Ramadan content planning: a timeline for Gulf brands

Ramadan is the most commercially important month in the Gulf calendar, and it is also the one most often planned too late. That is rarely carelessness. The month moves each year against the Gregorian calendar, it changes the shape of the working day, and the approvals it needs fall exactly when everyone has least time to give them. Whether your content is made in-house or by an agency, the same pressures apply.

First decide how present you want to be

Brands differ enormously in how they show up during the month. Some run a full campaign, some post a single greeting, and some choose to stay quiet on purpose. No approach is safe by default across every brand, and assuming one is how apologies end up being written.

Make the decision explicitly and early, write it into the plan, and brief it clearly to whoever produces your content. The worst case is a post queued weeks before, in a tone you would never have signed off, going out simply because nobody looked at it again.

A note on the plan that says this brand needs care during Ramadan does more good than any amount of good intentions.

Count back from the first day

The real limit is not the month itself but how much can be produced in the fortnight before it begins. Anything running in the first ten days has to be approved before working hours shorten, which in practice means creative is locked a month earlier than it would be for an ordinary campaign.

Treat Ramadan as a normal cycle and you end up producing Ramadan content during Ramadan, on shorter hours, with slower approvals on both sides and everyone working reduced days. That is how a campaign meant for the first week launches in the second.

Shorter days, and not the same everywhere

Working hours shorten, but differently across the region and between the public and private sectors. End of day can mean one thing to a team in Riyadh and another to a team in Dubai in the very same week.

Write the real dates and hours onto the plan instead of assuming everyone has made the same adjustment. It takes ten minutes at the outset and saves a fortnight of crossed expectations, especially where your approvers keep a different shortened day from the people producing the work.

The audience moves, it does not vanish

Engagement does not fall away during Ramadan; it relocates. Late evening becomes the peak, particularly after iftar, while the early afternoon slot that normally performs goes quiet. Overnight can be surprisingly strong.

Running Ramadan content on an ordinary posting pattern is the most common avoidable mistake in the region, and it is a scheduling fault rather than a creative one. The content is often fine. It simply went out when nobody was looking.

Audit what is already queued

Content scheduled well in advance is the quiet risk. A lunch offer promotion, a bright campaign line, a competition timed badly: each was approved in a different context and none was looked at again. Before the month begins, review everything queued for its full length, not only the new work. It takes about an hour, and it is the most valuable hour in the whole planning cycle.

The details that usually slip

• Greeting assets for the start of the month and for Eid, approved in advance.
• A decision on paid media: whether it pauses, moves to the evening, or increases.
• Cover for the shorter days, agreed between you and whoever produces your content, so nobody waits on an approval that was never going to arrive that afternoon.
• The restart after Eid, which is planned last, arrives fastest, and catches out teams who put all their preparation into the opening days.

Leave notes for next year

Because the dates move every year, what you learn in one Ramadan is unusually valuable and unusually easy to lose. A short record at the end of the month, covering what performed, when the audience was really active and what was decided for each brand, will be worth more next year than any general advice, this article included.

If next Ramadan is already on your mind, ALXO would be glad to start that conversation early, while there is still time to plan it calmly.