The temperature is falling and the nights are drawing in. No, this isn’t a depressing seasonal version of ‘It’s Raining Men’, it’s a way of highlighting that it’s somehow October already.
So, silly season has come and gone and the focus is now very much on peak for retail and hospitality brands, as well as any business that wants a piece of the Halloween, Black Friday or Christmas pie.
What does the data say?
- According to data from Roxhill, 231 journalists across the UK national media wrote stories focused on Black Friday in Q4 2023, while 1,843 wrote Christmas content during the same period.
- Google Trends data shows that UK consumers are seemingly losing interest in Black Friday as a premise, with the peak being November 2019, before steadily declining every year since.
- The Guardian reported that the busiest day for retail returns in the UK is the Monday after Black Friday.
- The quarterly IPA Bellwether report shows that UK marketing budgets had their largest increase since Q4 2014 during last year’s peak period. Although it looks like £58.6bn of that budget was wasted on ads that weren’t optimised for the digital landscape.
Preparing for peak season: When, how, why?
Despite the decline in Black Friday’s popularity, it’s clear that peak season remains hypercompetitive for businesses. Given the volume of companies that get involved in the likes of Black Friday and Christmas, marketing and comms teams need to ensure they have the right approach to stand out.
When we’re working on peak season comms planning with our retail, logistics and e-commerce clients, our first port of call is to interrogate data from the past few years to understand where the highest ROI was achieved. If prior success has been experienced around Christmas, rather than Black Friday, then take that as a learning and feed it into our recommendations
Once we understand the when it’s time to begin looking at the how. Proprietary data is like gold dust so if a company has access to legitimately insightful data that speaks directly to peak - especially if it can be compared to previous years - it’s likely to be of interest. A logistics firm may well have data highlighting the carbon footprint of Christmas gifting, while a retail supply chain expert may be able to reveal how the amount of touchpoints from order to delivery has reduced over the years.
Arguably the most important question though, is why? If the reason to invest in peak isn’t directly aligned to business objectives and is simply an exercise in jumping on the holiday season bandwagon, we would advise you don’t. The competitive nature of peak season means only the strongest stories make the cut and those trying to shoe-horn messages into the media won’t see the returns they’re hoping for.
So, when putting the finishing touches to your plans for peak season comms, ask yourself: Just because we’ve always engaged with Black Friday, does that mean we have to this year? Or, are we jumping on the bandwagon when our time and effort would be better spent elsewhere? With that context, you’ll be creating an environment it’s much easier to succeed in.
Come back for next week’s Your Weekly Antidote, another dose of data-driven news analysis on one of the biggest stories of the week from your favourite comms tech agency.
