Four weeks out

Four weeks before Ramadan is expected to begin, depending on the sighting, the city has already said so.

In Cairo the lanterns and the string lights are out in the shop doorways, above the butcher and the phone repair place, weeks before anybody switches them on. In a Riyadh hotel car park the steel frame of the tent is up, unclad, with a price already quoted for it and a script on the banqueting line for the question. The delivery apps are advertising for riders. The mall contractors work at two in the morning. The sweet shop has a note taped to the till about advance orders.

Nobody briefed any of that. It is what a market looks like when its year is starting.

Then I open a plan for the same month and it is a document waiting for permission. Waiting for the sighting, for the final date, for the media owner to come back, for someone senior to approve a film. First contact with a customer is scheduled for the first night, because the first night is when the month begins.

The first night is when the month begins for the brand. For the household it started about now.

By the time that message lands, the family has settled whose house takes which evening, who is travelling and when, what the children will wear, how the working day gets rearranged. Those are the decisions a brand spends the whole month trying to influence, and they are taken in February, in a kitchen, by the person who writes the list.

A brand that arrives on the first night has not arrived late for the month. It has arrived after the choosing.