November 2 - As The Marketing World Turns

National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day Nov 15

National Clean Out Your Refrigerator Day appears to have been created in 1999 by Whirlpool in the U.S. by some of their employees, It’s truly a great example of creative marketing at its best. It meets the bench marks for originality, humor and memorability and gets bonus points for being able to play off of the upcoming U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving.I’ve seen some reports Whirlpool even had a hotline people could call to receive cleaning tips.

I’m awarding it one extra point for the subtle unspoken but none the less clear insinuation of guilt. If you need to Clean Out Your Refrigerator you’d better get to it before family and guests come for the holiday. If your marketing campaign has a little tie in to guilt all the better as long as it’s subtle and humorous.

The following small businesses could benefit from attaching their marketing and advertising to this particular created for marketing day.

Appliance Stores
Appliance Repair Services
Grocery Stores (big and small chains)
Food Delivery Services
Home Chefs
Flower Shops
Cleaning Services
Medical Practices
Environmental Groups
App Creators

Of course there are hundreds of types of small businesses that could tie their products or services into such a funny campaign. Maybe Amazon (not a small business) could offer a free trial of their grocery delivery service that comes with a coupon for a free cleaning of your fridge, but you’d have to signup today.

It doesn’t even really matter if your small business is connected directly to a campaign such as this, what matters is your willingness to take a marketing risk and tie into something that will make people smile and possibly laugh.

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National Spicy Guacamole Day Nov 14th

November

National Spicy Guacamole Day
November 14th

So you have a product you want to remind your customers or entice new customers with, and you want to try something different, create something radical that fills the space with a steady buzz. What you ask yourself or maybe you ask your marketing team can we do? think about the above image of National Spicy Guacamole Day, does it inspire you? I hope it does because creating something along the these lines would not only be brilliant but not all that expensive to bring to fruition.

First make a list of your top 5 products or services on a sheet of paper and break out the components of each of those products of services. An example could be a 2×4 and the components would be trees, pine, building, homes, houses, construction and safety. Of course your list might be much longer. The goal of the list is to zero in on a main category you can use to create a national day of _ _ _ _ _ _ .

Maybe the growers of avocados saw there was already a day set aside for avocados and wanted to create a day that had more zing to it. In this scenario they got together with growers of onions and hot peppers to merge their resources to create the National Spicy Guacamole Day. And the result is something they can all promote and tag their own products to. Possibly they can do some cooperative marketing to get more bang for the money they’ll spend.

If I was working with you I’d suggest you first create a day in your town or city that fits in with your goals and once that’s done move up to the state level. Now there are lots of ins and outs for a project like this but working together with local or virtual partners will ease the expense and speed up the time it takes. It is not a complicated endeavor and once done it will give you a newly create marketing tool as well as new partners and of course new customers.

Creative marketing doesn’t always require a small business putting huge resources on the line. Small businesses have many advantages in marketing that large corporations can only dream about. Remember the National Spicy Guacamole Day started as a throw-away idea till someone wrote it down and started the train moving to the station.

Leave a comment with your thoughts or send me a note from the contact page if you’d like to chat.

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World Kindness Day November 13

November

National World Kindness Day

November 13th

Indeed, today is National World Kindness Day. Not only is it a great concept it’s also a good example of creative marketing opportunities and in that vein it’s a reminder that being creative with your business marketing can create its own great concept. It’s not important what business you’re in, you can find a way to get noticed. You can find a path of simplicity or complexity, it’s your choice. The point is together with a creative marketing team or all by yourself there is a creative path to marketing visibility.

Join forces and promote events like National World Kindness Day either locally or virtually, I’m pretty sure those promoting this event would welcome your participation.

If you’ve been in business for a while I’m sure you’ll remember the famous Coke ad from 1971 and if you’re not familiar with it you can watch it here for the first time. The ad was a huge hit way beyond the time-frame it ran in, it’s been posted to YouTube quite a few times and this version alone has had over 1,250,000 views. It’s easy for businesses to give into the easy marketing of negativity and fear yet time and again advertising centered around family, community and cooperation does a fine job for the client.

And yes there can be some backlash against a business if they are perceived to be exploiting a cause strictly from a profit standpoint. The solution to not being viewed as exploiting a good cause is for a business to be transparent and authentic about their involvement with the cause or concept, walk the talk so to speak.

It’s always the right time for business to be involved with their communities and with the people inhabiting those communities. It’s always the right time to be involved with helping to create and maintain a solid foundation within the communities that support your business.

The sky is the limit for connecting business in a transparent and authentic way that benefits everyone, so get on board with social events like the World Kindness Day. you’ll be glad you did.

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National Pizza With The Works Day November 12

November

November 12th
National Pizza With The Works Day
(Except Anchovies)

Pizza is one of those products that’s become deeply ingrained in the minds of hundreds of millions (maybe billions) of consumers around the world. In the United States alone there are at least 70,000 pizzerias operating and nearly 65% of those establishments are independently owned. November 12th may host National Pizza With The Works Day (Except Anchovies) but October is the US National Pizza Month.

Pizza is the perfect product to market, in the US alone 93% of the population eats it and it comes in a myriad of shapes, sizes and ingredients. Pizza also rarely lasts beyond the day it’s purchased, which means people will buy it again and again and won’t complain that it stopped working or the batteries ran out or something worse like it caught on fire or was hacked.

Each person in America eats about 46 pizza slices a year.
Worldwide sales of pizza are over 5 billion pies sold each year,
with 3 billion sold in the United States alone.
Mozzarella cheese accounts for nearly 80 percent
36 percent of all pizza orders want their pizza topping pepperoni.
Popular United States gourmet toppings are
chicken, oysters, crayfish, dandelions, sprouts,
eggplant, cajun shrimp, artichoke hearts, and tuna.

And let’s not forget the wonderful marketing opportunity National Pizza With The Works Day presents to nearly every business owner. Imagine for a moment creating a week long celebration of this savory day. It’s a day that appeals to every age group, every income level and in a recent study 63% of pizza eaten is eaten by women, though in another study men will eat more pizza if a woman is watching – go figure that one.Pizza is equally loved across most if not all demographics.

Point is, the love a pizza is everywhere and small businesses need to integrate pizza into at least one of their marketing campaigns. But, don’t just order a bunch of pizza pies that will sit around and get stale, no, cook the pies at your locations. “But”, I can hear you saying “we are not setup to cook lots of pizza.” Well don’t let that slow down your marketing juices, go out and rent a pizza truck or a set of portable wood fired pizza ovens.

The more inventive and creative your event the greater chance it has of success. If your business offers consultations offer a free consultation over lunch of freshly cooked pizza. And if pizza stains might ruin your merchandise setup a little fenced in cafe in or outside your business with small tables and chairs. You can offer pizza along with onsite daycare for those with children, now think about that one for a second.

Holding a week long event attached to National Pizza With The Works Day is the perfect opportunity to do a bit of coop marketing. Corral one or two other business to help share the costs of the event and do mutual advertising to draw in customers and create buzz. One business can serve the pizza while a 2nd business could go the daycare part of the project and you can easily switch roles halfway through the week so everyone gets to be part of the event and festivities.

Times a wasting, start planning today for next years pizza event. Here’s an example of a business that rents pizza trucks and trailers. Eddies Pizza NY. Check it out to gets some ideas for finding options in your area.