I am fresh back from Korea, the brand marketing, popup, merchandising, and apparently overall capitalism capital of the world. I’ve often thought about what does it look like when inevitably every brand becomes far better at marketing, and the standard for every piece of creative becomes exceptional and tasteful, and this is happening in Seoul, and it is… overwhelming. Lots to unpack from our trip, including notes from the K Beauty trade show, all coming over the next few weeks.
Speaking of being on the road… if you are in New York and work in marketing at a brand, I am speaking at the Tatari Forward conference specifically about brand world building next Thursday. Info here.
For everyone in SF, I am joining a truly excellent lineup at Motion’s Chief Marketer event on November 3rd, info here.
And our last Cut30 short form video bootcamp of 2026 launches on Tuesday, you can join here.
In this HYPER we’re going to go through holiday marketing planning, and into what it’s like to work in marketing today.
Let’s begin.
Planning your holiday marketing
If you haven’t locked in your holiday plans, good news, we’re going to get into some planning together, courtesy of my friends at Alia. This is the exact matrix you should use to get together a plan to maximize holiday sales. Use the worksheet here, explained below.
You have five phases to max out revenue, and each one needs its own plan.
Phase 1: Early November pre-sale. Start early if you need to move units, I did a study last year on when brands started and it shouldn’t be a shock but the brands that started earlier tended to drive higher revenue numbers.
For your popups on site: Start by offering early access to the sale for subscribers only to get people anticipating and build fear of missing out.
Phase 2: Black Friday week. Lock in. Best offer, straightforward, heaviest spend. Test creative, but never the deal.
For your popups: Build out popups by intent. Push a slight extra, like free shipping or additional discounts. To get new people over the line, point return customers to popular second order products or categories.
Phase 3: Holiday blitz. This is regular shopping that comes after Cyber Monday, mostly undiscounted. Use your gift guides and bundles, test gamified popups. Margin comes back here.
Phase 4: Last-second week. If you are still shipping, say so. Shipping cutoffs are your urgency, offer free expediting in your popup for urgency. Gift cards carry the final 48 hours.
Phase 5: Aftermath. People are treating themselves with gift money. New-year framing and your retention offer for everyone who bought in November.
For each phase you need four plans.
Email and SMS. Who gets what, which day, which offer. Early access goes to the list first. Each phase gets its own angle. Don’t forget letters from the Founder, plain text, and gift guides in partnership with your influencers or team members
Social. Your account and your influencers, briefed by phase. Anticipation, then the offer, then gift guides, then “still time,” then “what I got.”
Ads. Specific creative per phase mapped to the buying habits above, cut before November so you are swapping in December instead of making.
Website. Popups, banners and homepage should reflect the phase you are in. Plan your updates and assign responsibility.
A few pieces of popup inspiration to start testing now to see if you can up your conversion rates going into holiday:
All of these popups above are easy templates to implement in Alia. Alia has smart testing, advanced targeting to change pops based on behavior source and intent, all the interactive experiences you’ve seen on various sites from quizzes to games, plus smart triggering to capture up to 40% more subscribers.
Get started with Alia here
Printable planning template.
What it’s like working in modern marketing
I sat down with Drew, a creative strategist working directly with brands, to compare notes on what’s working across social, ads, and creator partnerships. He’s shooting street interviews, editing dozens of videos a week, and testing UGC himself, and is a good example of what working in modern marketing looks like for new employees who work with growing businesses on social media.
A few things from our conversation:
We hit street interviews, social shows, creator compensation, AI editing, physical spaces and much more in the video above.
As always
We are hiring at Darkroom: https://www.darkroomagency.com/careers
Until next week,
Oren