Post-iftar is three dayparts

Every media plan I have built or been handed has one row for the Ramadan night. The next one is expected around the eighteenth, depending on the sighting.

Post-iftar. A budget, a weight, one set of creative, sometimes a note about the hours.

The customer keeps three appointments inside that row, and arrives at them as three different people.

The first is the table at home, from sunset until the night prayer. The phone is face down. The buying was done that afternoon, in a shop or a queue, and the decision that mattered was made hours before the plan starts spending.

The second begins around ten, when the city comes out. Cafes full at eleven, a dessert place with a line at midnight, a mall busier than a December Saturday. This is a going-out audience with a wallet open and time to be persuaded, showing each other things on a screen.

The third begins around one in the morning, at a suhoor table. Friends rather than families, a shorter menu, a lower spend per head, and a reason for being out that has nothing to do with the reason at eight.

Three audiences, three places, three things being bought, and one line in the plan.

The row exists because the template came from a market with a single evening peak, and nobody reopened it when it landed here. In an ordinary month nobody would buy a row called daytime and expect one piece of creative to work on the school run, the office lunch and the hour before closing. That would be laughed out of the room.

Post-iftar is a word from the plan, not a word from the customer. It means the whole evening, which is another way of saying it means nothing at all.