The small account's Ramadan

Every March the same request arrives from small advertisers. They want a Ramadan film.

They have seen the big ones, because everyone has. What they cannot see from outside is what those three minutes are standing on: a production that started a season earlier, and media that was committed in the autumn, before anyone knew what the film would say. The film is the last thing added to a machine that has been turning since the summer.

None of that is purchasable in the first week of March. The version a small account can afford is the worst of both, carrying the ambition of a big film with none of the weight behind it, and arriving with a third of the month gone.

The small accounts I have watched win this month rarely have a film at all. What they change is the timetable.

The offer that runs from nine at night instead of all day. One item on the menu built for a table of ten. Delivery open two hours later, with a kitchen actually staffed for them. A photograph taken after iftar in the actual room, with the actual plates, posted the same night by whoever took it. Replies going out until one in the morning, because that is when the messages arrive.

None of that is a campaign. All of it is a timetable, and a timetable can be decided this afternoon by the person who also does the ordering.

The film is what Ramadan looks like from outside a business. From inside a small one it is thirty days of operating hours, and the advertisers who treat it that way finish the month holding something they can run again next year, rather than an expensive asset they cannot.