At a recent Eloqua user group meeting, an attendee asked if anyone had any Holiday-related campaign ideas or plans to share for the B2B marketers in the room. No one raised a hand.
So that got me to thinking. Can B2B Marketers get in on the Holiday action that is so often considered the sole domain of B2C?

When it comes to taking advantage of end of year themes, and non-religious Holidays like Thanksgiving the answer is clearly “Yes.” ReachForce has done a great job of this with their Marketing Oh Crap Day and Use it Or Lose it campaigns. And, at NetQoS, we used this year’s Cyber Monday Holiday shopping fiasco to promote our NetFlow monitoring capabilities in this Network Performance Daily blog post. And, we are currently having some fun with a New Year’s resolutions contest for Network Engineers.

But when it comes to Christmas, Kwanza or Hanukah, it’s probably best to steer clear or go with the generic Holiday theme. Obviously, introducing religion into the business world is not a great idea. It’s not even a good idea for some B2C Marketers. Witness this controversial ad for (WARNING: If you are easily offended, do not click here) Red Bull. According to Reuters, a priest persuaded the soft drinks company to withdraw an advertisement setting its product in a nativity scene on the grounds it is disrespectful to Christianity. Many in the church labeled it blasphemous!

Got any other examples of Marketing WTF moments involving religion or the holidays? Share them with us.

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