As 2027 approaches, marketing teams are all reaching the same conclusion. Audience attention must be earned, and it is rarely won through improvisation. Top performing brands are those that plan their communications and focus their efforts on moments when customers are ready to listen and take action.

That is precisely the purpose of the 2027 marketing calendar. Gathering in a single document every key event that will shape the year. For example, commercial events, world days, major sports and cultural gatherings… To prepare upcoming campaigns one step ahead and anticipate the launch of marketing game campaigns.

In this article, we present Adictiz’s 2027 key highlights Calendar, followed, season by season, by four examples of brands that turned a key event into concrete business results.

SUMMARY

• The 2027 marketing calendar, an essential tool for your digital strategy
• Four key moments, four objectives: how brands actually put them into practice
• How to leverage your 2027 marketing calendar on a daily basis

A 2027 marketing calendar is much more than a simple list of dates. It is a strategic tool that allows you to anticipate the key moments of the coming year. Winter and summer sales, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Black Friday, Christmas, as well as the major events that will capture attention in 2027. Roland Garros, the FIFA Women’s World Cup in June and July, or the men’s Rugby World Cup in the autumn. Not to mention hundreds of world and thematic days that provide just as many opportunities for lighter, creative messaging.

Planning ahead means, above all, gaining consistency. The calendar becomes a true shared marketing schedule: each campaign finds its rightful place throughout the year. It revolves around clear, quantified business goals and aligns with other teams, including sales, creative, and media. This shared communication calendar prevents rushed campaigns, sloppy creative briefs, and last minute trade offs.

It is also a tool for budget management. By intelligently distributing resources over twelve months, the 2027 marketing calendar helps maximize every investment. It prevents inefficient spending spikes and reserves resources for the key moments that truly matter to your audience.

To save you time, Adictiz has compiled all of these dates in its 2027 key highlights Calendar, available for free download. Month by month, it brings together commercial, sports, cultural events, and thematic days, so you can start building your digital strategy for the year right away.

A calendar does not create value on its own. Performance comes from combining a well chosen key moment, a clear business objective, and an adapted interactive mechanic. This is where gamification reveals its full value: quizzes, photo contests, skill games, or instant wins turn moments of attention into data, loyalty, or sales. The proof lies in four campaigns run with Adictiz, one for each season.

Early in the year: rebuild your first party database, just like Kiabi

After the excitement of the sales and Valentine’s Day, the initial challenge for brands is to replenish their database for the remainder of the year. Every year, Kiabi partners with Adictiz to launch its photo contest. Deployed across five countries, this initiative engages communities around a powerful promise: becoming the brand’s next face.

The result: over one million entrants in 2025 and 645 000 new actionable opt-ins. The interactive casting call makes it possible to collect zero party and behavioral data on an industrial scale, directly usable within the CRM. Discover how Kiabi builds its lead generation strategy around gamification.

Spring: turning one off interactions into active loyalty, like Quick

In spring, the May bank holidays and major sporting events multiply contact opportunities. It is the ideal time to turn one off interactions into active loyalty. Quick therefore launched the “Tony Parker Challenge” on its mobile app with Adictiz: an interactive basketball game that rewards skill with loyalty points and exclusive prizes.

The result was an 11% increase in new loyalty program members, moving the brand beyond purely transactional relationships to create an entertaining routine with high retention rates, built directly into its app.

Summer: converting passenger footfall into actionable CRM profiles, like SNCF

During major summer travel peaks, customers have time on their hands. Do not let this audience remain anonymous as they pass through points of sale. In partnership with ZooParc de Beauval, SNCF launched an interactive memory game, accessible upon registration for Club Place de la Gare.

This game generated a record volume of new qualified CRM profiles: 68% of new Club members came from the game. The immediate reward justifies authentication and sustainably qualifies the database, turning transient passenger footfall into an actionable profile all year round.

Year end: turn engagement into revenue, just like Sephora

In November and December, the focus shifts away from brand awareness toward turning engagement immediately into revenue. Faced with holiday advertising noise, Sephora prioritized immediacy with a catch game: by distributing targeted discount codes at the end of each round, the brand created a direct path from entertainment to purchase.

Overall outcome: 279 000 € in revenue generated by the game. ROI focused gamification makes it possible to distribute purchase incentives that increase the average order value. Discover Sephora’s complete gaming acquisition strategy.

Downloading a communications calendar is a solid start; turning it into a performance driver takes a structured method. Here are four essential habits to establish to get the very most out of your 2027 marketing schedule:

• Select the most relevant key moments
  There is no need to show up on every date. Cross reference the calendar with your activity peaks, brand identity, and target audiences: ten well chosen campaigns deliver far more impact than thirty diluted communications. Supplementary resources like the Blog du Modérateur marketing calendar make it easy to verify key dates.
• Align each key moment with an objective and a mechanic
  A single event can serve very different goals: data collection through a quiz, engagement via a photo contest, customer retention with a skill game, or conversion using an instant win. As shown by the examples of Kiabi, Quick, SNCF, and Sephora, the alignment between key moment, objective, and mechanic is what actually delivers results.
• Plan production ahead of time
  Creative concept, prizes, official contest rules, media promotion: every campaign requires its own schedule. Anticipating these steps through the 2027 marketing calendar provides the necessary time to refine the user experience and secure internal approvals well before launch day.
• Measure and capitalize
  Track the metrics that matter, such as generated leads, opt ins, conversions, and CRM impact, then channel these learnings into upcoming campaigns. Year after year, your calendar becomes a customer intelligence asset rather than a simple organizational tool.

Boost your commercial performance in 2027 by planning your marketing calendar right now. Adictiz supports you in designing, launching, and distributing your interactive campaigns throughout the entire year. Download the 2027 key highlights Calendar and turn every single key date into a business opportunity!

Back to school is a crucial time for brands. Everyone wants to capture the attention of consumers, but only those with the right marketing strategy will stand out from the crowd!

With budgets back in hand, new purchasing intentions and the start of the sprint towards the end of the year, the strategic stakes are enormous. Provided you know where to focus your efforts. So how do you get your fourth term off to a good start and maximize the impact of your back to school communications? In this article, we share concrete advice, inspired by examples of campaigns that worked.

September is a key time for brands. After the summer break, it’s a time of renewal, with shoppers returning to their usual patterns of consumption. For companies, it’s also a time to finalise their strategies for the last quarter, as the competition for customer’s attention intensifies.

Here are the main marketing issues that brands need to anticipate to maximize the impact of their back to school sales operation.

1. Boost brand awareness and generate new leads

After the summer, brands need to reconnect with their audience and attract new prospects. This is an ideal time to launch brand awareness campaigns, particularly via social networks, display advertising and influencer partnerships.

The statistic to remember: Nearly 4 out of 5 French people (79 %) are planning to change their shopping habits for the back to school season.

The marketing action to launch: a marketing campaign on social networks with an interactive and engaging format to maximize the brand’s visibility.

An example to follow: For its “Back to School” campaign, SFR relied on the Match 3 mechanic to promote the start of the new school year. This addictive game recruited over 4,200 leads and generated 38 games played per participant. The Adictiz Ads media campaign generated a 98% response rate, an essential factor in the game’s visibility.

2. Refine customer knowledge to improve future marketing campaigns

September is a good time to collect customer data (via Surveys or interactive Quizzes, for example). This enables brands to better understand the needs and expectations of their audience. They can then better target their future marketing campaigns and maximise their return on investment (ROI).

The statistic to remember: 83% of consumers say they are willing to share their preferences with a brand in exchange for a personalised experience. And brands that exploit first-party data generate 2.9 times more revenue.

The marketing action to launch: Brands can, for example, share an interactive Personality Test on their site to better understand their customers’ interests and needs. Customers will then be redirected to relevant product pages or automatically retargeted by email with targeted offers.

An example to learn from: The interactive quiz shared by MaGare+ as part of its back to school game enabled the company to collect valuable data on its audience. For example, it has been able to identify the station services that are most likely to be of interest to its customers.

3. Capitalize on purchase intentions to improve conversion

With the return to school and work, consumers are on a buying spree. Whether for school supplies, clothing, electronics or services, brands have a window of opportunity to convert these intentions into sales or customer account creation.

Key statistic: At the start of the new school year, families spend an average of 304 euros per person.

The marketing action to launch: Consumers are more likely to make a purchase or create a customer account in exchange for a discount or reward. Brands can boost their conversion rate by proposing an attractive welcome offer (a discount on the first order) or by distributing discount coupons via a 100% instant win.

An example to follow: For the back to school season, Kiabi launched a campaign focusing on lead generation and conversion, giving participants the chance to win attractive prizes, including shopping vouchers. Thanks to media coverage via Adictiz Ads, the operation recorded an opt-in rate of 68%, testifying to participants’ commitment to the brand and the effectiveness of the campaign.

4. Building loyalty and preparing for the last quarter of the year

The last quarter of the year (Q4) is crucial, with events such as Black Friday, the autumn sales and the festive season. Building customer loyalty from September onwards maximises sales during this strategic period and considerably reduces the budget for future marketing campaigns.

The statistic to remember: A loyal customer spends on average 67% more than a new customer (Source: Harvard Business Review). Not to mention that attracting a new customer costs five times more than bringing one back.

The marketing action to launch: to boost your retention rate, there’s nothing better than an innovative loyalty programme. This will encourage consumers to buy from the brand by giving them access to more attractive discounts or previews of Black Friday offers.

An example to follow: In 2021, Decathlon has decided to transform its traditional loyalty program into a more inclusive offering, allowing customers to collect points through various actions (in particular their interactions with the brand) and no longer just when they make purchases. The catalogue of rewards has also been expanded, giving program members the opportunity to spend their points at partner stores.

To maximise the impact of back to school communications, brands need to put the right strategy in place. Here are three tips for optimising your sales operation and achieving concrete results.

1. Identify your objectives and your target’s needs

An effective back to school marketing campaign must therefore be perfectly tailored to the expectations of its audience. To achieve this, brands need to collect data upstream. Marketing games will enable them to analyse the preferences and behaviour of consumers in greater detail, so that they can better qualify their leads.

2. Stand out from other advertising campaigns

The back to school period is therefore a time when consumers are very much in demand. Brands therefore need to focus on engaging formats and attractive prizes to capture attention. Playing on emotion and storytelling is also a good way of resonating with the aspirations of their community.

3. Use omnichannel marketing to maximize the impact of your back to school sales campaign

Consumers are constantly switching from one channel to another. They consult a product on mobile, read a review on social networks, then finalize their purchase in-store. A coherent omnichannel strategy can support this journey and multiply points of contact. To achieve this, brands can communicate both online and in their physical outlets, offer drive-to-store operations, and also explore co-branding.

The key to a successful back to school campaign is a strategic approach that combines personalisation, engagement and channel diversification. By targeting your objectives carefully, you can create an effective campaign and maximise your chances of capturing and converting your audience. All you have to do to take action is choose from our range of marketing games!

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