Gen-Z Digital, Social Opps: Neighborly taps CMO amid surge in demand (Score 63)

Neighborly selected Roger Chacko as its new chief strategy and marketing officer, effective March 2021. He will now lead the all of the company's strategy and marketing divisions, so spend will likely rise under his leadership. Chacko joined from OPG, having previously served as CMO (2018) and chief commercial officer (2018-2019) at Planet Fitness. He replaces Lisa Zoellner, Neighborly's incumbent CMO of four years, who departed in February 2021 for a board advisor role at LYNX.

Additional recent hires include marketing automation manager Karen Politte-Corn (January 2021) and senior social media specialist Anne Regan (March 2021). Not only do these hires, like Chacko's, signal potential increases in spend, but Regan's also hints an increase in paid social ad spend in particular.

Right now, Neighborly is focused on helping homeowners after the harsh winter storms wreaking havoc on US communities. Demand for many of its brands such as Mr. Rooter, Rainbow International, Aire Serv and Mr. Electric has surged since due to home service requests related to burst pipes, flooding damage and other emergencies. Neighborly's leadership expects even more damage to become obvious as the ice and snow melt, increasing the need for maintenance from its service professionals even more.

Pathmatics estimates Neighborly has spent $164k on digital ads so far in 2021. These include desktop display (63%), desktop video (24%) & mobile display ads (13%) placed site direct (60%) or through Google AdX + AdSense (19%), Verizon Media (12%) or Simpli.fi (7%); top direct sites include: YouTube, nypost.com & fox5atlanta.com, while indirect sites include: Yahoo, finance.yahoo.com, cnn.com & doityourself.com. This is 70% increase over spend from the same period 2020 ($96.2k). For full 2020, Neighborly's spend totaled $666.3k, mostly split between desktop display & desktop video ads - there was some spend allocated to social media ads (Facebook, $21k). Note that 2020 spend began steadily rising around late May and continued through the year - so look to H2 for revenue opps.

According to Magellan, Neighborly has aired 15 podcast ads, all for Mr. Rooter, within the past 12 months.

Neighborly targets homeowners and landlords in need of home services, along with people and companies that provide those home services. The aforementioned focus on social media and usage of podcast ads show that it's particularly targeting Gen-Z, which could lead it to also invest in digital channels such as OTT. Kantar data reports Neighborly additionally utilizes OOH, print (newspapers), radio and local broadcast.

Agency & martech readers - Since reviews could easily result from this CMO hire, reach out soon to see what work you can secure. Neighborly currently works with creative AOR Bullish and PR agency partner Bizcom Associates.