This past Presidents’ Day, a blizzard covered the Northeast with more than a foot and a half of snow, playing havoc with consumers’ ability to shop. I wrote an online column speculating that direct marketers, who don’t have any holidays of their own, secretly relished retailers losing a contrived shopping occasion.
How wrong I was! As I discovered, our plucky industry celebrates several observances. Many are regional and at least one has been rescinded. What follows is a representative sample.
Lost Mail Remembrance Day (No Longer Observed)
One of the few DM holidays to incorporate lapel ribbons, Lost Mail Remembrance Day acknowledged the tragedy of marketers who failed to use merge/purge or change of address technology before sending out a campaign. Observers wore bits of ribbon ranging in length from a tiny sliver to nearly 25% of a full loop pinned to their suits and blouses, reflecting their estimation as to how much of every campaign was lost to undeliverable addresses.
The holiday was discontinued after hundreds of Armani suits were destroyed when the safety pins holding the ribbons in place were inadvertently yanked off by fastidious co-workers who mistook the ribbons for loose threads.
St. Lester’s Day
This holiday celebrates one of the industry’s luminaries. The highlight of St. Lester’s Day is the crowning of the
Network
