Christmas Already

November 6, 2024

Twas the day after Halloween, and all through the shop,

The pumpkins were no longer, wop wop wop wop wop.

Mince pies, Christmas puddings, decorations and that,

Shelf upon shelf of barely-November Christmas tat.

It's Golden Quarter, that time of year when retailers and brands run from tentpole event to tentpole event barely stopping for breath. And in the shops, barely a day after Halloween, the pumpkins, witches hats, spiderwebs and bats have all gone and been immediately replaced with mixed nuts, stollen, advent calendars and crackers.

System 1 are already on high alerts, assessing the Christmas ads to see what will win Christmas this year. And actually that is quite exciting. After forever of there being the Super Bowl, a game I will never understand being peppered with hugely ambitious and expensive adverts for brands I've never heard of, being the advertising and marketing olympics, we have our own here courtesy of John Lewis and Adam&EveDDB.

It is an annual event, and it is something to celebrate. The big guns come out with their best. John Lewis are going into year two with Saatchi & Saatchi, Aldi - who have won Christmas the last couple of years - will be bringing back Kevin the Carrot in some guise or other and M&S are likely to have Dawn French back bringing her own very British charm. But what else, and who will win?

Of course, with all the rush to hit the ground running for Christmas you do have to spare a thought for Halloween. Not really a thing when I was a kid, it is no doubt now a big cultural event over here in the UK. But it doesn't seem to have got the same degree of thought and love as Chrimbo. Not if the multitude of "all treats, no tricks" messaging is anything to go by.

It feels lazy. Even worse, it feels bland. It lacks distinctiveness and I honestly couldn't tell you anything about any of the campaigns I've seen out in the wild for Halloween this year.

But that's Golden Quarter, and we all have to make choices especially when you add in other events such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and cultural events such as Divali.

Anyhoo, enjoy our Super Bowl and be kind in your criticism of the work you see. It'll be the result of people working their arses off and putting their necks on the line, but they've got work out there and that's not easy.

Right. The Obvious Questions Answered.

Why does Christmas advertising matter so much more than other seasonal advertising?

Because it's the one moment of the year where emotional advertising has near-universal cultural permission to go fully long-term brand, to be genuinely moving, funny, or memorable, without anyone asking what the immediate conversion rate was. That's rare. The correlation between emotionally resonant advertising and long-term business outcomes is well established, and Christmas is when brands get the most latitude to produce it.

John Lewis understood this early and turned it into a commercial asset. The anticipation of the ad became part of the brand equity. That's not a communications trick. That's years of consistent creative quality compounding into something genuinely valuable.

Why do so many Halloween and other seasonal campaigns feel forgettable?

Because they're built to fill a calendar slot rather than to say anything distinctive. "All treats, no tricks" is the creative equivalent of a shrug. It acknowledges the occasion, avoids saying anything interesting, and leaves no impression whatsoever. Which means the budget spent producing and distributing it has done almost nothing for mental availability or brand association.

The question any seasonal campaign should answer before a brief is written is: what does this occasion mean for our specific brand, and how do we express that in a way only we could? If the answer is a pun about the holiday, start again.

What is the Golden Quarter and how should marketers approach it?

The Golden Quarter is the period from roughly October to December, covering Halloween, Bonfire Night, Black Friday, and Christmas, the highest-spend consumer period of the year in most Western markets. For brands in relevant categories it represents a disproportionate share of annual revenue, which means the planning, budget allocation, and creative quality decisions made in the preceding months carry outsized commercial weight.

The mistake most brands make is treating each tentpole event as a separate campaign rather than a coherent period with a consistent brand voice running through it. The best brands maintain distinctiveness across the whole quarter rather than lurching between unconnected executions.

How do you balance short-term sales activation with brand building during peak retail periods?

With difficulty, and with a clear-eyed view of what each type of activity is actually for. Sales activation, promotions, offers, urgency-based messaging, works on people already close to a purchase decision. Brand advertising works on everyone else, building the memory structures that make them more likely to consider you next time. Both are necessary. The peak retail period tends to pull everything toward activation because the short-term returns are visible and immediate.

The brands that consistently win over multiple years are the ones that don't abandon brand entirely when the pressure is on. They keep the distinctive assets in play even in promotional periods, so the activation activity borrows equity from the brand rather than depleting it.

Does advertising creative quality actually affect commercial outcomes, or does spend level matter more?

Both matter, but creative quality is the more controllable variable for most businesses and the one most consistently underestimated. The research from the IPA and from System 1 is pretty unambiguous: emotionally resonant, distinctive creative significantly outperforms rational, product-focused creative on long-term business metrics. And the Christmas advertising season, where the creative bar is publicly visible and hotly debated, is one of the clearest demonstrations of this playing out at scale every year.

Spend gets you reach. Creative quality determines what that reach actually does to the brand.