Following yesterday’s talk from Living Social’s Mitch Spolan, this morning at Leading in Local: The National Impact, The Weather Co.’s Curt Hecht offered another primer on applying creativity to national to local marketing and advertising.

Hecht is an ad agency veteran who serves as Weather’s global chief revenue officer, driving revenue generation strategy for the Weather Channel and Weather.com.

“I love this topic of national-local,” Hecht said. “Weather is a global brand built off of location.”

Hecht has brought a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to the task of using Weather data to drive new insight and creative new ways to help brands generate more sales based on weather patterns. These insights are activated on a hyperlocal basis, because responses to weather conditions are often very different based on region.

Under Hecht, Weather’s insights go much deeper than selling snow shovels when it’s about to snow.

“We think we can help you move more salad, beer,” Hecht said. “We have made the pivot to helping them know about their brand, our whole sales force now pushing it.”

One example is an exercise Weather went through to track how weather conditions drive soup consumption in the spring. The drivers vary by market. Clouds in Chicago, humidity in Boston.

Another example was Pantene, which ran a “forecast Frizz” campaign that pushed out ads pushing anti-frizz product days in advance of humid weather.

The post At Leading in Local: The National Impact: Talking About the Weather with Curt Hecht appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

There is nothing more local than the weather. Curt Hecht puts this simple idea to work every day at the Weather Company, where he serves as global chief revenue officer. The Weather Company, which was acquired in 2008 by NBC Universal for $3.5 billion, operates two powerful brands — weather.com online and The Weather Channel on cable.

One of the innovations Hecht has led since joining the Weather Company in 2012 is using Big Data to develop insights that map consumer behavior (and thus product demand) to local weather conditions.

Take beer, for example. During the polar vortex, Weather studied beer sales before winter storms to explore a new marketing approach for beer other than the stereotypical sunshine and swimsuits genre. It’s a classic national to local approach. How do local weather conditions drive behavior and how should marketers exploit these local nuances?

“When we activate, we activate on a local level,” Hecht said. Weather has looked a other scenarios beyond calibrating beer sales during snow storms.

“We have looked at air conditioner sales in terms of how long does it take in Chicago vs. Atlanta for people to go out and actually buy the air conditioner,” Hecht said. Understanding which combination of temperature and humidity in a given market sends consumers stampeding to the appliance store could be an incredibly powerful insight for marketers.

Hecht joined The Weather Company after 24 years at Publicis Group. He followed Publicis colleague David Kenny, who become Weather’s new CEO. Hecht held a number of key positions during his long career at Publicis, including chief digital officer of Starcom Mediavest Group, and CEO of Vivaki Nerve Center, a unit of Publicis that served as the agency’s technology hub.

Hecht is the Day 2 Keynote speaker at BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming “Leading in Local: The National Impact” conference May 7-9 in Atlanta.

Launch this video for more of Hecht’s views on national to local plus a preview of his address at the Atlanta event.

The post Looking Ahead to Atlanta: Curt Hecht on Weather’s Local Roots appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

There is nothing more local than the weather. Curt Hecht puts this simple idea to work every day at the Weather Company, where he serves as global chief revenue officer. The Weather Company, which was acquired in 2008 by NBC Universal for $3.5 billion, operates two powerful brands — weather.com online and The Weather Channel on cable.

One of the innovations Hecht has led since joining the Weather Company in 2012 is using Big Data to develop insights that map consumer behavior (and thus product demand) to local weather conditions.

Take beer, for example. During the polar vortex, Weather studied beer sales before winter storms to explore a new marketing approach for beer other than the stereotypical sunshine and swimsuits genre. It’s a classic national to local approach. How do local weather conditions drive behavior and how should marketers exploit these local nuances?

“When we activate, we activate on a local level,” Hecht said. Weather has looked a other scenarios beyond calibrating beer sales during snow storms.

“We have looked at air conditioner sales in terms of how long does it take in Chicago vs. Atlanta for people to go out and actually buy the air conditioner,” Hecht said. Understanding which combination of temperature and humidity in a given market sends consumers stampeding to the appliance store could be an incredibly powerful insight for marketers.

Hecht joined The Weather Company after 24 years at Publicis Group. He followed Publicis colleague David Kenny, who become Weather’s new CEO. Hecht held a number of key positions during his long career at Publicis, including chief digital officer of Starcom Mediavest Group, and CEO of Vivaki Nerve Center, a unit of Publicis that served as the agency’s technology hub.

Hecht is the Day 2 Keynote speaker at BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming “Leading in Local: The National Impact” conference May 7-9 in Atlanta.

Launch this video for more of Hecht’s views on national to local plus a preview of his address at the Atlanta event.

The post Looking Ahead to Atlanta: Curt Hecht on Weather's Local Roots appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.