Methodology
MarketingDays holds 30 observances and 240 industry relevance scores, each an integer from 1 to 5 assigned by Vishal. Dates come from published records, never computed. This page states how every score, lead time and density verdict on the site is derived.
Who assigns the scores?
Vishal assigns every relevance score by hand. There are 240 of them: 30 observances times 8 industries. No score is generated by a language model, and no score is imported from another calendar site.
How is a relevance score assigned?
Each observance receives an integer from 1 to 5 for each industry. The scale is commercial, not cultural: it estimates how much a brand in that industry stands to gain from posting about that day, not how important the day is in itself.
| Score | Meaning | Appears on calendars |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Peak commercial day. Purchase behaviour measurably shifts. | Yes |
| 4 | Strong. Worth a dedicated campaign. | Yes |
| 3 | Relevant. Worth a post, not a campaign. | Yes |
| 2 | Marginal. Excluded to keep calendars honest. | No |
| 1 | Not relevant to this industry. | No |
An observance scoring 3 or higher for an industry is called an anchor day for that industry. This is why a jewellery calendar and a fitness calendar for the same month list different days.
Where do the dates come from?
MarketingDays records 16 fixed-date observances, 12 lunar observances and 2 rule-based observances. Fixed dates recur on the same month and day each year. Rule-based dates resolve from a stated rule, such as the second Sunday of May. Lunar dates are looked up from published sources and stored per year; MarketingDays does not compute Panchang, because a verified lookup is more reliable than an approximate algorithm.
Sources used
- FAO World Food Day
- UN observances list
- WHO campaigns list
- Wikipedia: Akshaya Tritiya
- Wikipedia: Black Friday (shopping)
- Wikipedia: Children's Day (India)
- Wikipedia: Dhanteras
- Wikipedia: Diwali
- Wikipedia: International Women's Day
- Wikipedia: Karva Chauth
- Wikipedia: Makar Sankranti
- Wikipedia: Mother's Day
- Wikipedia: Navratri
- Wikipedia: Onam
- Wikipedia: Pongal (festival)
- Wikipedia: Teachers' Day (India)
- Wikipedia: Vaisakhi
- Wikipedia: Valentine's Day
- data.gov.in gazetted holidays
Wikipedia content is available under CC BY-SA. Dates and the existence of observances are facts and are not subject to copyright. MarketingDays does not reproduce descriptive text, FAQ content or campaign suggestions from any other calendar site.
How is lead time decided?
Every observance carries a lead time in days, representing how long creative production realistically takes for a campaign of that size. The creative lock date is the observance date minus the lead time. Lead times on this site range from 21 days for single-post awareness days to 45 days for major festivals requiring photography, media booking and stock preparation.
How is density calculated?
For each industry, MarketingDays counts anchor days in all twelve months of a year and takes the median. A month with more than 1.25 times the median is high density; below 0.75 times the median is low; anything between is normal.
What are spillover and gap weeks?
A spillover is an observance in the following month whose creative lock date falls in the month being viewed. Those are the campaigns marketers miss. A gap week is a week within the month containing no anchor day, which means the posting slot has to be filled with brand-owned material.
What MarketingDays does not do
MarketingDays does not schedule or publish posts, does not connect to social platforms, and does not generate captions with a language model. Content angles are written by hand and stored in the dataset.
Corrections
Date errors matter more than anything else on this site. Report one through the contact page and it will be corrected in the next build.