Hi. Today is the federal holiday commemorating Juneteenth here in the United States.
Banks, government offices, and many businesses are closed.

And because this is America, many businesses are making Juneteenth another golden opportunity to turn a profit. You may have heard about Walmart’s huge frozen yikes moment, and they’re just the tip of the iceberg!)

So my top marketing tip for Juneteenth, today and forever, is this: Don’t. 🚫

This day is about enslaved people in Texas finding out — years after the Emancipation Proclamation — that they’d been freed. The freedom itself? Amazing. The fact that they were enslaved in the first place? Horrifying.

If you are a white person in the United States, today is a lovely day for:

• Reflecting on our ugly past
• Reflecting on our still-ugly present
• Supporting Black-owned businesses
• Paying reparations (here are some thoughts on how you can do that)

Actually, every day is a great day for those things. But today is a great day to start or double down on it.

I know I’ve sent a couple of emails like this, and I swear it’s not because I like to kvetch — it’s because I believe words matter and radically empathetic marketing is as much about what we don’t say as it is what we do say.

And here are some actual tips on how to be a more empathetic, ethical marketer or business owner in this moment:
✅ Ensure you have Black and other non-white decision makers at the table, so you don’t have your own version of the Juneteenth ice cream debacle on your hands
✅ Check your calendar and consider current events before sending out emails, publishing social posts, and running automations
✅ Become a paid subscriber to newsletters like Anti-Racism Daily for new or differing perspectives on our culture and current events

Paige

P.S. I asked a couple of people before publishing this whether a post about not marketing around Juneteenth actually…constitutes marketing around Juneteenth. I may never be sure sure it was the right thing to do.