Blue Monday to Brew Monday: how awareness days can elevate your student marketing

Free gifts being handed out

From World Spaghetti day to Brew Monday, there’s an array of weird and wonderful awareness days, some clearly more relevant than others. While some days (think ‘Kiss a Ginger Day', which if you’re interested, is on the 12th January!) are there for a more light hearted purpose, many of these awareness days are great for sparking genius content ideas that can be used across digital platforms, as well helping to get the juices flowing when it comes to planning on-campus events or pop-ups.

Some of these days offer brands the perfect hook to talk about a product or service in a more natural, and even humorous way. Imagine you’re an accommodation provider, World Sleep Day is the ideal opportunity to talk about the comfort of your beds, the quietness of your surroundings and the importance of sleep when it comes to studying.

The point is, for any awareness day that peaks your interest, you can simply link your brand to it by sharing a relatable post, a humorous meme, quote or story, or perhaps even a special offer for your product or services.

Here, we’ve collated some of the top awareness days for term 2, with some ideas on how to engage your audience. 

• Turn this gloomy day into something positive. If you have a blue product, why not offer a 10% discount on Blue Monday? Regardless, if your product or service gives off the feel good vibes, encourage a purchase by offering a discount or incentive more generally on this day.
• Ask for ideas from your social audience, what are they doing to combat Blue Monday?

• Show off your plant-based products or what you’re doing to be more sustainable in 2023.
• Do you have a vegan range you could sample?
• Offer some of your favourite vegan recipes as recipe cards that can be downloaded from your website or sent out via email.

• Set up a pancake pop-up, students love a sweet treat and a great opportunity to capture students and increase brand awareness.
• Share your best pancake recipes via social, your website or email.
• Encourage some social sharing, ask your followers to share their best pancake masterpieces, best one wins a prize?

• Share the love (but not too much! ) encourage your users to recommend your product or service in return for cashback or a discount?
• Could your product/service serve as the perfect date night?!
• Send out a “Be my valentine” newsletter… “Our gift to you” that includes some valentines promotions to encourage an instant purchase.

• Poll your social audience, what makes the perfect night's sleep?
• Does your product or service enable a better night's sleep? Educate your audience about it.

• Acknowledging holidays that are important to certain members within your community is a great way of inclusively engaging with your audience. Make sure to get into the Ramadan spirit by posting content that celebrates Eid, act of kindness and community spirit.

• Clearly a prevalent one, how can your brand support student mental health? Does your brand have a product that could help? Could you encourage your audience to fundraise with you for Student Minds?
• This day is all about inspiring conversations and combating loneliness, ensure your brand is part of that conversation by using #UniMentalHealthDay on your socials.
• You can also download a free comms pack filled with social tiles and content via www.unimentalhealthday.co.uk

• Clearly a prevalent one, how can your brand support student mental health? Does your brand have a product that could help? Could you encourage your audience to fundraise with you for Student Minds?
• This day is all about inspiring conversations and combating loneliness, ensure your brand is part of that conversation by using #UniMentalHealthDay on your socials.
• You can also download a free comms pack filled with social tiles and content via www.unimentalhealthday.co.uk

Plotting these dates and ideas into your planner will provide instant content ideas on a regular basis, but make sure you don’t over do it with these dates. It’s the same with anything, if there is too much of one specific type of content, it gets boring for the audience. Be sure to mix things up a little.



Here at Crowd, we love jumping on Awareness Days and using key events in the student calendar as opportunities to surprise and delight students.

Looking to reach and engage students over term 2 and beyond? We’d love to hear from you. For more information on how we can support you with student campaigns, contact us on: info@thecrowdagency.com