Why real brands love fake holidays—behind calendar creations like National French Fry Day

When Checkers and Rally’s planned their annual promotion around National French Fry Day last year, the fast food chains found a marketing hook in the calendar itself.

“Traditional French Fry Day was falling on a Wednesday,” said Russ Romeo, senior director of marketing activation for Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc., parent of the Checkers and Rally’s brands. “It made no sense for Fry Day to fall on a Wednesday, so we wanted to take a stand.”

The idea: rally fans around getting National French Fry Day moved from July 13 (a Wednesday in 2022) to the second Friday every July. How Checkers did it opened up the brand to the nebulous world of made-up national holidays.

The holidays, which range from National Banana Day to National Nude Day, are as stunty as they sound. And brands are increasingly leaning into them—and in some cases helping to create them—as they seek new ways to connect with consumers beyond traditional TV. The rise of social media, influencers and other modern-day marketing channels must be constantly fed with new content—and fake holidays are one way to do it.

The made-up holidays have long been the “bread and butter” of lifestyle section editors desperate for ways “to keep ads from colliding into one another on the page,” said Chuck Byers, a marketing professor at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business.

But brand interest in the holidays has catapulted them into a new wave of popularity. 

“I think they do work,” Byers said. “Looking at it from a marketing standpoint, it becomes a legitimate tool because it can provide information to users, and to media, and the earned media that is a service to all three audiences. At its best, it’s a very legitimate function that can serve the interest of 360-degree audiences. And a touch of ridiculousness and a tad of humor doesn’t hurt anybody.”

While the holidays have become mainstream, one man responsible for creating many of them is less well-known. His name is Marlo Anderson, and he's a web developer and entrepreneur in Mandan, North Dakota.

Anderson isn’t the only tracker of national holidays but he’s become the most prominent, creating and maintaining a complex National Day Calendar for 10 years now. For Anderson, the project began as a way to track the origins of lesser-known holidays he was personally interested in (National Popcorn Day on Jan. 19 was one) and has since become a platform to grant and establish new ones. For brands, the National Day Calendar has become a reliable way to secure a pop of visibility and earned media attention in increasingly creative ways.

Checkers’ plan for National French Fry Day involved an online “Fry Day to Friday” petition that gave its signers a digital coupon good for a free medium order of Checkers or Rally’s seasoned fries, along with swag such as french fry socks, beach towels and fanny packs. The brand then hand-delivered the 51,000 signatures to Anderson who was so swayed by the lobbying that he held a “press conference” declaring National French Fry Day to henceforth be celebrated on the second Friday in July. (In addition to the petition signees, Checkers drew 130,000 visitors to its landing page and processed more than 15,500 free fry redemptions—figures Romeo considered strong results to promote a signature menu item.)

“We know we weren’t changing the world,” Romeo said. “But when you think about the pandemic and inflation and the war in Ukraine, having something lighthearted to talk about is what people want to gravitate toward.”

1,500 national days

There are more than 1,500 celebrations—days, weeks and months—tracked on Anderson’s National Day Calendar. These include National Baked Alaska Day (Feb. 1), National Buttermilk Biscuit Day (May 14), National Sausage Pizza Day (Oct. 11) and National Peanut Butter Fudge Day (Nov. 20). According to Anderson, many of these unofficial national holidays have uncertain origins that predate his involvement. Some harken back to the founding of the country; others are remnants of age-old government proclamations or long-forgotten promotions.

Since Anderson started tracking them, still more holidays have been established by brands or associations representing them, including National Cinnamon Day (McCormick & Co., Nov. 1); National Fajita Day (On the Border Mexican Grill and Cantina, Aug. 18); National Nail Polish Day (Essie, June 1); National Fried Rice Day (Benihana, Sept. 20); and National Rotisserie Chicken Day (Boston Market, June 2).

Brands or organizations have to apply for holidays, and if approved by a review committee of the National Day Calendar, they pay a fee to become recognized as the day’s “founders” and are featured in materials accompanying the day. Anderson declined to discuss what a package costs. A competing national day register, National Today, said its packages start at $5,000 and include official holiday registration, a dedicated website page, “featured coverage,” and an alert sent to the site’s 200,000 subscribers.

Anderson said his site fields about 30,000 holiday requests a year. He figured there is still room to add about 150 new holidays to the 300 his site has already established (not including those on the site he did not help create), in part by “retiring” holidays with unknown origins and few celebrants, such as Bittersweet Chocolate Covered Almond Day (Nov. 7), “especially since we don’t have a Chocolate Covered Almond Day,” he reasoned. The calendar recognizes two National Doughnut Days. One is celebrated the first Friday in June and traces its origins to the Salvation Army in 1938; the other on Nov. 5—spelled “Donut Day”—has unknown origins.

But if the number of standalone calendar days are dwindling, the opportunities to profit aren’t. Anderson said this year he is offering brands a chance to establish “official” status associated with the calendar holidays for the first time. “The most unique opportunity we have is instead of having your own national day, is to actually talk to us about being the official destination, or the official product, of the national day,” Anderson said. Participants meeting approval would get a web page and a seal it could use on packaging.

Celebrating subversion

McCormick & Co.’s French’s brand has made it a priority to “own” National Mustard Day for the last four years. The holiday, celebrated on the first Saturday in August, has given the brand the opportunity to show up in creative ways that might be difficult to justify without an official “day.” Since 2019, French’s creations include a mustard ice cream (created with Coolhaus), a mustard beer (with Oskar Blues Brewery), mustard-flavored hot dog buns (with Piantedosi Baking Co.), and mustard doughnuts (made in cooperation with New York’s Dough Doughnuts).

“We talk to consumers a lot throughout the year about mustard in more traditional ways, like using it on your sandwiches,” Marni Kokorus, senior director of global creative and content operations for McCormick, said in an interview. “But it’s these moments that we get to think outside the box—or sometimes we say outside the bun—getting people to think about our product in a different way and use it in a more versatile way.”

With the help of creative agency Fitzco and PR agency Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis, National Mustard Day has now become the biggest promotional event on the yearly calendar for French’s. McCormick has also participated in National Cinnamon Day (“the unsung hero of the spice rack,” according to the brand). One stunt involved a video montage of women named Cinnamon. The company has also taken advantage of National Chicken Wing Day (July 29) to promote its Frank’s RedHot sauce.

The stunts aren’t purely for show. They help to bring the brand top of mind for consumers and can also demonstrate the versatility of the product, Kokorus said. Last year, for example, the mustard doughnut, “was really about bringing mustard to the breakfast table,” Kokorus said.

Other brands have subverted the holidays for attention. The fitness brand Peloton last year released an ad on social channels showing actor Christopher Meloni working out in the nude. The ad promoted the Peloton app—not on National Home Workout Day (that day doesn’t exist yet), but on National Nude Day (July 14). Ryan Reynolds' Maximum Effort produced the creative.

For Boston Market, establishing National Rotisserie Chicken Day helped to highlight its signature food on a day (June 2) that typically comes during a slow period for the chain, said Joe Alvarez, senior VP of sales, catering and operations for the 292-unit restaurant chain. The day was championed by its then-CEO George Michel and established in 2015.

Last year, Boston Market celebrated its holiday by offering rotisserie chickens at $6.02, and its catering division offered a $7.99 dinner with sides. But Alvarez says the real value of the holiday for the brand is the opportunity to talk about what makes its birds different. “It’s Rotisserie Chicken Day, not Boston Market Day,” Alvarez noted. “We can talk about the rotisserie style of cooking and what differs us from others who serve rotisserie chicken like the big box stores and grocery stores.”

Food conglomerates such as Hormel have a range of brands that can stay busy throughout the year with holidays. Hormel’s Applegate brand celebrated National Hot Dog Day last July 20 by upgrading street vendor hot dog carts to eco-friendly battery power, promoting its eco-friendly Do Good Dog brand.

“Food brands have a special connection with consumers, and since Hormel Foods covers such a broad range, with everything from National Peanut Butter Lover's Day to National Bacon Lovers Day and everything in between, recognizing these days are fun ways to build on and strengthen those connections,” said Lisa Selk, VP, marketing-retail at Hormel Foods.

“The national holidays can be a lot of fun, because people are always looking for reasons to celebrate,” McCormick's Kokorus said. “And over the last few years, especially, people really are looking for moments to connect and celebrate. And so for us, we’ve had success leveraging those moments of celebration and finding the ones that are really genuine and authentic for our business, and for our consumers.

“There’s a magic that comes together when you can leverage something that's meaningful for the brand and for consumers,” she continued. “And Mustard Day has become that kind of piece of magic for us.”