This week I had a really special day. On Wednesday, I accompanied my wife, Cathy, to Buckingham Palace. She had been invited to a Royal Garden Party in recognition of her 21 years of continuous service as a school governor. It was a fabulous day and one that I will never forget.
Special events like this are “episodic” memories embedded within our autobiographical memory system. They are part of our lives but stand out as special episodes in our brains.
For many people reading this, today may be one of those standout memories. That’s because on this day, only 35 years ago, the World Health Organisation declared that homosexuality would no longer be considered a “mental illness”. For members of the LGBTQ+ community, that day must be a standout moment in their memory.
Today will also become an episodic autobiographical memory for many music lovers as they will never forget their involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest, which takes place in Basel, Switzerland, tonight. You will be watching, won’t you? It is expected that 160 million people will be tuning in – including me…!
However, if Eurovision is not “your thing”, you may be creating memories today through an affiliation with Americans who have served their country because today is US Armed Forces Day. You may also be involved in World Hypertension Day, World Telecommunication Day, or, perhaps, World Whisky Day, all occurring today. These commemorative days aren’t just cultural curiosities, but are moments of emotional engagement, and often, clever business.
Anyone involved in these special commemorative days will create new memories, many of which will last a lifetime. However, they also have another impact beyond those individual memories. For example, Oxford Economics has shown that the Eurovision Song Contest has a lasting positive economic effect on the host city. Over €700m of advertising revenue is created for media organisations from the event. Plus, a study in 2022 showed that Eurovision entries dominated the Top 50 chart on Spotify’s viral list.
Today’s World Whisky Day is bound to increase sales. World Hypertension Day will help save lives, but it will also probably lead to additional purchases of supplements that are thought to help with raised blood pressure. In the USA, today is a special day in the form of National Graduation Tassel Day – yes, such a thing exists. It is clearly a commercial event, created by the company Tassel Depot. Even so, those tassel purchases are bound to create special memories, such as when Grandma hands over a tassel to her cherished grandchild later today.
The fact is, every day is a special day for someone in the world. Each day, millions of episodic autobiographical memories are created. Many of these have commercial significance. Indeed, large numbers of the “Days of the Year” have been created by companies and industries seeking to gain further sales.
Perhaps, you could spend next Friday celebrating “Drinking with Chickens Day”. This was invented six years ago by blogger Kate Richards. At the time, her blog was getting around 130 visitors a day. Now it receives almost 4,000 a day and you can see the massive trend in visits after she invented her “day”. Indeed, the biggest contributor to her search visits is the phrase “National Drinking with Chickens Day”. A year after she invented her “day”, she published the book “Drinking with Chickens” and has an online shop selling all kinds of items related to the seemingly odd activity of drinking a cocktail while sitting amongst your chickens.
This might seem wacky, but it demonstrates that simply by creating a special day, you can boost your business. So, the question for each of us to think about today – let’s call it “think about a special day day” – is what kind of memorable annual event could we create for our business or organisation. If you can create a day that sparks joy, connection, or reflection, you’re not just making memories; you are making business sense.
