How To Find Pop Culture Events For Content Calendars And Campaign Rollouts

Happy National Blog Post Writing Day!

I’m kidding you - National Blog Post Writing Day isn’t an actual thing. But thanks to the increased need for campaigns to be relevant as well as the need for social content, it seems as though nowadays there’s a holiday for everything, and a brand to capitalize on it.

Used correctly, a timely campaign that is launched in association with a culturally relevant event can earn that campaign even more attention and reach. Subway used National Sandwich Day to launch a sandwich promotion on their social channels and earned PR coverage on major news outlets. On a grander scale, Burger King introduced a “McWhopper” or “Peace Day Burger,” on the UN’s International Day of Peace.

Anecdotally speaking, aligning a campaign with a holiday seems to work best when the subject matter is closely aligned to the day’s theme (Subway and National Sandwich Day) or when the day is a well- publicized date (International Day of Peace).

So how do you find actually interesting, useful days to inspire creative? Here are some tools that I’ve found to be useful.

• Check an established source for general holidays and events. Sites like Chiff.com have great roundups.
• Reference Google Trends to find key moments for your brand. Search for your brand or category, and look for major spikes throughout the year or even weekly trends. For example searches for, “easy recipes” spikes after the holidays, meaning that it could be timely to launch a recipe campaign then. Or, because searches for “credit cards” spike on Tuesdays, content posted at that time may be more relevant.
• Talk to your media or PR agencies. Some outside agencies will already have well-developed cultural calendars that encompass major pop culture events for their other accounts, which make them valuable resources.
• Go for a manual search. Search for relevant cultural events during your campaign launch- local events, movie launches, game launches, upcoming tv shows, award shows, sports, or concerts.
• Or, review relevant anniversaries. Landmark events like the moon landing, movie/celebrity birthdays, advent of notable inventions, or even fake dates from movies are all great opportunities to tie your idea to a newsworthy event.
• Look up specific calendar dates. If you are lucky enough to know your proposed launch timing, you can see a massive list of all the things you could possibly align to on a given day. Wikipedia, BBC on this Day, and NY Times on This Day are all great resources to learn more.

As you go through this process, it’s incredibly helpful to keep a list of the events that you find so that you may share it with your colleagues. Consider developing a collaborative spreadsheet or Google calendar to give yourself an ongoing reference.

Finally, it’s also so helpful to share. I’ve tried to include all I use here, but please share any other resources you have in the comments! It’s National Share Your Pop Culture Event Resources Day, after all.