As pointed out in a recent MarketWatch article, the upcoming holiday shopping season may start earlier this year due to the overlap of the Thanksgiving and Hanukkah holidays, in hopes of extending retail spending with an unusually truncated period of only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This rare intersection of Thanksgiving and Hanukkah hasn’t occurred since 1918, and in our modern consumer-driven economy, it presents some new challenges for retailers. At PReturn, we work with our clients to better understand how Thanksgivukkah may affect retailers’ holiday campaigns to help provide the retail and marketing trade media with the guidance and thought leadership they must in turn deliver to their readers to help them prepare and navigate these challenges to ensure strong holiday performance.
Essentially, with Hanukkah falling earlier this year, retail experts are speculating there may be two Black Fridays this season as marketers push to try to promote a jump start on holiday shopping. Retailers hope they can turn November 22nd into the first Black Friday, one week before the standard Black Friday so they can reach more Hanukkah shoppers.
Microsoft seems to be among those retailers hoping to capitalize on the push for an early holiday shopping season by releasing the Xbox One the week prior to Thanksgiving, beating Sony’s PS4 to market.Even nine year-old Asher Weintraub is getting in on the Thanksgivukkah action, having recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund his turkey-shaped menorah (a.k.a. – “Menurkey”) concept.
With just ten weeks until Thanksgivukkah, what sort of PR and media relations opportunities might your brand want to pursue in light of the unique 2013 holiday shopping season?