Brands Are Scrambling To Sell You Stuff Before The Election

In a normal year, a holiday marketing email landing in my inbox the first week of October would have been cause for an immediate “unsubscribe.” In 2020, though, the premature arrival of festive cheer and seasonal discounts hardly registered as unusual — coming, as it did, after months in which my experience of time seemed to bear little connection to my calendar. Brands that might otherwise wait until mid-November to start pushing out holiday promotions had plenty of reasons for getting a head start, most of them related to the Covid-19 pandemic: reducing last-minute crowds, capitalizing on the momentum from Amazon’s months-delayed Prime Day, and accounting for shipping delays caused by the expected flood of online orders. The wild card that marketers say has been at the top of all of their minds, though, is the upcoming US presidential election, a single day in November that could very well monopolize the country’s attention long past the closing of the polls. Read more at Vox.