Gen-Z, Millennial Parents Digital Opps: Sears Home Services searches for CMO amid ad spend decreases (Score 40)

Sears Home Services (SHS) is searching for a CMO to manage the company's marketing department and strategy. The selected marketer will report to the CEO and will be responsible for business-to-business and direct-to-consumer marketing, budgeting, communications and analytics. This follows the July hire of CEO Daniel Pidgeon, who most recently served as president of Goodman Networks. We will likely see some changes to the current strategy and to the agency roster once SHS makes a decision. 

According to iSpot, Sears has not aired a national TV ad YTD. It spent around $726.2k in 2019 during programming such as "TMZ Live," "Modern Family," "Despierta America!," "Combate Americas" and "SpongeBob SquarePants." Sears has been decreasing spend in this channel for several years now as full-year spend equaled $20m in 2018. 

Per Pathmatics, Sears earned 429.4m impressions through Facebook ads (44%), desktop display ads (37%)Instagram ads (9%), mobile display ads (6%) and desktop video ads (4%). It placed the majority of these ads site direct (72%) onto sites such as facebook.com, instagram.com, kmart.com, youtube.com and tvtropes.org. It placed 20% of these ads indirectly through Google AdX + AdSense onto sites such as yahoo.com, toptenreviews.com, slickdeals.net, msn.com and theblackfriday.com. It spent $2.4m in this channel over the last 365 days, about half (46%) of the $5.2m it spent over the 365 days prior. 

**No spend information is available for SHS; therefore, all of the above data refers to SHS's parent company Sears.**

Sellers-- Sears seems to mainly target Gen-Z and millennial parents with a Hispanic and female skew. It has cut ad spending across the board. The company has not aired a national TV ad this year and drastically reduced digital spend. I expect the new CMO to reverse this trend and ramp up spend, especially digital if it continues to target Gen-Z and millennials. It also invests in OOH and print ads, per Kantar. Keep in mind, these strategies are subject to change once a CMO is locked-down. 

Agency & martech readers-- Pay close attention to SHS, as it may conduct an agency review or hire additional shops once it finds a new CMO. We believe SHS currently works with digital AOR FCB Chicago and takes care of creative in-house. You may have the best luck offering media buying and planing assistance.