Happy Summerween
Forget Christmas in July. In 2024, major brands and retailers are embracing Summerween — a summer celebration of the fall holiday, and a cheeky way for companies to build excitement during slower months like July and August.
Halloween spending was expected to reach $12.2 billion in 2023, exceeding the previous year by nearly $2 billion, so it's a no-brainer that we're seeing stores like Home Depot and Michael's capitalize on that this summer.
For many Halloweens now, Home Depot has inspired the masses with its 12-foot skeletons, and that much is still true this year, except that the retailer dropped its entire Halloween decor collection on July 18th. The announcement from Home Depot's Instagram earned 9k engagements.
Decorations are not the only things to come early though, with Reese's making their Peanut Butter Pumpkins available sooner than ever.
Bath and Body Works also released new Halloween fragrances on Instagram, Disney opened their Halloween costume shop online, and Spirit Halloween stores will be opening in August, so it's safe to say that the public's insatiable need for all things Halloween is undoubtably being met.
Project 2025 walkback shows the power of unified messaging
Project 2025 — the proposed transitional plan published by the Heritage Foundation — has come in for a significant amount of criticism in the last few weeks.
Although the proposal has been public for some time, it has really come into the spotlight in recent weeks, and just yesterday the director of the project Paul Dans stepped down from his position.
The graph below illustrates just how much the media suddenly started to focus on the issue, with a huge increase in how much was written about Project 2025, and the public's interest and awareness of it.
Much of this increase in attention seems to tie directly back to consistent messaging from the Biden administration and other Democrats in the last few weeks.
In June, non-politicians such as Joy-Ann Reid and Mark Hamill had been talking on social media about the potential impact of Project 2025, but it was a post to Joe Biden's website on June 26th that appears to have set the wheels in motion.
Beginning from this point, Biden himself has consistently posted about Project 2025, as has the new presumptive nominee Kamala Harris. But beyond that, we've seen posts from Hillary Clinton, Eric Swalwell, and Hakeem Jeffries among others, as it clearly solidifies into election messaging for Dems — and one that clearly resonates.
Donald Trump also felt the need to distance himself from the project on his own channels, putting out on Facebook that he has nothing to do with Project 2025, and the continued noise appears to have culminated in the personnel changes announced yesterday.
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Messaging is often intangible or more long-term focused, so it's always interesting to see real-world effects it can have in the short term, and the Democrat messaging here is a great example of that.
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