What are you celebrating today?
Personally I look forward to taking that special someone for a nice dinner and romantic Ferris wheel ride. This is truly the only way to celebrate February 14th the right way, as Ferris Wheel Day!
Did you miss national Radio Day yesterday? Well don’t worry you can make it up to your loved ones with an exciting Battery Day card tomorrow. In 2021 it seems like Holidays are everywhere. Social media is constantly reminding us that every day is a national something day. The staggering amount of holidays we are faced with can seem overwhelming and people have been upset for quite some time about the commercialization of holidays.
While the Battery Day example was mainly a joke it turns out that the battery industry actually takes the holiday quite seriously. With so-called “Hallmark Holidays” like grandparent’s day and secretary’s day coming up seemingly every week, people have become fed up with the financial burden of all these holidays.
Projections for total spending on Valentines day including everything from roses and chocolates to fancy dinners and stuffed animals are $18.6 billion.
Condemning companies for the commercialization of holidays is nothing new. Going back as far as 1840’s companies in New York began to advertise deals around Christmas time to encourage spending in the name of holiday cheer. Holiday sales and specials are marketing set to easy mode. Go on almost any company's website and you’ll see a majority of them are running Valentine's day sales.
So the question then becomes is it even possible to avoid corporate interests in National Holidays at all? No matter what day of the year it is, car dealerships are always running some kind of holiday special that they just have to tell you about in 3 back to back television ads. Holiday advertising has become such a large part of our everyday lives that it is impossible to avoid.
This poses a substantial challenge for small businesses. If everyone is advertising at the same time for the same event, how are you supposed to stand out?
My personal favorite Valentine's day ad from this year comes from the Funny How Flowers Do That initiative by the UK government to promote the general wellbeing of flowers. The break in case of love at first boxes placed around major European cities are a lovely example of guerrilla marketing at work.
The key to making your business stand out from the pack during the holidays is to get creative and make a large impact on your consumers by showing them something that they have never seen before. Guerrilla marketing is built around these ideas.
Or maybe you can find success by marketing holidays that nobody else knows about.
From everyone here at Guerrilla Marketing Society, Happy Ferris Wheel Day!
My name is Dan Bruwer and I am a senior at Boston University in the Questrom School of Business studying Marketing and Management Information Systems. I am currently serving as the Head of Inbound here at the Guerrilla Marketing Society. If you have any other questions about how guerrilla marketing can work for your business or want to be involved with GMS please reach out to myself (dbruwer@bu.edu) or any of the other talented GMS leaders.