Happy New Year!Happy New Year! I mean it. Monetate means it. We’re not just being polite. We really hope you have a great year. And if you’re in marketing, may all of your projects get funded and all of your campaigns convert at record levels!

Personally, I have to admit that wishing people Happy New Year has not always been at the top of my January agenda. When I was younger, January tended to feel a bit anti-climactic after the excitement of the December holidays. But then I had the opportunity to spend a few years in Scotland, a country where they take the start of a new year very seriously.

I was very impressed when I realized that people in Scotland would greet you with “Happy New Year” the first time that they saw you in the new year, even if the year was several weeks’ old. Not only that, the Scots have their own name for New Year celebrations: Hogmanay. This is a serious holiday spanning two days: January 1 and 2. If those days fall on a weekend they are observed the following week. So Monday of this week–January 4, 2010–was an official holiday in Scotland. Here’s how my weekly calendar describes it:

Day after New Year’s Day (Observed) (NZT, SCT)

Actually, that tells me two countries have two-day New Year observations: Scotland and New Zealand. There may be more. Certainly there are different calendars in different cultures that place the start of the year at different times.

Now, given that this is a blog about marketing, you might be waiting for the zinger, the call to action, the marketing message for which the “Happy New Year” headline was just a hook, a teaser, a slice of link bait. Maybe you were expecting me to segue into a pitch for location-based marketing that leverages country-specific holiday promotions. Perhaps you were anticipating a roundup of marketing predictions for 2010.

Well, as it turns out, the point of this first post of the year is simply this: To wish you–warmly and sincerely–a Happy New Year.

(Marketing posts with catchy headlines will resume shortly.)