Black Friday and Christmas campaigns: the seasonal calendar

A Black Friday campaign or a Christmas campaign is prepared several weeks in advance, not in the same month. For each seasonal period you need four decisions in the right order: offer, stock, creative and measurement. If you leave them for the last week, you pay more and have less choice.

The calendar of a Greek business has a few major retail periods and many smaller occasions. You do not need to be everywhere. Choose the periods that genuinely bring in sales in your sector and work on them properly.

The seasonal campaigns of the year in Greece

• Black Friday and Cyber Monday, at the end of November. In 2026, Black Friday falls on 27 November and Cyber Monday on the 30th. Many stores spread their offers across the whole week.
• Christmas: in practice, the gift season starts straight after Black Friday and ends with New Year and Epiphany.
• Winter sales, which start in January, and summer sales, which start in July. Their dates are set by regulation, so check them every year.
• Valentine's Day and Mother's Day: smaller gift occasions, suited to jewellery, cosmetics, flowers and restaurants.
• Easter: the date changes every year. In 2027, Orthodox Easter falls on 2 May.
• Summer: tourism, holidays, summer sales. For some sectors it is the strongest period, for others the quietest.
• Back to school in September, for children's goods, bookshops, clothing and footwear.

How early to prepare

The time you need depends on what the campaign involves. A campaign with only posts and email takes less time than one with a new photo shoot, a shop window and printing. As an example, for a Christmas campaign with a store and an e-shop, the sequence looks like this:

1. Two to three months before: you decide what you will promote, what the offer will be and what stock you will need. Placing orders with suppliers takes the longest.
2. Six to eight weeks before: brief, idea and key visual. You book the photo shoot and video.
3. Four to six weeks before: photo shoot, editing, copy and the offers page on the e-shop. You send the in-store materials to print.
4. Two weeks before: you check tracking, links and promo codes, brief the staff, and schedule posts and emails.
5. Campaign week: you monitor sales and stock every day and change whatever is not working.

The same pattern works for every period, as long as you count from the right date. If Easter falls in early May, the Easter photo shoot is booked in March. For an e-shop, count backwards from the last day on which you guarantee delivery before the holidays, not from the holiday itself.

Stock and offers before the creative

The creative follows the offer, not the other way round. Before anything is designed, answer these questions in writing:

• Which products are included in the offer and which are not. Products with a small profit margin may not be able to take a discount.
• What kind of offer: a percentage, a fixed amount, a gift with purchase, free shipping or a product bundle.
• How much stock you need and what you will do if a product sells out: an alternative suggestion, a waiting list, a change to the advertising.
• How long the offer runs and whether it applies equally in the store and on the e-shop.
• What the last order date is for delivery before the holidays.

For every price reduction, the original price you show must follow the rules on announcing sales and offers. Before each period, check the current guidance from the competent ministry and ask your accountant or legal adviser.

A seasonal campaign does not have to be just a discount. For New Balance, THPAUL designed two Easter activations. In “We Paint Shoes, Not Eggs”, an established painter painted a large 3D shoe live inside the store, and with purchases of children's footwear from €49, children received a small 3D shoe as a gift to paint themselves. In “Easter's Gift for a Greener Home”, every purchase of a children's shoe came with four small pots of cress seeds, packed in an egg box. In both, the gift with purchase became an invitation to take part.

Creative, store and measurement

One idea for the whole period works better than ten unconnected posts. Design a key visual and produce all the materials from it: shop window, signage, a banner for the e-shop, ads in every format, email. From the start, prepare two versions of the advertising: one for before the offer, which builds interest, and one for the days of the offer, with the price and the deadline.

For measurement, decide before you start what you will compare: sales and average order value against the same period last year, advertising cost per sale, how many new customers came in and how many bought again later. Keep notes on whatever sold out early or stayed on the shelf. It is the most useful document for next year. The mistakes we see most often:

• An offer decided after the creative has already been designed.
• Advertising that leads to a product that has sold out.
• Different prices or terms in the store and on the e-shop, with no explanation.
• A campaign that stops abruptly, with no follow-up for the people who bought.

THPAUL starts every retail campaign from the retail calendar and the message, designs the key visual and produces from it all the materials for print, the store and online. For shop windows, it plans a calendar of changes with you for each collection or retail period.