A content calendar landed in my inbox last week with a row that read, in full: 3/8, IWD, purple gradient, copy TBD. Nothing else in the cell. The row above it was a product promo and the row below it was a giveaway, and all three had been assigned the same amount of thought, which is to say a color and a date.
Copy TBD. Tomorrow is the eighth.
I want to be fair here, because I have written that row. I have sat in the February meeting where somebody says we should probably do something for International Women's Day, and the something becomes a graphic, and the graphic becomes the whole program. The theme this year is Balance for Better, which is a good phrase and a very easy phrase to set in a sans serif over a gradient.
One day of empowerment graphics is a claim, and every claim a brand makes on March 8 gets audited by people with a spreadsheet and a long memory.
That auditing is not hypothetical anymore. British companies over a certain size have to publish their gender pay figures, and the next round is due in April. Which means a UK brand can post a message about balance tomorrow and file the numbers contradicting it about six weeks later, in a public database, with a searchable name attached. Somebody will put those two things side by side. Somebody always does now, and the screenshot travels farther than the original post ever did.
So here is the test I give clients, and it is only one question. Is the post the smallest thing you are doing this month, or the largest? If it is the largest, do not post. Write the check instead, or fix the promotion track, or publish your own numbers before anybody makes you.
Compare it to what Nike did with Dream Crazier during the Oscars last month, narrated by Serena Williams. Agree with the company or do not, that spot is backed by a roster, a budget, and years of contracts. It is a claim with collateral behind it. A gradient has no collateral. It costs one designer forty minutes and it asks the audience to accept the sentiment as the substance.
Is the post the smallest thing you are doing this month, or the largest?
The brands that come out of tomorrow looking honest will mostly be the quiet ones. A pay audit published without a hashtag. A supplier policy nobody made a graphic for. Boring, unshareable, real.
Karaoke on Saturday, a woman I have never met sang Cher and the host who calls everybody baby made the entire room stand up for her. That took no purple gradient at all. It cost him something, though. He gave up his own slot.