Male Opps: Scotts Miracle-Gro bolsters advertising efforts under new AOR (Score 70)
Sales Lead: Per execs in a recent earnings call, Scotts Miracle-Gro (SMG)'s marketing and sales team have driven most retail traffic.
- The company's US consumer media advertising was noted as key to building consumer engagement, which will be up 25% this year YOY.
- Since SMG's strategy is paying off, it will likely continue bolstering its advertising initiatives.
- Starting in and continuing from fiscal 2024, the company will start diversifying its promotions and marketing promotions.
- These efforts will expand the lawn season into the fall and work around weather extremes.
- SMG's main activation point will still be the spring, but the company started investing "more in summer and fall for sustained growth," per CEO James Hagedorn.
- The company's spend for marketing in the fall is almost 250% higher YOY.
- Fall initiatives will push SMG's grass seed, lawn fertilizers, and rodenticide line.
- SMG's gardens had gains in Q3 in both dollars and units across key product lines.
- The company's $300m organic gardening business is the fastest-growing part of its gardens portfolio.
- This growth even happened without the full support of all of its top retail partners.
- Its leadership expects SMG's new organic listings to be "far superior" in fiscal 2024.
- The company will likely:
- Continue bolstering advertising efforts and spend
- Ramp up spend in Fall 2024 as well
- Keep increasing spend
- Conduct additional agency reviews following recent appointments (more below)
- Target demographic:
- A male target demographic consisting primarily of millennials and Gen-X
Recent leadership shifts:
- SMG selected Katie Winkler as its integrated marketing director in April 2023.
Additional spending insights:
- Broadcast insights (TV ad creative spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance); digital and social insights (digital ad spend, effectiveness, impressions, and performance)
- View recent national TV and digital spend for SMG's brands here. Note that national TV spend is skyrocketing, with digital spend increasing more gradually.
- Additional channel insights
- The company utilizes Google Ads along with OOH, digital, local broadcast, radio, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and online video (primarily via Youtube Android and Youtube.com) ads.
- SMG sponsors podcasts such as The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Stories from NPR, The Dan Patrick Show, The Bobby Bones Show, and The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast.
Additional agency insights:
- Opportunity: If you haven't yet done so, reach out soon to offer PR, multicultural, influencer, and/or experiential services following SMG's recent AOR appointments.
- The company named MullenLowe Boston as its creative and strategic AOR in 2023, Performance Art as its digital AOR in 2023, and Mediahub Global Boston as its media and digital AOR in 2022.
- Current agency roster:
Insight Sources: Broadcast insights estimated by iSpot; digital spend insights estimated by Pathmatics; additional channel insights estimated by Vivvix; podcast insights by Podchaser.
