15 MINUTES OF FAME
Andy Warhol is famous for 3 things: Painting a can of soup, being an albino, and saying “in the future everyone will get a chance to be famous for 15 minutes.”
Now despite the fact that it’s a pretty decent painting of a soup can, and albinos are super rare, his quote about 15 minutes of fame gets all the attention because it seems so prescient. I mean, the dude said this in 1971, long, long before teenage sociopaths began pulling six figures for posting of themselves shopping. So maybe he was prescient. I never heard Nostradamus even come CLOSE to predicting Instagram would be a thing.
We should also probably point out that Warhol was actually shot several times by Valerie Solanas, who’s name we only know because she apparently wanted to take him up on his offer of 15 minutes. Today, we’d call it a cover-up, and suggest that Warhol was actually a time traveler from the future and Solanas was a deep state agent trying to silence him.
We may never know for certain.
THERE’S A DAY FOR THAT
But what we CAN know for certain is that Warhol’s prediction was also true for holidays. Yep. Turns out that there’s a day for everything, and wily marketers have dedicated every day of the year to something new.
Did you know that April 21 is National High-Five Day? That means that WHEREVER you travel in the US, you will find throngs of celebrators with their palms in the air, just waiting to exchange a congratulatory slap (levels of celebration may vary).
Why did this happen? It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, calendars were printed with maybe 3 or 4 holidays marked out per month, including silly ones like “Flag Day” or “President’s Day” (“All former POTUSes can get a free Icee just for stopping into 7-11”).
Hallmark even got into the act by creating holidays like “Sweetest Day” (October 19) as a means of conning boyfriends into buying more greeting cards, but they only managed to show up on Hallmark calendars.
And then the Internet happened, and every half-assed “national” holiday was given its time in the sun.
NEVER STOP CELEBRATING
So what caused this onslaught of holidays? How did humans reach the point where they decided that denim needs its very own holiday? (April 27). Like with most things, we can probably safely blame the Internet, or at least social media.
You see, once the most brilliant minds in technology succeeded in building a raft of platforms that allowed people to say whatever they wanted to the entire world, it became painfully clear that nobody really knew what to talk about. Could be politics, perhaps, photos of cats for certain, and sure, why not post a photo of your lunch before you start digesting it? People need to know.
As marketers well know, the challenge of social media is simply feeding it. It’s a hungry beast that devours content endlessly, and the only way to keep it alive is to keep feeding it whatever you can find.
The only solution was to try to make every day its own kind of Christmas, so posters could have something to talk about on their social media sites. Marketers were swift in snapping up random days and assigning them to products. Thus, we have “Oreo Day” (March 6), “National Cereal Day” (March 7), and “Crayon Day” (March 31) among countless others. Every day is a holiday, even if it’s just to celebrate “World Password Day” (May 5).
A DAY OF OUR OWN
As a result, today’s calendar is now lousy with marketing masquerading as public celebrations, leading THIS particular marketing company to declare ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. How do we get in on this before it’s too late?
I think you probably see where this is going.
In the name of the World Wide Interwebs, we do solemnly declare and degree that the 18th of April shall forevermore be known as “DAMN GOOD Day.” It is a day for celebrating your favorite expertise-ridden agency, and for recognizing how insignificant your life is in comparison to the amazing, earth-shaking and world-defining work put forth by the geniuses that had the amazing foresight to establish this holiday before someone else came along and took it.
So go out and celebrate. Demand paid time off. Decorate a DAMN GOOD tree. Wear your DAMN GOOD attire and say things like “let’s take the conversation further” to people you meet. We’re also claiming the hashtag #DamnGoodDay so that we can watch our new holiday sweep across the globe, captivating all who would celebrate it with us.
Whaddya say? Are you ready to take the conversation further?
