Earth Day a family dining experience and an excellent example of local business joining with a big event.

I give my granddad a ride to church roughly twice a month and yesterday was the second Sunday of Easter for the Catholics.

I don’t understand the process too well but my granddad tells me it’s just a way to keep track for the Catholic calendar.  I always thought there was 1 Easter Sunday.

I’ve been involved with Earth Day a bit and knew it was coming up on Wednesday but was in for a special surprise when I took him out to eat after the service.

It’s always interesting to see the method and form the Catholic service takes because it seems to be the same thing every week.  The one thing which does change is the sermon the priest gives.

It has basically three acts:

– the opening (same each week) lasts about 20 minutes

– the sermon (changes each week) the priest tells a story and selects a passage from the Bible, lasts about 20 minutes

– the closing where they do communion (same each week) last up 20 minutes

His restaurant of choice yesterday was Furr’s cafeteria.

As we were leaving Furr’s I saw this little flyer promotion sitting next to the cash register.

They were doing a promotion piggybacking on Earth Day which is coming up on April 22.  They were using the heavy promotion and especially here in Austin, the growing energy surrounding the Earth Day event and were doing a special deal for $5.99 all-you-can-eat buffet.

Their normal buffet costs $9.  So they’re giving a 33% discount as their part to help out mother Earth.  Which is very cool.

Sundays are usually busy for them and there were lots of families there having a good time and enjoying a family dinner.

They also had a live singer named Colton belting out various country songs. I’m no fan of country but he seemed to be doing a pretty good job with just him, his guitar and speakers.

As you know big events are huge marketing opportunities.  You can build great anticipation and buzz for your launch by following a specific launch process.  The other thing you can also do which Furr’s cafeteria was doing is to just ride the tidal wave of anticipation, momentum and buzz of some other big event that’s going on in your area or that’s newsworthy.

Clearly Earth Day is one of these newsworthy events which lots of people are talking about. Instead of creating their own events which require a huge amount more energy they’re just jumping on the Earth Day bandwagon.

It’s also great to jump onto some sort of charity event tied in to give your business even better buzz and goodwill in the community.

So take out your calendar right now and figure out which events are coming out in your local area or related to your business which you can co-promote and build buzz for your business.

And get involved this Earth Day even if it’s only a donation of 5 to 10 minutes of your time or $5-$10 to help out the earth in 2009.

Talk about some of your ideas and activities you’re going to be putting to work in your business in the comments section.

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