There are a LOT of things I just can’t wrap my mind around.  String theory.  The vastness of space.  Reality TV  One thing I’ll never understand is how seasonal marketing gets earlier with each passing year. 

Let me qualify that with this:  Intellectually I get it, emotionally, not so much.  Intellectually I get the promotion of hard products for “gift giving season” with each flip of the calendar.  Emotionally I’m lost when I walk into a store a week before Labor Day and there’s a lot of red and green crepe paper surrounding a display.  That’s a good 60 days too early in my book.  Especially when you know all the “really good deals” happen later, right?  (see “Friday, Black”) 

At the risk of sounding like grumpy old guy, what I’ll never understand, on either an emotional or intellectual level, is the earlier and earlier promotion of soft goods.  I don’t get walking into a store on December 26^th and seeing displays for Valentine’s Day.  Or walking into a store over Labor Day weekend to get barbeque supplies and have to navigate wall o’ Halloween candy.  

Ok.  I do get it.  There’s no way those perishables, once purchased, will make it to their intended holiday distribution destination. So more will have to be bought once those holidays actually happen. 

But what I’ll really never understand is how commercials that should have an end date/time still get broadcast this close to the end date of a promotion.  You know the ones.  They air Sunday nights and say to stop in this weekend for the giant, humongously colossal sale to end all sales.  Meanwhile the store has been closed for four hours.  

Ok.  I get it.  This is where the make good comes into play.  Users inputting data make a mistake here and there and things air that shouldn’t.  That’s why pencils have erasers, right?

Fine.  But you know what I really don’t get?  People that don’t get things…..

Ian Cohen is Production Director at The Radio Agency. Please follow The Radio Agency’s Blog “Sounding Board” by subscribing to the RSS link above. Visit our website TheRadioAgency.com