The week before

Three days from now, every brand in the Kingdom will post the same thing at the same hour. Green, a flag, a line about pride, a logo in the corner. I have made those posts. Some of them were good. None of them were remembered, because nothing posted into that hour is remembered. The feed on the day belongs to the institutions and to the people, and a brand in it is a guest talking over the host.

The brands that are remembered did their work this week.

They did not interrupt the day. They enrolled people in the run-up. A restaurant that changed its menu a week ahead and let regulars find it. A retailer whose staff were wearing the colours on Sunday, not Wednesday. A delivery brand that put a small, real thing into every order in the days before, when nobody was expecting it and it did not have to compete with anyone. A bank that did something for its customers' businesses, quietly, and let them tell the story.

Enrolment is when the customer chooses to take part before the moment arrives. Interruption is when you arrive with the moment and ask for attention that has already been given to something else.

The difference is timing, and timing is the cheapest thing in the plan. It costs nothing to be a week early. It only requires deciding, in August, that the day itself is not the campaign.

So the question I ask now, ahead of any national moment, is what the customer will already have received from the brand by the time the day comes. If the answer is a post, that is an interruption. If the answer is a reason to feel included, the enrolment already happened, and the post on the day can be as quiet as anyone likes.

Be early, be small, and be theirs by the time everyone else shows up.