Hungry for Weekend Sales

August 31, 2023

One of the worst parts of being an adult is realizing you have to plan what you are having for dinner every single night for the rest of your life. It’s a constant struggle in my household. My wife is a great planner but, after working eight hours a day, the last thing she wants to do is organize a meal. It’s probably the same at your house …

To compound that, you don’t just have to plan out what you are going to have; you also have to see what ingredients you have, what you may need from the grocery store, and then do the actual cooking itself. Not to mention the cleanup afterwards. That’s my part of the process in the Weavmann household.

After a long week of working 40+ hours and any commuting that entails, you want to sit on the couch and relax and focus on the television. It’s the weekend! You deserved it. Besides the Harry Potter marathons, what else do you see? It’s tons of ads for fast food and sit-down restaurants. Applebee’s is promoting their all-you-can-eat boneless wings; Burger King is saying “you rule” and “have it your way”; the McDonald’s spokesman Brian Cox is singing “bada bah bah bah” (or however you would spell it).

This is just smart timing. It gets consumers in their cars to go pick up some food or pick up their smartphone and order DoorDash. I can tell you this from firsthand experience. A couple weeks ago, I was already planning to order pizza but, as soon as that bottomless wings commercial came on, I knew what I had to add to my order.

Why do we as a radio industry view the weekend as having no importance or a time that shouldn’t be prioritized? Yes, your morning drive show is a big seller to your station, but we’ve shown time and time again that your weekend listeners should not be discounted. Sometimes weekends can be the highest ranking dayparts in terms of cume, and many of our clients beat their competitors’ morning drive on the weekend.

Consumers are out shopping, running errands, going to the gym, and doing anything else that they didn’t have time for during the week. More importantly, they are closer to the point of purchase. If they hear that McDonald’s commercial at 11:30 after taking their kids to ballet or karate, they are way more likely to find a drive-through and pick up some food. Food that is cooked by someone else just tastes better anyways.

I am not recommending your advertisers put their entire campaign on the weekend but make sure they don’t discount it either. It may be the time your listeners are the hungriest to buy what your advertisers are selling.

-Matt Weaver, Information Systems Coordinator

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