Working solely in retail, Summit have become a trusted partner, offering perspectives and insights that lead directly to increased sales and improved return on investment. To allow our clients to influence the entire sales journey, Summit offer a complete range of digital marketing services and retail technologies. Critical to our effectiveness is what we believe to be the most advanced consumer behaviour and attribution modelling available.

When Summit took the decision 3 years ago to work exclusively with the retail sector, we realised that our retailers were speaking a different language to other clients. They required bespoke technology, had specific reporting needs and an altogether different set of expectations. This especially manifests itself during Peak. Or Christmas as you and I call it.

Christmas 2012 started for us last January with our 2011 Peak activity Wash-up. ‘Peak’ is the key trading period of the year when the traditional optimisation approach of seeing what happened last week and adjusting for next week just doesn’t apply. Through this period we have to optimise for what’s going to happen tomorrow not yesterday. So our year on year data is gold dust, the use of which allows us to head into this Christmas period with an informed and flexible plan.

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Insight based on what we learned last year
•    A clear idea of when ‘Peak’ starts (much earlier than everyone thinks)
•    Budgets that are matched to seasonal customer spending patterns and conversion rates
•    A product category level understanding about how consumers purchase
•    Messaging to control how we will execute around last shipping date
•    A clear idea of when we will flip from Christmas promotions to Sale messaging and how we will deal with Christmas / Boxing day (direct response or engagement?)


And most importantly, respond to an imperative to mentally change to ‘box packing ‘ mode in order to trade the direct response channels and align with the weekly promotional cycle.
It’s worth noting that if this is second year data, it’s important to pause at this point. Was there anything significantly different about last year – weather, hero products etc. I’d also recommend keeping a log this year – it will be invaluable when sitting down to plan next year. If it’s the first year of gathering data, then make some assumptions based on experience of the sector but keep an even closer eye on trends as they emerge.
As the pressure-cooker of peak builds, the issues that may now affect our plans fall into two main camps:


1. Did Peak start and behave as we predicted?
If not, how should we react? Is there an under (or -over )spend? Do budgets need to be reallocated to different products categories or re-phased across the weekly leading into Christmas?

2. Will we need to provide commercial / trading teams with tactical support?
How is the business doing? Will there be a requirement from the commercial teams to support key products or push tactile opportunities?
All things being equal – we can now continue with the day by day running of the campaigns and get ready to trade the key days of Christmas.

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