\nSurprisingly\n enough, one of those little things that can trip people up when \nplanning marketing is the public holiday system. While we all look \nforward to it, most people don\u2019t allow for how they can effect when work\n can be completed and when people are more likely to spend money on \nthings. As I\u2019ve got to know the system quite well dealing with it when \ncreating calendar templates every year, I\u2019m writing this little guide to\n help you understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These\n ones never change their date but do change the day of the week they \nfall on due to the fact that our year is 52 weeks + 1 day long (or 2 \ndays in leap years). You can see this when you look at the calendar over\n a number of years. New Year\u2019s Day fell on a Friday in 2010 but by 2017 \nit has rolled through a full week (skipping Monday and Saturday thanks \nto leap years) and ends up on a Sunday. From a promotional aspect, you \nshould think more about the day of the week a holiday falls than the \ndate depending on the nature of the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n classic example of this is Easter. This \u2018movable feast\u2019 falls on the \nSunday after the first full moon that falls on or after the northern \nhemisphere vernal (spring) equinox, or in practice on or after March 21.\n Another example of this is the regional anniversary dates. These are \n\u2018Mondayised\u2019 (or Fridayised) dates to be the day on or closest after the\n calendar date that the event takes place. This means all that each year\n the long weekend falls on a different date. If you are planning \nmarketing for that holiday, you are best to treat them as long weekend \nevents and double check the dates that they fall on each year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a whole raft of legislation on how to deal with this situation but the plan language version is found here<\/a>\n . I won’t go into here as it\u2019s far too complex to cover in a quick \narticle but from a marketing perspective, if a public holiday falls on a\n weekend then a large number of people will have the next following \nweekday off as well. This means that you have a long week end to which \nbuild a marketing run on or to. Christmas and New Year this year have a\n double effect with both the Monday and Tuesday becoming effective \npublic holidays. While the employment situation may change based on the\n employee (chech with your accountant or HR professional), the \nimplcation for business and marketing is that it creates a long (or \nextra-long) weekend!<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n If\n you are old enough to remember when late night shopping on Thursday was\n a big thing, you\u2019ll remember how New Zealand basically shut down for a \nvery long time over the Christmas – New Year period. Even now with seven\n day a week retail, a lot of non business-to-customer companies will be \nclosed for at least two weeks due to how Christmas and New Year holidays\n taking out two days out of each week. As such, if you want to hit the \nground running in the new year with marketing material you need to have \nit printed and sitting with distribution companies before the Christmas \nclose down. In fact you might want to have that in with the printing \ncompanies by the end of November as December is one the high workload \ntime of years for us. As a side note while we at Copy Express will be \nclosed down for Christmas and the first two weeks of January, if you \nhave a big job let us know as we do check out emails on a regular basis \nand will start up the printers if we can justify the cost of coming into\n print your job especially.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Officially\n only Good Friday and Easter Sunday are public holidays where most \nbusiness are required by law to be closed, unless granted special \ndispensation by local authorities. Easter Monday is a public holiday but\n is more day where business can be open, like Boxing Day. From a \nmarketing perspective, while you may have to be closed on the Friday and\n Sunday, you can pretty much treat the whole long weekend as one big \npromotional block, especially as this is the last holiday of \u2018summer\u2019 \nand the budget blowout for parents with kids at school has now been \ndealt with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n This\n one can trip a lot of people up. Businesses are only legally required \nto be closed to noon on ANZAC day. This was to allow people to attend \nthe dawn service and any after events and still be able get to work for \nthe rest of the day. Most customer facing businesses (retail, customer \nservice, hospitality, etc) will be open in the afternoon from 1pm, but \nanything else will be closed as it\u2019s not worth the effort of being open.\n You will have noticed that a lot of big retailers have made the weekend\n closest to ANZAC a bit of a promotional block with week long deals that\n have one day specials happening on the half day. It will depend on the \nnature of your business if it\u2019s worth trying to compete with that, but \neven if you are not it\u2019s still smart to plan around what others are \ndoing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like\n it or not, the school term system has a dramatic effect on people’s \nspending habits. Depending on the nature of your business, you will \neither see an upswing of business or a noticeable drop. This is why you \nshould plan for it, either in targeted marketing to parents to offer a \nway to keep kids busy, or make specials that will draw customers in no \nmatter how tight their budget is. You can find the information of when \nthe holidays fall from here but every school has different dates for \nthe beginning of term one and the end of term four depending on student \nyears they cater for. Surprisingly enough, one of those little things that can trip people up when planning marketing is the public holiday system. While we all look forward to it, most people don\u2019t allow for how they can effect when work can be completed and when people are more likely to spend money on things. As I\u2019ve got … Continue reading “A Simple Guide to How Public Holidays Work”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":966,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The Christmas close down
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nDealing with Easter
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nANZAC Half day
<\/h3>\n\n\n\nThe unofficial holidays – School holidays
<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Of course this is only \njust a small introduction to the matter of the public holiday. The best \nplace to go to get more information on this is Ministry of Business, \nInnovation and Employment.\n\n<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"