Santa is Coming to Town Earlier and Earlier
In marketing, we always look at target market data before we complain about this trend or that trend. So you should never hear a marketing person complain about Christmas shopping starting earlier and earlier. That’s because we are slaves to the data.
Yet I still hear bright marketers complaining about the season starting too soon. The data says Christmas may begin sooner than you think. Retailers of all kinds are finding that Christmas may make the fourth quarter click, yet the shopping happens all year long.
Here are the facts according to Epsilon and Adweek:
- 40% of shoppers began Christmas shopping in April-May-June
- 36% of shopping begins the three months directly after Christmas
- Only 23% of shoppers wait until December
- Most influential advertising for gift giving is TV (22%), email (22%), newspaper (19%), mail (12%), ad on brand’s website (6%) and magazine ads (4%)
- More than 50% of all shoppers will go to a brand’s website to look for coupons
- 38% will spend more than $500 on gifts this year
Retailers are not starting Christmas early, consumers are. Retailers are just responding to the data. Ho, Ho, Ho, Merry Halloween.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.