Happy St Marketing Day!!

I wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy Marketing Day!! This holiday happens many times a year. What makes February’s Marketing Day so special? This is not only the holiday that lets you know how much you are loved by your significant other, but also how alone you are.

We have become so materialistic and preprogramed to expect certain things on February 14th. Somehow, we have managed to turn religious holidays into reasons to spend money at a specific time of year. Most people have no idea what these holidays are supposed to be celebrating, we just know we will be in the doghouse if we do not buy the appropriate gift at the appropriate time of year.

Common Expectations:

Other Marketing Day Musts:

• Romantic Dinners: Restaurants are flooded each February 14 with couples who want the fancy dinner. Couples make their reservations in advance to make sure that they get a seat at a restaurant who jacks up their prices for food portions that are barely enough to properly feed a toddler and call it a Valentine’s Day special. They throw some candles on the table, play music that no one really enjoys, put up heart decorations and call it a romantic experience.
• Jewelry: How many heart-shaped charmed necklaces can one have? This seems to be the go-to gift when you have no idea what else to buy. Simple and generic, but it has a heart, and it is expensive, so it must show that I am in love. There are many variations of the hearts or even other pieces of heart-shaped jewelry to shake it up from year to year, but still at the end of the day, it is not very thoughtful and very generic. If you want your loved one to have a nice piece of jewelry, it should be something that represents them, not some Valentine’s Day cliche.
• Sappy Card: Every gift needs a sappy card with a romantic poem written by someone else. Even though it is not sufficient on its own, a card is a mut have to accompany the gift. No matter how great of a gift you give, if there is no card, the gift is not worthy on its own. Cards can be shown off and then kept in a box to never to be looked at again. If the relationship ends, they can be burned or thrown away.

There is a bombardment of advertisements across all avenues of media leading up to February 14th that are geared to tell you that you should not be alone. This marketing holiday in particular seems to want to make you feel like less of a person if you do not have someone to share this kind of gift giving with. Everyone wants to feel loved. Even if you are happy being a loner, you still want to feel like people care about you.

I would imagine that this type of social and marketing pressure drive people to do some crazy things. You see movies and TV shows pointing out some extreme lengths that people go to in order to show they are loved.

• Reaching Out to an Old Flame: When feeling alone, some people try to rekindle a relationship that ended for a reason. This time of year, people are made to feel any relationship is better than no relationship at all. They put aside all the reasons this ended and only focus on not being alone. Afterall, there is a famous quote “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.
• Sending Yourself Gifts: There are many people out there that stoop to the level of sending themselves gifts just to show others that they have someone who loves them. On its face, this sounds pathetic. But what is really pathetic is that people feel this is more acceptable than being single on Valentine’s Day.
• Escorts: Some people dread being alone on Valentine’s Day so much that they actually hire a person to be their date. This doesn’t have to be a prostitute, there are girlfriend/boyfriend experience escorts out there that probably make a killing for this marketing holiday.

There are so few holidays left that have not turned into a marketing wet dream. There is no doubt in my mind that there are marketing teams out there trying to figure out how to turn Independence Day or New Year’s Day into a gift giving holiday. We are guilt gifting all the time and this is crazy to me. Although I haven’t been able to shake the Christmas guilt giving, I have stopped participating in all the other Marketing Days.

Celebrating anything should be about the celebration, the time with family and friends, not about how much you spend, what you buy others and when. If I see something I know someone I care about will like, I buy it for them. We shouldn’t need a specific time of year to show someone that we love them and are thinking about them. It is much more meaningful when society isn’t telling us we should. I cannot be the only one out there that thinks all of this is ridiculous. Am I crazy or just a voice of reason?