Retail spend should shift from print to mobile advertising, says Walmart VP
Retailers should be "quickly" moving their advertising budgets away from print to mobile as customers' consumption of media continues to shift towards digital devices, according to Walmart vice president of media and digital marketing Wanda Young.
Speaking to The Drum following her talk at the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) London Forum today (8 June), Young said that the retailer and parent company of Asda, is working to push out less print-based advertising as it looks to target its communications towards a millennial audience.
“We are moving away quickly from print,” she said. “We really believe that from Walmart’s perspective you follow the customer – it’s just that simple. If you do customer research and you watch customer behaviour all of their time spent now is split between devices.
“As more and more we shift our customer audience of who we try to target towards a millennial audience they just don’t read [print].”
Young said that print is expensive to produce and its long lead time and inflexibility when it comes to reacting to change means Walmart can't reach its intended audience quickly enough. “The shift is happening but just slowly,” she added.
During her session Young spoke about Walmart’s mobile road map, citing geo-location and mobile video as areas on which it will focus as it looks to investigate its role in driving awareness, intent and purchase across the marketing funnel.