Just after the once-in-30 years alignment of Ramadan, Easter and Passover, it’s timely to reflect on the way brands embrace seasonality, and key festivals.
Despite the cost of living crisis, we’re hearing that people are willing to spend a little more on the goods and services that help them create more meaningful connections with friends and family. But we’re also hearing more overt rejection of simplistic or opportunistic seasonal branding – the dressing your product in Halloween livery, or the special edition rainbow Pride variant.
The consumers we’ve been talking to are looking for brands that know their role (or potential role) in an occasion, and dial that up well. If bought ahead and hidden, for example, your brand can contribute to the sense of anticipation – a reassuring presence in the cupboard of the happy moment to come. Often it’s not about dressing up in overtly ‘seasonal’ fancy dress, but demonstrating your fit to the occasion by being a better, more special and/or more celebratory version of your everyday offer.
For great insight into what this looks like in practice for Britain’s Muslim community, the ‘Next Generation Muslim’ report by @The People is well worth a read (you can download a summary here). There’s a frustration among 97% of the young Muslim community that they are only seen and communicated with at Ramadan – the ‘Ramadan campaign’ – and then ignored at other times of the year. The panel at the launch event that I attended also commented on how odd it is that Eid al-Fitr – the Festival of the Sweets – is overlooked in favour of the fast period; the equivalent of ignoring Easter yet focusing on Lent.
Looking internationally, we see people cutting back significantly yet still defending their expenditure on treating their kids, on creating meaningful family memories and choosing products that make them smile. In the UK this week, M&S ‘You give me butterflies’, joined the Percy Pig range. Its name makes it such a great all year round wee gift for romantics to their significant other, on all sorts of occasions that will only mean something to the people involved – and should see sales soar around Valentine’s Day.
The big lesson here, we think, is to focus on finding insight into the core emotional benefit of the occasion and building on that, rather than rely only on signalling the occasion per se.

Rachel is a Lucid Associate, leading our innovation work. She’s a swift-minded, pragmatic strategist with a consultancy background. Rachel began her career in brand experience strategy, before moving into foresight with The Henley Centre/Futures consultancy. She then worked in marketing at The Body Shop and Zurich and was an Associate with Big Green Door and Brand Genetics before joining Lucid.