Archive for January 18th, 2012

Each year I am amazed by Blue Monday’s formidable penetration of the public conversation. Of course, it is total PR bollocks- Everyone who knows that all bathroom products are made of the same elixir, M&S food is food like any other regardless of the dulcet tones of Matthew Mcfadden and Jim Morrison isn’t really dead knows that.  Yet at the same time, year on year, it trends on twitter (0.06% at its peak yesterday) and is splashed all over online and traditional outlets.

Even Blue Monday’s creator, pseudoscience wizard Cliff Arnall (who concocted the theory on behalf of Sky Travel), admits that it’s rubbish, but he also raises a good point. Blue Monday succeeds in getting British people to talk about their feelings far more successfully than any number of peer-reviewed journals. This, combined with the fact that practically every charity and a fair number of consumer PRs recycle the concept every year for their own campaigns, mean Blue Monday is here to stay, bullshit or no.

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