Choosing, then solving

In the first week of August the parent buying school shoes is choosing. In the last week she is solving.

Same shop, same category, same household, and not the same person.

The early one has time. She is comparing, checking what still fits from last year, waiting to see whether the list the school sends changes anything. She wants range, sizes, a reason to prefer this one over that one, and she is perfectly willing to leave and come back on Thursday.

The late one has run out of road. Term starts on a date she does not control, the list is final, and what she needs is availability: open now, close enough, in stock, and certain to be there when she arrives. Price matters to her less than it did a fortnight earlier, which is the reverse of what most plans assume about the end of a season.

Most accounts run one message across the whole six weeks and put more money behind it as the date approaches. So the calm weeks receive an offer built for urgency, and the final week receives an argument about choice, made to somebody who has stopped choosing.

From the platform side, the accounts that did well in a season were rarely the ones with the best creative. They were the ones carrying two answers: one to what should I buy, and one to can I have it today.

The last week of a season does not need a bigger budget. It needs a different sentence, and the sentence has to be written now, because in the last week there is nobody free to write anything.