Ahead of a holiday season, the senior living advisory service A Place For Mom (APFM) has named Horizon Next, a division of Horizon Media, its media agency of record in a move to consolidate its media mix. The independent U.S. agency, which has managed traditional media investments for the brand since 2020, won its digital business this month without a review and is already managing its digital channels.

The holidays are an especially pertinent time to advertise APFM’s services, according to its senior vice president of marketing, Lauren Radcliffe. The brand specializes in providing free, personalized and unbiased guidance to families and caregivers. It sees an uptick in awareness each holiday season, Radcliffe told Adweek, because its primary target audience—women in their 60s—are more likely to notice if their parent’s health has declined during holiday visits than other times of the year and decide to seek help.

“They may not have seen their mom and dad for a while and notice that there’s a change,” Radcliffe said.

The combined account size is between $75 and 100 million, APFM said, noting its media budget has been growing for three years. The brand’s two biggest channels are television and search, and it’s expanding its budgets in print and social.

“Our goal as a company is to enable caregivers to make the best decisions and to reach every single caregiver. We want every caregiver to know that our free service is available to them,” Radcliffe told Adweek, underscoring why targeting the right audience is crucial for the brand.

‘Finding the right combination of channels’

Radcliffe awarded Horizon Media its traditional media work in 2020.

When the agency nabbed that first chunk of business, APFM decided to keep its digital media account with digital marketing agency Kepler Group. It’s now parting with Kepler on good terms, according to Radcliffe, so it can go all-in on an overarching strategy.

Radcliffe was enthused about using Horizon’s tools to connect with the right people at the right time, while avoiding oversaturating them with content. Putting all APFM’s channels under the same management, the leader believes, will help the brand allocate its media mix more efficiently.

“It’s all about figuring out the right efficiency and the right combination of channels,” she said. “We feel like there’s probably too much waste today in some of our channels, and we’re really excited to get much more prescriptive in terms of meeting [caregiver] needs,” she said.

Striving for round-the-clock caregiver support

The Horizon Next team is fully staffed up, according to Gene Turner, its president, noting that the agency shifted some talent away from other businesses to ensure that APFM’s team is staffed with Horizon employees that fully embody Horizon’s culture and understand its tools and practices.

Though there was no formal review of the business, Radcliffe and her team vetted Horizon’s capabilities, including social search, programmatic and analytics, before expanding the partnership.

The brand leader felt optimistic about Horizon’s ability to deliver results, having already recognized the agency’s impact. She aims for APFM to remain “always on” and ready to support its audience.

“At any moment there are huge volumes of caregivers who need our help,” she said.

Radcliffe’s been reaching toward that goal since first partnering with Horizon two years ago, when she estimates APFM had coverage on air roughly 50% of the year. “Now I’m happy to say that we’re on air 52 weeks a year,” she said. The brand also saw a 28% increase in its branded search volume since inking its first Horizon partnership.

Reaching the right audience at the right time is at the heart of the “always on” approach. The agency’s digital media prowess, bolstered by the audience segmentation and channel planning tools built into its blu. technology platform, assured APFM the agency could do that and sold Radcliffe and her team on the deal.

“They build tools that enable their team to move fast for their clients, and make it easy for us to [make] decisions. So, blu. was definitely one of the reasons we felt they definitely could help us with the totality of our business,” Radcliffe said.