, it made for the perfect opportunity to get a pulse check on where advertisers are at with their Q4 planning. Here’s what they had to say. 

Making Marketing Mascots out of Halloween Villains

Who knew that Halloween’s most loved feared villains would also make for good brand ambassadors, too? We cataloged some horror movie icons like Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Jason Voorhees and asked marketers who among them would be their best spokesperson. The results were surprising: 20% of respondents voted for pint-sized antagonist Chucky, followed by the equally pint-size-evil M3GAN, and fellow demonic redhead Pennywise the Clown. We guess that golden 80/20 rule in marketing also applies to villains, too — the smaller the spokesperson, the bigger the impact.  Respondents also thought outside the multiple-choice box, with the “Other” category including Candyman, Art the clown, Freddy Fazbear, and Keyser Soze.

The Marketing Monsters Hiding Under Your Bed Desk

Sure, Halloween villains are quite the fright — but to a marketer, there are much scarier things out there, especially now that we’re in the thick of Q4. So we asked, what is the worst campaign killer? Turns out that anything contributing to campaign inefficiencies were guilty as charged. Almost a quarter of respondents voted that constant changes in direction were their biggest pain point. Other honorable (horrific?) mentions included slashed budgets, tracking the wrong marketing metrics, and last-minute changes. This is why having the right CTV tech stack on your side is important in order to accomodate any real time campaign changes (which, in marketing, is pretty much inevitable). 

It’s Q4: Are You Ready, Set, or Already Going?

It’s always a race to the finish line during Q4, but it’s the strategic and savvy marketers that stand to win. We wanted to get a pulse check on where marketers are at with their Q4 planning, which we split into four buckets: ideation, developing ad creative and assets, test and learn, and launch. Over a third (34%) are in the testing phase — clearly paying close attention to our seasonal alerts, which identify September and October as key testing periods for the holidays. This was followed closely by the 29% who have finished ideating and are in the process of developing ad creative. Meanwhile, an equal proportion of respondents (15%) landed on opposite ends of the scale: either about to hit launch (or were already live) with their campaigns, or in the ideation phase. Surprisingly, there was even a small (7%) of respondents who weren’t running Q4 campaigns at all (jumpscare!).

No matter which phase of holiday planning you’re in, keep it up — we’re almost halfway through the quarter! And if all else fails, applying a performance mindset approach always pays off. Our annual holiday guide contains all of the best practices you need to get started, or to make sure you’re on track with the key milestones throughout the quarter. Might we even suggest … exploring a new ad channel? (*Evil Vincent Price laugh*)