Save the Date

Woe to sidekicks. The ever-underrated second bananas never get their moments in the sun. Worse, they’re the ones who usually have to take the bullet so the hero can live to fight another day. Replaceable, that’s what they are.

Sure, time can fly, heal all wounds and save nine in a single stitch. But without its partner, the calendar, what would be there to bring order to time’s crazy impulses? Okay, so the calendar has a tendency to run out when time has seemingly met its match (i.e., December 31, every year), but it always comes back renewed and ready to face another day.

Time is Money

Which is, of course, the main draw for promotional products distributors. As one of the few hard-good items in the industry with a definitive shelf life, traditional calendars are successful year after year, due in no small part to the fact that the item is designed to become obsolete at a preordained point in time, said Bob Teese, vice president of sales and marketing for St. Paul, Minnesota-based Hotline Products.

Yet, with a new nemesis sweeping the streets—technology—will calendars have to become masters of disguise to continue to emerge victorious? Not necessarily. “We heard this concern even five years ago about digital timepieces replacing hard copies of calendars, but we really haven’t seen that much invasion in the calendar industry,” Teese said. He, as well as Rob Marold, account manager for The Deerfield Collection, Mankato, Minn., both agreed that despite calendars’ numerous successful incarnations, the classic wall variety will survive and thrive. Here are a few reasons why:

1. Tradition holds its own over innovation. The wall calendar is such a time-honored fixture, for many consumers, it almost seems wrong to not have one. “It’s what they grew up on, it’s what they’re used to,” Marold said. By virtue of it being a product of necessity for the “dark ages” prior to the rise of computers, at this point, the yearly calendar purchase is more a product of cultural conditioning than anything else. And old habits die hard, Marold added.