It is the country's only major commercial period whose date changes every year, and that mobility alone is enough to make very organised teams miss the window.
Check the date before planning
It moves by several weeks from one year to the next, and it drags the school holidays and the long weekends along with it.
So never build your reverse schedule from a month. Take the exact date for the current year, put it in the calendar, and count backwards: running three weeks before, videos delivered five weeks before, shooting seven weeks before.
A team that plans "in April" because that is how it was last year sometimes discovers that everything happened in March.
The categories that live off it
Travel and accommodation, restaurants, food, mid-season fashion, motoring and everything to do with the journey.
To which are added the categories people forget: pharmacy and personal care, children's items, car accessories, the home when families gather.
What a week when the country moves changes
Your volumes no longer follow your averages.
Deliveries take longer, returns arrive later, customer service gets different questions, and some of your customers buy from a city other than their own.
Anticipate that in the content: a message promising a delivery time the period does not allow does more damage than the absence of a campaign.
Local and highly recognisable content
The traditions are not the same from one region to another, and neither is the tone.
Where the week is above all an observance, commercial communication leaning on it goes down badly. Where it is mainly a period of travel and reunions, the same message works without difficulty.
So split your buy by region rather than putting the same video across the whole country. It is more work, and it is what separates a local campaign from a translated one.
Long weekends change behaviour
Purchase times shift towards the evening, phone use rises, and decisions are taken on the move.
Plan short formats, readable without sound, and a hook that works for somebody watching while standing in a station.
Produce in January
That is the only calendar advice that really counts.
In January the creators are available, the rates are normal, and you have time to redo a video that is not right. Three weeks before the period, everything costs more and nobody is free.
What gets ordered around Holy Week
| The advertiser | Their order | Their window |
|---|---|---|
| A bakery or caterer | The seasonal product | The three weeks before |
| A hotel or rental | Availability and the district | Two months before |
| A clothing shop | The going-out outfit | The preceding month |
What is filmed and what is not
A product, a shopfront, a street away from the processions: yes. A procession, a brotherhood or a recognisable person during the service: only with the organisers' explicit consent, and never turned into a sales argument.
What the calendar imposes on scheduling
The date moves each year and the city is saturated during the week itself. Useful shoots happen before, while businesses still have time to take part and the streets remain passable.
What can be reused the following year
Service content can be reused almost entirely, provided no date is filmed in it.
Content tied to the traditions ages fast and gets recognised. Buy it for a year, keep it separate, and do not run it three years in a row hoping nobody remembers.
