With all this talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all the other colors and days to which people have attached holiday meaning, I think we should test the system and start our own movement to see what happens.  Maybe reading Seth Godin’s latest book “Tribes” has gotten under my skin, or maybe it’s just the incessant media attention paid to certain holiday shopping days and the ensuing financial trends attached to them.  Whichever it is, I know there is a great deal of power in the notion of a tipping point — so I am challenging us to create one.  As a social experiment of sorts.

So, on Tuesday December 9, let’s all go out and buy scotch tape.  As in lots and lots of it. (No, they are not a client).  We’ll call it Purple Tuesday.

Stock up on all the holidays, birthdays and other occasions you plan to celebrate for the next three or four years.  Because herein lies my madness — if we create a run on scotch tape, then some pundit, some bean counter, some analyst sitting in a darkened office somewhere watching numbers blip on a computer screen, will assign some significant meaning to this uptick.  This sudden surge of scotch tape consumerism will require a reason.

And what better reason than perhaps this:  consumers are buying scotch tape because they must wrap all the many thousands of packages they have purchased as holiday gifts for family and friends.  The very idea that all these many items have been purchased and must be wrapped will signify that all is not lost this holiday season — that perhaps people really are buying stuff, and spending their money on gifts, and these gifts must be wrapped, and sealed with scotch tape, and presenting to smiling family and friends in a traditional gift exchange experience.

And voila!  We will have singlehandedly turned around  holiday retail sales when prognosticators have predicted the 2008 season would be one of the bleakest in decades.  It’s our very own stimulus package.

The nation’s retailers will thank us, including some of our agency’s clients such as Tiffany & Co., Seaport Village, Del Mar Plaza, Hazard Center and a whole lot more.

All because we bought a few cases of scotch tape.

So whaddya say?  Purple Tuesday anyone?  It couldn’t be any sillier than a Black Friday that drives people to trample and shoot each other, or Cyber/Black Monday where millions return to work to shop from their computers — instead of (gasp!) work.  Let’s see what happens.

Recent posts by Jon

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• Setting the tone for a great client relationship - December 19th, 2008
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• Holiday gluttony or bonding? - November 14th, 2007
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