Galentine's Day became a $2.4B event not by chance, but by following a formula. It formalized an existing behavior (friends celebrating near Valentine's), was placed adjacently (Feb 13th), and offered brands a new profit opportunity, ensuring its promotion and growth.
Instead of buying entire sports seasons, Netflix acquires single, high-impact events like a Christmas NFL game. This 'eventizing' strategy creates maximum buzz for a lower relative cost by turning content releases into unforgettable, can't-miss dates on the cultural calendar.
To escape the noise of Black Friday, Set Active created 'Set Miss,' a branded sales event in December. This strategy helps them stand out from competitors by creating their own sales moment. The event has become so successful that it rivals or even surpasses their traditional Black Friday performance.
The advent calendar concept is being decoupled from Christmas and applied to other occasions like Halloween, Mother's Day, and birthdays. This transforms a seasonal novelty into a year-round marketing strategy, creating new consumer habits of anticipation and driving sales for various events.
The 'Fresh Start Effect' suggests people are more receptive to change at temporal landmarks like birthdays, new seasons, or the start of a month. These moments create a psychological window to prompt action when motivation is naturally peaked, which can be leveraged in marketing and for personal goals.
"Heated Rivalry" strategically moved its launch to Thanksgiving to leverage the holiday period when consumers actively seek and share new shows at social gatherings. This timing creates a powerful organic marketing engine, turning personal recommendations into a key driver of viewership for new content.
A powerful marketing gimmick involves launching a very small product batch to guarantee it sells out quickly. Brands then leverage this "sold out" status in press coverage to create a perception of high demand and build hype for subsequent, larger product releases.
Inspired by American Express creating Small Business Saturday, Wild Rye launched "Women Lead Wednesday" to rally shoppers around women-led brands. This scrappy initiative, started with a quickly-built website, has grown to over 900 brands and became a powerful marketing engine and invaluable networking community for female founders.
The end of the year creates a specific consumer mindset focused on reflection and catching up, popularized by Spotify Wrapped. Brands can capitalize on this by creating their own 'best of' content, meeting a pre-existing audience expectation and leveraging a cultural moment for higher engagement.
The hosts coin the term 'BublĂ©-ing' to describe a strategy of identifying a recurring, predictable market voidâlike the annual demand for new Christmas musicâand shamelessly dominating it. This concept is transferable to other seasonal or cyclical markets, such as Halloween.
Justify "too good to be true" discounts by tying them to real-life events, both positive (birthdays, holidays) and negative (unexpected bills, damaged goods). This authenticity makes the offer more believable and compelling to customers, increasing conversion.