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🪩 Volume 154 | September 30, 2026

 

It’s almost Q4 which is more concerning as your average human/consumer than it is a business owner, don’t you think?

 

Prime Day is October 7-8. (Stores like Target and Walmart are tossing their hats in the ring with copycat sales, too.)

 

Then Black Friday will start October 9 (kidding but like, not? Lol)

 

You get a short window to stock up your halloween candy & decorate with your version of pumpkin chic vs jack-o-lantern spooky.

 

Then boom, it’s Thanksgiving and BOOM AGAIN, it’s Christmas. Family, travel, school activities, holiday parties. If you’re a social butterfly, it’s your season. If you’re overwhelmed already, hi.

 

As a marketer/business-doer… that means you’ve got a lot competing for your attention.

 

You always do. Q4 just cranks up the volume big time.

 

So this week’s campaign coverage, we’re gonna play a game called “is it a good time?” You’ll see what I mean. 

 

Let’s go:

 

 

 

 

Yeah. Like now. BEFORE November 1. It’s a big hell yes for me. As previously mentioned… the holiday window opens way earlier than the day after Thanksgiving now. Amazon prime, that capitalist GIANT, made Prime Big Deal Days kick it all off (October 6-7). Launch BEFORE that and you get TIME: time for the market to react, time for people to tell a friend, time for it to land on a wishlist before everyone goes gifting-frenzy crazy. Launch MID-NOVEMBER and you’re just another tab in a spend-money race. 

 

 

Yeah. And might I recommend a few? For business: Stupider People Have Done It & Who Not How.  For pleasure: Into the Blue, Heart the Lover, One Day in December (esp with the holidays coming!) & Wild Dark Shore. 

 

 

Eh, NO, and I'll go further: a big fat NO to any major website changes right now, especially if your conversion's already decent. This isn't me being precious, it's a real practice with a real name called: CODE FREEZE. Retailers lock their sites between Halloween and Thanksgiving on PURPOSE, because the cost of a broken checkout in December is not the same as a broken checkout in July. (One percent more conversion in November is worth a small fortune. One new bug in November is worth a small, er, LARGE, heart attack.) The better move is to make your changes BEFORE the freeze (like, now) and then leave it ALONE. Small A/B tests and tweaks? Fine, go play. Ripping out your navigation on December 3rd? Absolutely the heck not.

 

 

Hell yeah, with ONE big asterisk on timing. Raise your prices NOW, in October, before the spend-money season kicks in. New pricing lands a heck of a lot cleaner when it's had a minute to exist in the ether, versus jumping the week before Black Friday (which shoppers 100% notice, because they've been browsing since October, and which—fun fact—the FTC actively frowns on if you're doing it just to slash a fake “was” price).

 

So: NO to “jack it up for the holidays.” YES to “reset my baseline in October so that when I DO discount in November, I'm giving up margin I chose to give up, not margin I never had.” Raise on purpose, discount on purpose. :) 

 

 

Eh, totally up to you. “I have a prior commitment” and that commitment being your couch + a glass of wine is a complete sentence, though. 

 

 

I always say get creative, but in Q4, creative isn't a nice-to-have, it’s A NEED.

Ad costs jump 15–40% in Q4, and Black Friday week can literally DOUBLE what you pay per thousand eyeballs. You're paying premium rent. So the worst thing you can do is fill that $$$ expensive space with mundane, normal ads. Creative is the biggest sales lever there is. Nielsen says it drives ~half of the sales an ad generates, more than your targeting and your audience combined. (System1 even scores it: a boring ad barely moves market share; a genuinely great one moves it 3x as much.)

 

The move for October: pull up your best-performing ads from ALL year, and rerun your weirdest winners, not untested new stuff you're gambling premium dollars on. Creative and weird beat mundane and normal; in Q4, they beat it while everything's on sale.

 

 

1. Another newsletter I just love to read is “the skimm” – and they have a segment called “tabs I have open.” Not gonna steal that, but this week I have a TON of shopping tabs open as I prep for the “deals season.” Here’s what’s got MY attention (and what I’m currently getting SPAMMED with abandon cart emails for): Primally Pure’s new “jelly to milk” cleanser, Rothy’s Clogs, a Bluey Christmas yard inflatable (tell me you have kids without telling me), a new Cordless Vacuum and this fully automatic Ninja coffee/espresso machine.

 

2. When a groovy new innovative product comes out, I am usually NOT one to jump. I’m the type of consumer that has to hear that it works before I personally try (from a friend) but idk, I might be jumping right into this new innovative nail polish brand.