Summer Is Gone Because The Tomatoes Are Here?
It seems that back-to-school sales & promotion campaigns are launched earlier each year, sometimes as early as mid July. This is understandable because the bottom line for merchants, vendors, corporations, and stores is they need to sell product & services and move inventory. This means they sell early, hard, and fast.
Right now, tomatoes are now in full bloom, and many folks in the media are using this to proclaim that summer is over. But what, if anything, are they really trying to sell?
I was under the impression that summer officially ended at the end of September. Not when school starts up again and not when it is time to sell something new, like a fashion or a food.
The reality for North America is that it is just over one-third of the way through summer. But for commercial media, right now it is fall or even perhaps winter.
I like the following analogies to media’s mid-summer announcement that summer is over;
- The hockey game is over at the beginning of the 3rd period
- The baseball game is over at the start of the 7th inning
- The basketball game ends in the middle of the third quarter
- You’re supposed to work from 9am to 5pm, but you leave at 3pm
- You wake up and start your day at 4am even though you’re supposed to wake at 6am
- You stop your car 20-meters from a red light even though nobody is in front of you
As far as I’m concerned, the media (television, radio, internet, print) can announce that summer has ended. While they’re doing this, I’ll be riding my bike, having a BBQ, or picking my tomatoes asking ‘What are they trying to sell me this time?’.
