Read This Before Planning Juneteenth Marketing
Tips for Brands To Participate in this Cultural-Based Federal Holiday
The world now knows that on June 19, 1865, slaves in Galveston, Texas finally got word that they were free. On this day, Major General Gordon Granger, accompanied by Union troops, arrived in Galveston, and read General Orders №3 informing the state’s enslaved African Americans that they were free. This enforced the Emancipation Proclamation more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln first issued on January 1, 1863.
Catching up to present day. Although celebrated throughout Texas for decades, the June 19 date evolved into a nationwide celebration of Black independence, history, culture, and progress as an official United States federal holiday on June 17, 2021. It is an atrocity that it took so long, but it’s here, and we will honor this accomplishment.
Now that the Juneteenth Federal Holiday here, I think many brands, organizations and people are struggling with what to do with it. I say this from the range of how brands are tip toeing around how to participate in it, and also getting it wrong. Many people outside of Black culture want to celebrate it, or honor it, but don’t know how. Listen up!
We are in America. America is a capitalist society. We get it. And as such, there is a tendency to make everything about money. Yet, my sincerest desire, as a marketer, and a Black woman who descended from the institution of slavery, is to challenge marketers to not make this holiday about money. I invite you to be mindful of the purpose behind this particular holiday. Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas all have origin stories from which celebrations have veered pretty far.
Yet, we as brands, entrepreneurs and people have a prescient opportunity to get this one right. Let’s keep this celebration as pure and intentional as possible. I am not entitled to tell anyone how to celebrate or what to do to celebrate. But for brands, please consider that this Holiday is one that is rooted in the celebration of Black people learning of their freedom from a system which was designed to destroy our culture, our lives, and prevent our wealth.
So, if you are developing a brand event or product, please, I as a brand marketer and a Black woman, implore you to:
- Create experiences that bring us together. Bring us together to celebrate the survival of a system never designed for our prosperity. Feed our souls. Help us prosper. This is something that we need, actually everyone needs this. And EVERYONE can come.
- If you must charge, please ensure that there is a giveback component specifically enriching the lives of Black people.
- And for all the Black entrepreneurs, do your best to use Black people in your supply chain and manufacturing process. As a seller of yoga mats and journals, I KNOW the temptation and the allure of Alibaba and “China.” But do what you can. And please consider a giveback component as well to support now or next generation of Black people, particularly those underserved.
We have the rare opportunity to define how we get to celebrate on behalf of our ancestors stolen time and loss of dreams, through rest, the permission to gather, reparations, and entrepreneurship.
The 651 Arts & Soapbox Presents “We Outside” celebration in Brooklyn, NY and “Her Juneteenth” in Houston are great examples of the spirit of Juneteenth Marketing. Brands, consider sponsoring gathering and celebratory experiences for Black people, for the Holiday and throughout the year. Help us unite. We as a people, as still very divided, and have a hard time working together as a collective. The mindset of achieving independently vs as a people is deeply rooted, and once shifted gives birth to a new nation of Black legacy. Black-on-black gun violence continues to ravage our communities, especially in cities with large Black populations like Chicago, Philly, New Orleans, Memphis, St. Louis and NYC. Organizations like Strides for Peace has year-round events you can support to combat gun violence in our communities.
As of today, June 11, #juneteenth on IG has 2.4MM hashtags uses. Visit yourself to see the potpourri of how people and brands are experiencing it, and challenge how this Holiday’s commercialization grows.
Be the change. Happy Juneteenth!
Let me know in the comments if you have other ideas and what you think.
Respectfully, Olivia
Olivia is a C-Suite Marketing Exec, Author of 51 Brand Marketing Tips for Creators & Founder of Omerge Alliances & Freedom at The Mat. An NYU & Loyola Professor, she has led marketing at influential organizations such as Carol’s Daughter, VIBE, Live Nation, Ogilvy & more for 25+ years. A Native Memphian, now based in New Orleans, is a forever Harlemite (NYC) who travels extensively and blooms where she is planted.
