Come festivals and celebrations marketers hijack print, television and digital media with all that they have got. Be it major Indian festivals including, diwali, holi or celebration of special days viz, Independence day, women’s day, children’s day etc, every brand wants to do ‘something different’ to promote themselves.

Done-to-death:

From colourful ‘holi’ ads, ‘bright and dhamakedaar’ diwali emailers, ‘proud’ Independence Day & Republic Day ads or ‘joy-filled’ Christmas ads; newspapers and emails are filled with such ‘done-to-death’ marketing material.  Instead of doing something different, most of them end up being a part of the clutter.

This ad by Toyoto sums up what I am trying to point out here…

You could argue that print medium has its restrictions and hence the lack of creativity, but then here are few examples of brands that got it right and how!

Force-fit:

I guess most of the brands suffer from FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and hence they wish to be everywhere... whether an Independence day ad is relevant or irrelevant, doesn’t matter…

Just link the words ‘relevant’ to the occasion to the brand and you are sorted, or so you thought…

Not all force-fit ads are bad though. Thanks to the social media and the viral videos, many brands use the ‘emotional’ tool to get a thumbs-up.

Rajnigandha Pearls played it rather well with its teacher’s day campaign #teachernebolatha. The brand’s product and the occasion have nothing to do with each other. It’s just the stories weaved in carefully with emotions that grabs the eyeballs. But then again, this story could have been told with any other brand in picture or without any brand and it would still work just as fine.

Follow the herd:

You already know it, when one brand announces a ‘Big’ Sale the others follow the foot-steps with a ‘Great’ sale. When a particular brand proposes ‘noise-less’ or green Diwali, all the other brands don the ‘save the environment’ cape as well; whether or not they believe in it is a different question. For all you know they are the ones lighting up the sky on Diwali with those spectacular fireworks.

When people do not follow the herd and take their own stand, they truly stand-out. Take for example these two brands that instead of ‘save water ‘proposal, this brand caught on to ‘eve teasing’ that is so prevalent during Holi.

On any given day not just the mail box, but the text box and whatsapp also are spammed with nurmerous marketing messages wishing me Happy diwali, eid, teacher’s day, mother’s day, father’s day, chocolate day, rose day and many days I never knew existed.  It seems the day isn’t far when every day will be a celebration, literally. Till then, Happy Blog Day. Look, I just invented one!