Marketers ruin everything.
Today is the most arbitrary date for significance.
As are plenty of other dates…
- Valentine’s Day;
- Mother’s Day;
- Father’s Day;
- Black Friday;
- Cyber Monday;
- Ad nauseum…
Tonight, people are going to make promises to themselves, which they could have done 24 hours earlier, but they didn’t.
Come one now, who could blame them?!
Dates, AKA end dates, AKA events are very powerful.
I’d argue that New Years Eve is one of the most powerful psychological reset buttons ever created.
And marketers are going to use that to their advantage:
- Gym memberships;
- Language lessons;
- Whole foods;
- Nicotine patches;
- Term deposits;
- Home loans;
- Ad nauseum…
The thing with dates, AKA end dates, AKA events are they have built-in urgency.
Time.
Like once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Never going to repeat.
And that, my friends, is a very powerful way for marketers to play on the emotions of fear and regret.
Want to sell something?
Use time-based urgency.
But don’t be a manipulative jerk in doing so.
NOTE: This post originally appeared on Medium.