Tis The Season

The best businesses I work with balance merchandise, marketing, and creative.

Cyber Monday obviously skews strongly to pricing ... no need for marketing / creative brilliance. That's how Thought Leaders like things ... they either make everything so complicated you couldn't possibly execute properly (#omnichannel) or they pick a corner of the triangle above and tell you that excellence in one area equates to excellence in all areas.

With Christmas a few weeks away, large businesses are applying their version of the "triangle" above to coax customers into orders. Tis the season for the image they believe will convert a customer to an incremental order. Any similarities?

When the largest "brands" all choose one direction, you have an opportunity to choose another direction. Kohl's / Macy's / Target / Walmart all clearly view the world through the eyes of a specific type of female aligned with the color "red".

Ecommerce is begging for somebody to be creative. It's one thing to optimize boring/sterile Facebook Ads paired with 60% off on Cyber Monday. It's another thing for agencies to recommend one type of woman as your "idealized consumer". It's difficult to walk away from that world and chart your own course via creative strategies. But it's necessary as we move into 2026.