CHRISTMAS COMING EARLY: ARE WE SELLING CHRISTMAS DOWN THE DRAIN?
Are you dreaming of a white Christmas yet?
We’ve all heard of “Christmas in July”. It’s an adorable sentiment for sure, as we try desperately to recapture a sense of festivity in the drab wilderness of the midyear.
More and more, our holidays seem to be moving – the starting block falling further and further down the calendar until one begins to bleed into the other. It’s become a sort of high-street stereotype now, hasn’t it? The Halloween pumpkins have barely gone soft, the trick-or-treat sweets are still uneaten, and someone starts lamenting the sudden influx of Chocolate Oranges and gingerbread on store shelves.
It is perfectly understandable, of course, for retailers to want to ‘get ahead of a holiday season. There’s money to be made as families prepare (and frequently over-prepare) for high days and holidays. By giving customers plenty of time to prepare, you also afford them plenty of time to shop: textbook lemonade-stand economics!
But recently, something has been bugging me…
As I write this, it’s mid-October of 2022. Halloween hasn’t yet happened, but there’s increasingly an odd atmosphere surrounding it. I expected our first real post-pandemic Halloween to feel a little more… defined. Surely, as a society, we’d embrace this particular holiday as a chance to get out into the world again? Surely, as retailers, we’d be meeting this demand?
In every store in which I find myself, however, something seems out of place. Out of the corner of my eye, almost haunting me (no pun intended)…
The iconography of Christmas: colourful baubles and autumnal ferns. Hardly in the spirit of Halloween, but no less THERE, in mid-October. And here I am, complaining about the Chocolate Oranges. I told you that someone would.
Is this the earliest that the Christmas marketing push has ever been? Are we, for some reason taking ‘Christmas in July’ just that bit too literally? I accept that not everything Christmasy can start in December. I’ve seen enough Christmas movies shot in April with mountains of fake snow to know that you need to give yourself some wiggle room to get a Christmas-themed product in front of a potential consumer. But is it excessive, perhaps even unreasonable, to kick off the Christmas rush before the spectre of Halloween has been exorcised?
The essence of my question is this: are we, as retailers starting to shoot ourselves in the foot? Are we going to see ourselves lose the Q4 trade because we are starting the race before the starting-gun has gone off? Are we kicking off the Christmas rush so early that the resultant complacency will lose us our business?
With the ongoing cost of living crisis (Sorry, I’m bringing it up again!), a survey by product design specialists Quantum Metric reports that most shoppers are only willing to spend around £500 this Christmas: down from previous years – way down! Couple that with the fact that people haven’t even factored in their Halloween and Bonfire-Night expenses yet; by starting Christmas marketing so early, are we going to shrink this number even further? Surely, people are going to be more willing to spend their increasingly hard-earned money when it feels most relevant!
I love Christmas; honestly, I do! Guard all of your gingerbread, ‘ye retailers, for I will try and buy it all when the festive season begins. But when does it begin, exactly? Have we become too keen? Are we, as an industry, failing to recognise that we’ve gone a little too far? Christmas in July is never as satisfying or rewarding as Christmas in December.
Let’s make the most of the festive period, at the right time!
Let us know what you think:
www.c-talk.co.uk
or
EMAIL: info@c-talk.co.uk