Wow!! It’s hard to believe we’re already approaching the Christmas or Holiday season. You can call it what you want to. Merchants are having “Black Friday” sales events before Thanksgiving in an effort to move merchandise.
Some people complain that it’s too early to start advertising for the Holidays. I’ve heard people talk about when they were kids, advertising didn’t start until after Thanksgiving. Over 30 years ago, while I was at the Fire Department, I worked part time at Radio Shack. The manager of the store started putting out Christmas information posters, and decorations on the first day of November. I grumbled a little bit and he explained the reason. It made sense.
When I was a kid, even the town where I grew up, started decorating with the street lights before Thanksgiving. It took about 3 weeks to put up the decorations. Thanksgiving evening the lights were turned on.
A business has to be two seasons ahead in operating. A good example is a clothing store that cannot wait until the last week of summer to bring out their fall line. The clothes have to be selected, bought, manufactured and shipped to the store in order to have it ready for fall. This trend has migrated to other business areas as well. I noticed one large chain store advertising “Layaway” with commercials back in September.
With today’s economy, is this a bad thing? Not really. It gives people a chance to purchase items and spread out the payments without paying credit card interest. If you’ve ever gotten depressed after Christmas when the bills started coming in, you know what I mean.
My Chamber of Commerce is offering a “Christmas Village” type of advertising this year, where you can go to their website and find local business owners and hopefully keep some of the money in the local economy. We (MAC Tee’s) are advertising there. Hopefully someone will want a “seasonal” shirt to wear at the family gathering.
So, is it too early to advertise for Christmas? I don’t think so. I think it makes “Good Cents”.
