Marketing Briefing: Why marketers aren’t confined to traditional holiday and seasonal promotion cycles anymore

Of course, it doesn’t help that the seasons no longer feel the same as they once did given ongoing climate issues. But that’s for another story.

While the timeline to celebrate holidays has changed, so too have traditional promotional cycles like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Much of the motivation behind that change has been to shift timelines earlier, with marketers looking to capture as much attention as they can as early as they can. The move mirrors consumers’ shopping habits, according to marketers and agency execs, who say shoppers are vetting their purchases to find the best deal earlier and earlier.

“The traditional guardrails of where you thought the season started and ended have shifted — and continue to shift,” said Nora Cortez, director, media planning, at Rain the Growth Agency. “Advertisers are really in a position of almost trying to beat everyone else to market with their seasonal messaging or holiday deals. In turn that has pulled messaging and product placement forward so that things are in the market way ahead of the actual season in some cases.”

There’s a desire from marketers for a “first mover” advantage, noted Cortez, adding that earlier this summer the shop debuted Father’s Day initiatives on social platforms for a client a week earlier than usual which allowed the brand to get “cheaper CPMs,” though Cortez did not provide exact figures, as well as boost awareness, grow traffic and impressions on the campaign. While a week doesn’t seem like a big deal in the grand scheme of things, the inching of holiday and promotional cycles earlier and earlier has led to the current stretched out seasonality.

With seasonality being stretched — Back to School coming seemingly as soon as school lets out; fall holidays bleeding into summer; Christmas in July and all the like — it’s easy to assume that seasonality doesn’t matter as much anymore. If it all bleeds together then are there really any seasons? But marketers and agency execs say that it’s not that seasonality doesn’t matter, but they’re finding that they’re using seasonality less in messaging and more as a tool for targeting and understanding consumer behavior.

“What has changed is what and when the seasonality is,” wrote Margaux Logan, svp and head of marketplaces, Publicis Groupe, in an email. “Items that were traditionally a Cyber5 [the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday] purchase may have moved up in the cycle due to additional sales events or pricing work done by the retailers to create interest, fit adjusted marketing cycles or brand marketing campaigns or just plain based on timing. We saw an uptick on traditional [Back to School] items during Prime Day this year and the theory is that is due to Prime Day being later in the month than previously.”

Logan added: “The better our targeting gets at understanding consumer needs and sales cycles, the better brands are becoming at adding or adjusting their events calendar and changing their messaging accordingly.”

With Back to School efforts in particular, marketers are now using a more targeted regional approach than a national approach, explained David MacDonald, retail and commerce experience practice leader for Razorfish. National campaigns were typically timed later in the summer for markets where students returned to school after Labor Day. A regional approach allows some brands the ability to target consumers earlier, potentially closer to their true return to school.

Shoppers are ignoring seasonality, too

How consumers shop as well as consumption habits have shifted as social media feeds show this content earlier as well — from influencers on TikTok posting hauls to planning Pinterest boards for the school year months in advance, said Camila Caldas, strategist, at Mother Los Angeles. “You might be looking for sales earlier or thinking of what you need earlier because of the value component,” added Caldas, noting that consumers are particularly budget conscious this year. “You’re collecting inspiration earlier on, pulling things from here and there. That journey doesn’t start the month before school.”

Seasonality could be a way to see how brands are listening to customers more than ever. “They’re [Marketers are] actually building their product lines and building their promotions around different types of seasonality, said Sarah Engel, President of January Digital.

The shifts in seasonality aren’t just a marketing tactic for shoppers. Even some tourism boards are adapting to have a more evergreen approach to their marketing efforts, recognizing the elongated timelines and windows.

“We do still have creative that speaks to those seasons, but it’s less of a start/stop and just taking some of those signals for when people are thinking about travel, dreaming about travel,” said Kerry Moore, media director at Colle McVoy of the shop’s work for the city of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. “It’s evergreen but also seasonal.”

3 Questions with Ranu Coleman, head of marketing of PatPat, an online clothing store

Search functionality has become a bigger trend in social. How is PatPat using search on social for its marketing strategy?
[Traditional SEO has] been a first priority. But I would say second priority is TikTok, for sure. I use it as a search function and I know that it’s definitely high on our priority list. We’ve definitely been trying to work with TikTok a lot in terms of search functionality, as well. I would say those two: more traditional [SE]O] and then also TikTok. But even the company that we work with for SEO, most of our backlinking strategy is all AI. It’s all an AI tool and functionality that we use for that as well.

You mentioned PatPat is heavily invested in influencers. How do you measure success there?
Number one is we’re definitely looking at our impressions. So one thing that we do is, for each campaign — we run a lot of different campaigns — but for each campaign, we try to have about two to three core products in our collection that we have influencers promote. It helps significantly because you notice, obviously, increased sales or those three styles end up being your top sellers. Clearly, we’re still looking at revenue that’s coming in from the influencer codes. But also, I would just say, overall impressions. How engaged are people? Are they saving the video? Are they liking it? Are they engaging with it? Are the comments actually related to the product?

Are you seeing influencer rates getting more expensive? How is PatPat responding to hiked prices?
The rates, just in general, are crazy in my opinion. Some of them, they’ve gotten so astronomically high. Which, I guess for some brands, it’s totally fine. I think it’s a little harder for others. I would say one thing we do is we have, I would say, very core, good relationships with some agencies. We don’t work with that many. We work with the ones that we feel like we’ve established good relationships with and I think that helps just in terms of our negotiations. We actually also work with a lot of influencers for trade [trading brand products in exchange for influencer content] still. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

The wheels may already be in motion for holiday marketing this year. Seasons are no longer finite and marketers aren’t confined to traditional holiday promotion cycles as noted above. However, shoppers are expected to be tired of holiday marketing by November, according to a new holiday shopping report from Optimove marketing platform. See key findings from the report below: — Kimeko McCoy

• 67% of consumers are anticipating marketing fatigue by November 1st. Marketing fatigue occurs when consumers feel overwhelmed by the volume or repetition of brand messages, leading to reduced engagement and negative perceptions.
• 64% of consumers plan to shop online during the holiday season, underscoring the importance of integrating online and offline channels to provide a seamless shopping experience.
• Trust in online brands is high, with 66% of respondents confident in the security of their personal information. Brands must prioritize data protection and transparent communication to maintain and build consumer trust.

Quote of the week

“It’s a wake-up call that the unpredictability and volatility associated with self-proclaimed governing bodies and greed, coupled with Musk’s decisions and ego can have serious repercussions that ripple throughout our industry.” — Josh Rosen, president of Hotspex Media, when asked about Elon Musk’s antitrust lawsuit and subsequential unraveling of the Global Alliance of Responsible Media (GARM)

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