Is Summer No Man’s Land for PR Launches?

Jul 07, 2011 Beth Monaghan

Every summer, companies rush to get their major news announcements out before the vacation season gets underway. A quick Web search about the most popular weeks for vacation didn’t turn up much information other than the common knowledge that the weeks before and after Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day are popular.

While some of our most fruitful media initiatives have taken place over holiday weekends when news is slower, we don’t typically recommend the summer months for major launches. Summer is an important time to maintain momentum though, and there are many cases when news cannot, and should not wait until the fall when the wires will be cluttered again with news releases fighting for attention.

So if you are planning a summer launch or campaign, when should you do it? We decided to get some qualitative data to understand the best bets. We ran the poll through Crowdtap (an InkHouse client), which is an on-demand consumer participation network. We asked 1,013 men and women between the ages of 13 and 75 (the average age of our respondents was 31) when they plan to take vacation this summer.

The results were not overwhelmingly definitive. People will be on vacation every week of July and August, but some weeks were more popular than others:

Weeks to Avoid

  • July 11, 18% on vacation
  • July 25, 11% on vacation
  • August 1, 11% on vacation
  • September 5 (week of Labor Day), 10% on vacation
  • September 12, 13% on vacation

The Best Weeks

  • August 15, 6% on vacation
  • August 22, 4% on vacation

Here is a screen shot of the complete results:

Topics: Press Releases, Public Relations, PR
Beth Monaghan

Since the early days working around her kitchen table, Beth has grown Inkhouse into one of the top independent PR agencies in the country. She’s been named a Top Woman in PR by PR News, a Top 25 Innovator by PRovoke, and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist. Beth designed Inkhouse’s signature Storytelling Workshop to mirror the literary hero’s journey and to unearth the emotional connections that bind an audience to a brand or idea. She also uses narratives to build Inkhouse’s culture, most recently through two books of employee essays, “Hindsight 2020” and “Aren’t We Lucky?”

Read more from Beth Monaghan

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