It is a week of celebration. Even if right now we celebrate differently. And at times we need to dig deep to see why we celebrate.
Here is my favorite childhood picture. One slice of Canadiana.
Just what you do… dress your little girls in pretty dresses and snap a photo of them in front of a moose. I’m the little girl in the middle, lol.
I’ve always found it interesting that these two national holidays are the same week. Because it shows the two cultures in juxtaposition.
For both it is a time of summer bbqs, family and celebration out of doors. (Even if some family connections this year are virtual, we are hopefully still connecting!)
Americans always celebrate July 4th on the 4th, no matter what day of the week it lands on. It is such an important day in terms of celebrating the values of independence, patriotism, and community, that the day is fixed.
Canadians often slide it to a weekend, though gov’t and stores are mostly closed on the 1st. Canadians want to turn it into one of the summer long weekends. One where we often head out to cottage or cabin country.
Some Canadians shift their day off from July 1st to July 4th because they serve American customers. A tendency for most of the holidays that are different. We adapt and shift to serve our customers.
For Quebecois, St Jean Baptiste Day on June 25th can be a bigger day. And for Ontarians, July 1st can seem like an echo of the May 24 weekend, that we affectionately call firecracker day.
All this can seem like a lack of national pride to Americans. It’s just our way of quietly celebrating our country differently.
So beyond wishing you all well and waxing on poetically, why am I getting into all of this in a weekly email aimed at talking about identifying marketing insights? Because for me this juxtaposition tells us something about looking for insights about our different customer segments. For building up our customer personas.
In marketing, we sometimes try to describe our customers in terms of surface demographics, but we can understand them better and deeper by their behaviours. (Notice the u,eh) While Canadians and Americans both celebrate with national pride, we do it differently. Those same behaviours are opportunities to engage with our customers. And, yes, in the case of a national holiday, celebrate along side them.
So, here’s to you!
I hope you are enjoying the holiday that you celebrate this week! That you get a chance to spend some time in the sun. Connect with people you love. And enjoy some good food.