In many respects, East­er is no Christ­mas. These hol­i­days dif­fer in terms of reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance, cul­tur­al pen­e­tra­tion, time of year, and even mar­ket­ing poten­tial.

Amer­i­cans are expect­ed to spend $16.4 bil­lion – most­ly on can­dy and clothes – for East­er 2015. That’s accord­ing to the Nation­al Retail Federation’s East­er Spend­ing Sur­vey, which found the aver­age Amer­i­can cel­e­brat­ing East­er will spend $141 this year, which is up slight­ly from $137 in 2014.

Fur­ther, 87 per­cent of these respon­dents say they’ll buy can­dy.

Face­book Insights, too, not­ed, “East­er is a social hol­i­day [in the U.S.] often fueled by choco­late and can­dy.”

Brands have many oppor­tu­ni­ties to play roles in Amer­i­cans’ East­er cel­e­bra­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly by tar­get­ing women of all ages and con­sumers who are 18 to 34 in par­tic­u­lar because they will be dri­ving the East­er con­ver­sa­tion, accord­ing to Face­book.

Yet not many can­dy brands or retail­ers are push­ing out social con­tent they way they would for, say, Christ­mas.

Easter 2015 Digital Marketing Efforts

For its part, Cad­bury has shared some short videos fea­tur­ing its choco­late prod­ucts in var­i­ous East­er sce­nar­ios.

Ever won­dered how Bun­nies learn to hide eggs at East­er? Watch your step or you might just find out… https://t.co/syQzwaHjVD — Cad­bury UK (@CadburyUK) April 2, 2015

Reese’s, too, has some videos…and some recipes on Face­book. Chee­tos is push­ing a new sweet prod­uct, Swee­t­os, with Chester’s Egger­a­tor, a dig­i­tal egg-dec­o­rat­ing effort that allows con­sumers to choose ani­mals, col­ors, acces­sories and back­grounds and to then share social­ly for a chance to win prizes. Jel­ly Bel­ly, too, has added a spring-themed Pin­ter­est-like recipes and how-tos sec­tion to its web­site. (The brand also has an East­er Time Pin­ter­est board.) But the marsh­mal­low brand Peeps real­ly seems to be the big sto­ry. Tar­get had a Peeps-relat­ed tweet as part of its larg­er #Fan­ny­Bas­ket effort.

How many @PEEPSBrand are in the #Fan­ny­Bas­ket? Clos­est guess in the next 5 min­utes gets an RT! pic.twitter.com/NYvfFhoxvI — Tar­get (@Target) April 1, 2015

Peeps revealed two mys­tery fla­vors only avail­able at Wal­mart on April 3. An addi­tion­al Orange Crème fla­vor is only avail­able at CVS.

The brand also encour­aged con­sumers to go to Rite-Aid to pick up every­thing they need to make a Peeps Spring Fruit Bou­quet and even cre­at­ed Katy Perry’s infa­mous Left Shark from the Super Bowl out of Peeps.

Hey @KatyPerry don’t you think this #PEEPS #Left­Shark is FIN-tas­tic? http://t.co/kkPRYFTutD pic.twitter.com/6ff3FfYDWq — PEEPS® Brand (@PEEPSBrand) March 25, 2015

Mean­while, many oth­er brands are using a gener­ic hash­tag like #East­er and/or are shar­ing recipes to engage spring-mind­ed con­sumers.

Why Brands Find Easter Moments ‘Tricky’

East­er isn’t so much a missed oppor­tu­ni­ty as it is sim­ply a tough moment for mar­keters to cap­i­tal­ize upon, say experts.

“East­er can be tricky,” says Tom Eslinger, world­wide direc­tor of dig­i­tal and social at adver­tis­ing agency Saatchi & Saatchi. “It’s a reli­gious hol­i­day, which does­n’t trans­late in some big mar­kets and does­n’t have a big retail/shopping flash­point out­side of [fast-mov­ing con­sumer goods].”

Denise Bla­se­vick, CEO of the S3 Agency, agrees East­er is tough giv­en its reli­gious tie, not­ing Christ­mas is a bit of a dif­fer­ent ani­mal because it has “long since become a straight-up com­mer­cial indul­gence for those who nev­er stepped foot in a church.”

Fur­ther, Bla­se­vick says that thanks to social media, brands can com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with audi­ences about moments like East­er with­out launch­ing major cam­paigns.

“Add to the mix the poten­tial back­lash of over-cam­paign­ing – peo­ple can only be influ­enced by so many cam­paigns, turn­ing either a blind eye or a jad­ed one to the ones that don’t fit – and I think brands are pick­ing their moments a bit more care­ful­ly, let­ting hash­tagged impromp­tu inter­ac­tions suf­fice in between,” she said. “It’s no longer an all or noth­ing world when it comes to engag­ing con­sumers. East­er has a defined brand audi­ence who ben­e­fits from sea­son­al sales; oth­er brands may chime in to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion, but they’re sav­ing their big­ger bud­gets for oth­er times to break through – times when con­sumers either expect or wel­come it more.”

In addi­tion, Bri­an Har­ris, cre­ative direc­tor at adver­tis­ing agency Bradley and Mont­gomery, says anoth­er prob­lem with East­er is that the date changes each year.

“Any hol­i­day that you have to go to the cal­en­dar and flip through two dif­fer­ent cal­en­dar pages to find lacks a cer­tain impact,” he said. “When you com­bine that with the epic scale that Christ­mas has reached, many people’s spir­its – not to men­tion their pock­et books – are still burnt out. I believe Spring Break has cul­tur­al­ly, or at least com­mer­cial­ly, become more sig­nif­i­cant. East­er is just the qui­et Sun­day fam­i­ly gath­er­ing that may be right after or right before the big fam­i­ly trip to Dis­ney­World.”

What do you think of East­er as a mar­ket­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty?