Canada Day is this weekend, and Canadians everywhere are preparing to fire up their barbecues for backyard celebrations. This means they are also out shopping for all the classic BBQ components – burgers, buns, canned beans, to name a few. Some may even be upgrading their barbecues for the occasion. To better understand how retailers promote in order to capitalize on this holiday, we reviewed our promotions data from the two weeks leading up to Canada Day 2018 for specific CPG & durables categories common to the season – meats, beer, snacks and barbecues.
While several retailers did begin promoting Canada Day 2018 in the week starting 6/17/2018, the true bulk of Canada Day promotions began the week prior to the holiday, with many grocers releasing Canada Day themed flyers featuring common BBQ holiday categories – meats, summer fruits, chips, etc – on the front page.
Obviously no summer holiday would be complete without the meat, and grocery retailers know that. Interestingly, though, when looking at meat & seafood promotions by promotional week for the month of June, there were more in the week leading to Father’s Day 2018 (30%) than in the week leading to Canada Day 2018 (25%). When breaking down by category share of meat & seafood promotions, the most promoted type of meat was chicken, followed by dinner sausages and beef (not ground) – quite a departure from the usual hot dog and hamburger promotions seen in the US around summer holidays.
Of course, every meal needs a set of accoutrements and there’s no easier side for a BBQ host to « make » than setting out a bag of chips. When it comes to the chip category, Lay’s led the way at 12.6% of total chip promotions, followed by Pringles (10.9%) and Tostitos (9.2%). The top promoted brands included many of the usual suspects – Lay’s, Tostitos and Doritos – but also some less common brands, like Miss Vickie’s and Bugles.
A warm summer holiday definitely calls for ice cold beer. What beer brands did retailers have on tap in their 2018 promotions? When looking at beer promotions, the most promoted brand was Budweiser (with 7.7% share), followed by Coors (6.5%) in second place and Molson (5.7%) in third.
Finally, we also took a look at barbecue promotions – after all, you need something to cook all that meat on, and what better excuse to upgrade to a newer, better model than right before a major holiday! Retailers were promoting barbecues in the weeks leading to Canada Day 2018, but not quite as heavily as before Victoria Day or Father’s Day. In fact, in reviewing gas, charcoal, electric and specialty barbecue promotions from the months of May and June 2018, we found that the week prior to Canada Day had the second least amount of barbecue promotions, while the week prior to Victoria day had the most. Of the barbecue promotions that did occur prior to Canada Day, the top promoted brand was Broil King with 19.4% of promotional share, while the average depth of discount across all brands was 20%.
Having a holistic view of your competitor’s promotions during seasonal shopping events is vital for better planning and improving performance. At Numerator, we provide comprehensive visibility and deeper insight into the competitive cross-media promotional landscape. For more information about an event review of promotional trends in your category, reach out to us today!
