Are advertisers capitalizing on the holidays prematurely?
Halloween decorations disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared. They struck without warning and then they were gone, ghosting away, just like the ghouls they portray.
As the last Halloween revelers staggered home, retail clerks were already busy at work. Pumpkins and spiders are replaced with Christmas trees and turkeys. The song “Thriller” fades into Christmas carols. Graveyards become Nativity scenes and chocolate pumpkins are replaced with chocolate Santas.
Shane Wellner | Rawr
As the saying goes, “there ain’t no rest for the wicked,” and there’s even less rest for advertisers and marketers. These hearty souls spend their lives anticipating and planning for Christmas. Every day is focused on an upcoming annual event.
It’s a constant cycle. Back to school sale, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, 4th of July. The circle spins around, peppered with minor holidays and sales.
This machine is always in motion, but this is the season where it is most prominent. We are coming up on some of the biggest holidays of the year, and the options for advertisers are endless. If you are in the business of selling anything, your child’s Christmas presents often depend on how many Christmas presents you can sell to other people.
All the stops are pulled out in this last ditch effort to make a profit before the year is over.
Because of its proximity to Christmas, Thanksgiving has become almost inexorably linked to shopping. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have slowly gained ground and are now almost as much of an event as Thanksgiving itself.
Americans have always realized the retail potential of holidays. In fact, in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt actually pushed Thanksgiving forward a week in an effort to give consumers more time to shop for Christmas presents as America tried to move through the Great Depression. The retail benefits of this change were negligible and it messed up the schedules of countless Americans, but it did give FDR the dubious perk of having a holiday named after him, as critics dubbed the event “Franksgiving.”
Now, we consistently celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November, but the spirit that spawned “Franksgiving” is still alive. Instead of pushing the holiday around, advertisers simply kick off their Christmas promotions prematurely. Slowly but surely, every year the Christmas decorations go up a little earlier. At the current rate, Christmas decorations will start going up the Monday after Easter in the not-so-distant future.
Regardless of your beliefs about the sanctity, or lack thereof, of the holidays, it is undeniable advertising is inexorably linked to them in American culture. The line between holiday decorations and advertising collateral is so blurred it is almost irrelevant.
According to the advertisements, Christmas is nearly here, everything is on sale and carols are filling the air. Don’t be a Scrooge and “bah, humbug” the holidays away, but don’t let advertising define them either.
Cy Whitling can be reached at [email protected]