BRAND HOLIDAYS
FAKE BRAND HOLIDAYS
MAKE A DAY OF IT
BY : DEB GABOR
Who doesn ’ t love a holiday ? Who wouldn ’ t want to dig into a syrupy short-stack on National Pancake Day ( September 26th )? Or to finally bring some order to the chaos of your bathroom on National Clean Out Your Medicine Cabinet Day ( 3rd Friday in April )? And is there anything better than an intimate scrub on National Shower with a Friend Day ( February 5th , the coldest part of winter )?
All of these holidays , and thousands more , are the inventions of brands seeking to find new ways to reach and excite their audiences . IHOP is responsible for the pancakes , DisposeRx for the cabinet-cleaning , and a conservation organization called New
Wave Enviro for the shower suggestion .
BRAND-LED CONSUMERISM
Brands have been leveraging established holidays and creating them from scratch since at least the 19th century . Black Friday grew from a tradition held by department stores to officially start the Christmas shopping season the day after Thanksgiving . Hallmark dreamed up National Friendship Day in 1919 as a way to increase card sales .
But the practice of inventing holidays has exploded in recent years . Brands noticed the uptick in sales that a “ holiday ” can provide , and ready-made content that ’ s perfect for social media . The National Day Calendar , an unofficial holiday authority , tracks thousands of days that brands have originated or appropriated . Valentine ’ s Day is a good example . Now , the calendar is so thick with occasions that SEO specialists have their pick .
Some fake holidays have become enormously popular and lucrative . Prime Day ( July 15th ) is a massive sales day created by Amazon that actually lasts for 48-72 hours . Even more successful is Singles Day ( November 11th ), which this year generated more than $ 38 billion in sales . Singles Day is a Chinese holiday created in the 1990s to celebrate bachelors , and later seized upon by Alibaba as a great way to encourage shopping . It ’ s now the largest offline and online shopping day in the world .
It isn ’ t just annual holidays , either - days of the week have their own brand associations . New Englanders will recall that “ Wednesday is Prince Spaghetti Day ” - remember the commercial ? More recently , Instagram ’ s co-opted “ Throwback Thursday ” encourages users to post historical reminiscences both personal and cultural .
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