Tradition: The Rose Bowl

When you are an old-school brand, you have the advantage of tradition on your side. Take the Rose Bowl, for instance.

Self-proclaimed as the "Grandaddy of them All", the game has many advantages that other events do not have:

1. Negotiated TV contracts that cause the bowl to not have competition on New Year's Day. Any competition. 
2. Weather. Temperatures on January 1 were in the mid-60s. Hint, that's comfortable!
3. Sunset. The game is purposely hosted at 2pm Pacific Time. This means that the stadium will go from direct sunlight to shadows to sunset on the surrounding mountains to the orange you see on the clouds above. You don't get this kind of dynamic inside the Super Dome.
4. Teams.  Most years you have a team from the Big 10 (featuring 14 teams) ... a Midwest team (which means you have fans who travel to warm Southern California) against a Pac 12 team (which means you have West Coast fans willing to travel ... ever been to Eugene in January?) This "tradition" existed for decades, causing fans from those areas to "want" to attend.
5. Parade.  Approximately a million people line Colorado Boulevard to watch the Rose Bowl parade the morning of game day. That's a lot of people. The floats are made of roses, and predictably smell amazing! It's a community event.

In our modern world, two things seem to happen.

• We celebrate startups and we lambast traditional brands.
• We don't market tradition.

Many of my readers work at traditional brands, brands that have been in business for 30-70 years. Don't hide from your tradition ... exploit your tradition!!! And by exploiting it, I don't mean "30% off and Free Shipping for Friends and Family" ... that's tepid nonsense! I mean create events that capitalize on traditions.

And if you don't have any traditions (think Nordstrom Anniversary Sale), CREATE ONE!! Do something fun! That's the job of a marketer, right? We've changed the job of a marketer to maximizing SEO ... stop it ... create an event that is so amazing and tradition-riddled that your SEO efforts are maximized without you having to do anything to maximize them ... other than capitalizing on tradition.