Ancient Rituals, Modern Marketing

It seems like marketing seasons are getting shorter and shorter. No sooner are the Fourth of July sales over than the Halloween candy starts coming out. Of course, the winter holidays now last from October until January, and then even before all the green of St. Patrick’s Day has been put away, the sheaves of grain and fox decorations start showing up for Cerealia.

What, you’ve never heard of Cerealia? Ceres Talent is named for Ceres, the Roman goddess of growth. We recently discovered that there really was a Cerealia festival in Ancient Rome in April. You can read about it here. We don’t have any immediate plans to bring this harvest holiday back, but it wouldn’t be that odd for a company to start promoting a new holiday. Marketers are responsible for a lot of our current celebrations. The recent surge of hashtag holidays like National Cheeseburger Day (September 18th ) and Pi/Pie Day (March 14th) may cause a lot of eye rolling, but the truth is that the way we celebrate older holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day has been influenced, or invented, by marketing (a jolly guy with flying reindeer?). As you probably noticed last week, even a traditionally anti-establishment holiday like April Fool’s Day has become a boon for marketers.

Holidays (and invented holidays) give marketers new ways to tell their stories, and it wouldn’t surprise us at all if one day a cereal company decided to re-establish the ancient festival of Cerealia (minus some of its more barbaric traditions). In the meantime, we’ll stick with celebrating existing holidays.

Whether you’re looking for someone to invent a holiday for you, or just help you make the most of the ones we already have, contact us.

Itching to create your own holiday, or want to join a team that knows how to party and get things done? Check out our job board.