Every November, half the owners I coach quietly take their foot off the marketing accelerator. Staff are tired, budgets look stretched after a hard year, and someone always says “everyone's checked out anyway, so why spend the money.” Here's the problem with that logic: November and December are when NZ and Australian retail spending peaks, and when your customers make more purchase decisions than at any other point in the year. I've watched this exact mistake hand market share straight to a competitor inside six weeks, more than once, and it's entirely avoidable if you plan it now, in September.

The enemy here isn't December. It's the assumption that attention drops in December, so marketing can drop with it. That's backwards. Attention goes up — people are scrolling more, shopping more, comparing more, and quietly deciding who they'll buy from in January before they've even taken the tree down. What actually drops is marketing effort, because owners confuse “we're tired” with “our customers are tired.” Those are not the same thing.

I've watched this play out inside one FMCG category two years running. One brand pulled all paid activity and social posting from mid-December through late January — “everyone's on leave anyway.” A direct competitor kept a lean but consistent presence through the same window: two posts a week, one small promotion, ranging conversations still happening. By February, the quiet brand had lost shelf position and mental availability it took eight months to win back. The market didn't shrink. One competitor showed up; the other didn't.

This is where I get owners to build what I call the November Lock-In — a short, decisive planning session, done in the next few weeks, that protects your Nov-Jan presence before fatigue and budget optics get a vote.

1. Set a floor, not a switch — agree the minimum spend/output for the whole period, non-negotiable.

2. Batch and pre-schedule in October/November so content survives leave and chaos.

3. Pick three dates, not thirty — a short, specific promotional calendar.

4. Name one owner for the gap, accountable for the floor holding.

“Kevin, you distilled business, marketing and sales strategy into powerful simple concepts and actions with real life stories of your start-up business and corporate life. You walk the talk with empathy and passion. Feedback has been off the charts. The energy in the room was palpable.”

— Nikki, MahiTahi / Colab (11 Food and Beverage Companies)

Most owners reading this already know all of it. They've done a version of the Lock-In before, in a good year. The problem isn't knowledge — it's execution under pressure. Budget optics make marketing spend an easy line to cut in December when everything else feels urgent. Team fatigue means the person who'd normally own this is the first one checked out. And “it can wait until January” feels true right up until January arrives and you're three weeks behind everyone who didn't stop.

That's exactly the gap accountability closes. An owner working through this alone will let the floor slip the moment something else catches fire, and in December something always catches fire. An owner with a coach or a structured check-in has someone asking, in October, “is the floor locked in?” and again in November, “is it scheduled?” That's not motivation. It's a second pair of eyes on the one decision every business in your category is quietly making the same call on.

If you want someone making sure your Nov-Jan floor actually holds instead of quietly slipping, that's exactly the kind of accountability I build with the owners I coach.