National Spaghetti Day

According to historical texts the family of pasta has been commercially available since the 5th century, and I think we can safely assume that spaghetti and celebrations including national spaghetti day weren’t far behind. All versions of pasta are wonderfully adaptive and delicious with a myriad of foods, that’s why it’s welcome all over the world.

Check out more history of spaghetti and many different dishes made with it on the Spaghetti At Wikipedia page.

Planning an event or series of events that celebrate National Spaghetti Day together with your business can be a bit perplexing. Spaghetti is not something we usually think about when mapping out marketing campaigns.

If you decide to integrate this wonderful food into your marketing you’ll have the opportunity to be the first to create a  Flash Marketing Popup featuring spaghetti.

Choosing to use food as the cornerstone of your marketing campaign has many things going for it right from the start. Food is attractive and people love to eat, those two things alone will draw people to your event. And don’t forget that spaghetti can be really messy, and who doesn’t love messy food?

For those not in in the know when it comes to Popup Stores or Popup Marketing here is a short article on Forbes titled Retail’s Uberization Is Already Here: It’s Called Pop-Up Stores And here is some info on catering spaghetti you can use for ideas before you call a catering company to partner with.

5 National Spaghetti Day Marketing Tips

(1) Plan on the Spaghetti Day running for 5 days with the last day be the official National Spaghetti Day. Monday to Friday your business will market itself around spaghetti. This includes traditional and nontraditional side dishes and decorations. Don’t forget garlic bread.

(2) This all happens at the beginning of the new year so I’m recommending that this becomes a give-a-way to those in need or those by themselves. This could happen in a different nursing home each day or a different church basement or even different schools.

(3) Partner up with a catering company or a couple of catering companies and come to some sort of agreement on what percentage of their costs you’ll cover. Maybe you cover the food costs or just the labor costs. It’s important that they bear some of the cost since they also will benefit greatly in the marketing success. But it is your marketing so if you want most of the control you’ll need to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to cash etc.

(4) You’ll want to connect with all local media and online social media at least a month before the launch and the earlier you connect the more value you’ll get.

(5) Remember that even though you are celebrating National Spaghetti Day this chief reason you are doing this is to market your business, to get people to associate your brand name with it’s products and services.

The story you’ll be telling both the media and any catering business you hope to partner with is that over the course of 5 days you are setting up one or two Spaghetti Day Giveaways. Each popup will be a colorful booth that serves food to anyone who shows up. To make it workable you’ll need to limit the hours it serves food.

Each popup will promote the food, the giveaway and your business at the same time. Lots of great graphics on the booth and hanging banners at entrances and exits etc.

Because it is the beginning of the new year you can promote the power of giving within each businesses community and how powerful the message is to all involved as well as the larger community and surrounding communities.

This becomes a multi pronged marketing event that pays off to not only those receiving but also to the businesses and media involved. If done with loads of enthusiasm it will build visibility, marketing chops and community recognition.

This particular marketing campaign also lends itself to being repeated and expanded each year. Think about having is integrated into all your local locations from 2 to 200 small business branches. And think about also inviting 2 or 3 other business to join as it grows, even competitors.

Pop Up campaigns occur in the middle of a public place and for this reason alone it’s important that all of your employees taking part are comfortable with what’s expected of them, how they will dress, talk and present themselves to the public. Because of the atmosphere it can be easy for them to forget they are working and representing your small business.