The campaign calendar: phases, key dates and the flighting of every discipline

The campaign calendar is the timeline every team works from: the campaign's phases, the fixed dates it must respect, and for each discipline, phase by phase, whether it is off, light or heavy. It is where the plan's "timing" box becomes operational, and where clashes and gaps between disciplines become visible before they reach the customer. A media plan sits under it for the paid lines.

The calendar uses the scheduling patterns of media planning. The Radio Advertising Bureau, citing the American Marketing Association's definitions, describes three: continuity, where weight stays steady through the campaign; flighting, where messages run in intervals separated by periods with no advertising, each active period being a "flight"; and pulsing, a mix of continuous and flighted insertions that produces heavy-up periods¹. Erwin Ephron's "Recency Planning" in the Journal of Advertising Research argued that "when" matters more than "how many", favouring reach close to the moment of purchase over heavy frequency². Les Binet and Peter Field's principles add the long view: brand effects build over long periods, alongside the short-term spikes of activation³.

The calendar is also the action stage of PR Smith's SOSTAC: who does what, when, with which resources⁴. The IPA's best-practice guide to communication strategy describes how channel roles and their sequence are planned together⁵.

1. Set the phases and their weeks from the plan's objectives.
2. Add fixed dates: holidays, Ramadan and Eid, school terms, trade shows, financial results, competitor launches you know of.
3. Choose the pattern for the campaign and note why.
4. Fill each discipline's row, phase by phase: off, light or heavy.
5. List dependencies: what must be ready, by whom, before each phase starts.
6. Read down each phase: is anyone missing at launch? Are four teams heavy at a moment the customer will not notice?

Illustrative: the fictional Ourika Roasters' twelve-week subscription launch.

• Weeks 1 to 4, tease in-café cards and staff heavy; owned social light; PR pitching the weekly-roasting story.
• Week 5, launch paid social, search, PR, owned social, email and cafés all heavy.
• Weeks 6 to 11, sustain search and email light and continuous; paid social pulses heavy around paydays; cafés light.
• Week 12, review the measurement review; findings go into the next plan.
• Dependencies subscription checkout live by week 4; roast dates on bags by week 3; café staff briefed by week 1.

• One calendar per team Nobody sees the clash until the customer does.
• Everything heavy at launch, nothing after Build a sustain phase into the calendar from the start.
• Ignoring the market's dates A campaign that ignores Ramadan or a major holiday fights the calendar.
• No dependencies A launch date with no checkout is a date, not a launch.

• The Radio Advertising Bureau on flighting, pulsing and continuity¹; Ephron on recency planning².
• Binet and Field's principles³; SOSTAC's action stage⁴; the IPA's communication strategy guide⁵.
• On IMC Report: planning frameworks.