Why are panettones already on sale in September?
Have you seen the panettones in the supermarket yet? It’s not a Mandela effect: it’s just that there are exactly 100 days to go until Christmas. Just enough time to think about the peak season and figure out when it’s time for your brand to get in on the action.
Preparing in advance is useful, but only if you know why you’re doing it. Otherwise, you risk acting out of anxiety rather than strategy, and in marketing, anxiety is a bad advisor: it pushes you to rush campaigns, launches, and communications that might have been more effective in twenty or thirty days.
This article is dedicated to just that: understanding when to act and how to do it right.
The illusion of “the sooner the better”: the paradox of panettone in September
On supermarket shelves, between peach iced tea and exotic coconut, the first panettones are arriving. It’s a scene we know well by now, even if it surprises us a little every year.
There are many reasons behind this choice, and not all of them are wrong: psychologically, Christmas evokes positive emotions, family memories, and a sense of comfort that drives impulse buying. A study by psychologist Steve McKeown suggests that “Christmas decorations take us back to childhood, and therefore make us happy.” In a hyper-connected and stimulus-laden world, anticipating Christmas means, in essence, offering a small interlude of joy.
But if you are a company or a digital marketing professional, the question you should ask yourself is another: does it make sense to apply this same logic to your online strategy? Will publishing your gift guide on September 20 really help you sell more, or will you risk burning through your content too soon, losing attention just when the market is most ready?
Work ahead, yes, but only with data in hand
Working ahead can be a powerful lever, but only if it is driven by data and not by fear. It makes sense to work ahead for Black Friday, because in this case, following an action plan based on data can help you avoid wasting your budget.
To understand this, you first need to ask yourself a very simple question: is your audience ready? Are they already searching? Are they already comparing options?
Seasonal SEO is your sleigh, and SEOZoom is your Rudolph reindeer, to stay on topic.
Within SEOZoom, you can analyze the performance of keywords related to your industry in real time: from the keyword card with the seasonal graph (which shows you the minimum and maximum volumes for the year) to the “seasonality” column found in all keyword tables.
If a query related to Christmas gifts peaks on November 10, then publishing content on October 25 may be perfect. But if the same query only starts to move on December 1, then you have plenty of time to build a more reasoned strategy.
Because time is not enough: you also need attention
There is another risk that is often underestimated: starting too early can dilute attention. If you publish strategic content too far in advance, you risk talking to an audience that is not yet listening to you, and in the meantime, you will lose the novelty effect just when you need it most.
It’s a bit like the famous episode 3×10 of Modern Family, in which the whole family organizes an “early Christmas” in mid-August so they can celebrate together before everyone leaves for vacation. The intent is noble, but the result is surreal: Christmas lights under the scorching sun, themed sweaters when it’s 86°F in the shade, and out-of-season gifts. No one can really enjoy the party because the atmosphere is forced. The emotional, cultural, and contextual conditions are missing.
Anticipating trends can have the same effect. If the public is not yet paying attention, even the most carefully crafted content risks sounding out of place. It comes at the wrong time, when people are not yet mentally and emotionally ready to welcome it.
Here too, SEOZoom can help you. By analyzing the actual and seasonal trends of your website traffic (in the Domain Analysis section), you can compare peaks, drops, and year-over-year variations and understand when people really start to take an interest in your content. You can see where they come from, which queries trigger their interest, and how their informational intent varies over time. This type of insight allows you to build an editorial and advertising plan that is perfectly aligned with your audience, not just the calendar.
Don’t win the race against time: win the race for hearts
And here we come to the most important point. Too often, brands and marketers rush to publish early, driven by an implicit form of insecurity. “What if a competitor gets there first?” “What if I can’t find any advertising space available?” “What if Google doesn’t index me in time?”
But here’s a truth we should tattoo on our homepages: users don’t reward those who arrive first, they reward those who arrive at the right time for them. It’s a simple but powerful principle. The race is not about time, it’s about intention. And SEO, understood as content strategy, channel monitoring, and listening to searches, serves precisely this purpose: to enter the heart of the consumer at the exact moment when they are willing to listen.
Even the best content, if launched too late (or too early), risks leaving no trace. Whereas content that is well aligned with search intent becomes memorable, saved, shared, and converted into purchases.
Anticipating is not enough; you need to choose the right time
September is the perfect time to start thinking about Christmas. Not to publish everything, but to observe, analyze, and plan. With the right tools, such as SEOZoom, you can understand where your audience is, when they will start searching, and how to intercept them at the exact moment when their interest becomes intention.
Marketing isn’t a race to see who gets there first. It’s like asking someone to dance: if you ask too soon, you risk rejection. If you ask at the right time, you could be the perfect choice.
So yes, go ahead and add that panettone to your cart if you like, but before you write the definitive guide to Christmas gifts, open SEOZoom. The data can tell you when it’s really the right time to make yourself heard.
