If you have felt like everything is a bit out of kilter this year, it is just about to be fixed! February 29, the great equalizer, is just two days away. It is a leap year. Once every four years an extra day is added to the calendar to get us back in sync with the orbit of the earth around the sun – what is known as the solar year.

It takes us 365 days and nearly six hours to make one complete lap around the sun. To make up those extra six hours, every four years another 24-hour day is added to the calendar. However, you might have noticed I mentioned that it is 365 days and nearly six hours to complete the circle. We are moving a bit faster than that. It actually takes 11 minutes, 14 seconds shy of the six extra hours. So we have a problem, don’t we? Not to worry, astrophysicists, computer programmers, and watchmakers got together long ago to figure this out. Rather than shortening February 29 to end at 11:48:46 p.m., we just skip leap year in new century years that are not divisible by 400. We had a leap year in 2000, because it can be evenly divided by 400. Not so with 1900, nor will there be a leap year in 2100, 2200, and 2300. Skipping February 29 in those years gets our 12-month Gregorian calendars back in line with Earth’s solar orbit, almost! At the end of 1,200 years, you would still have another 25.8 hour discrepancy, which is why February 30 has been added to the calendar periodically (ie. 1712 in Sweden.)

The oddity of having a day that only comes around every four years is full of marketing possibilities. Marketing is all about trying to stand out from the competition. There is nothing like a rare day to use as a platform for awareness marketing. Here are some ideas to get you started.

• Everyone loves a deal! Make a special offer with a 29 attached to it - $29 deal, 29 percent discount, free stuff if you are 29 years old, etc.
• Saving your customers time is very marketable. Allow your customers to leap over the normal process to get your products faster if they order on Leap Day.
• Offer a once-in-every-four years promotion, kind of like the Black Friday of the end-of-the-winter season.
• Add an extra item for free on the extra day of the year.
• If you are into sports, add a little trivia to your marketing. Ask your customers who were the greatest players to wear 29? (Football running back Eric Dickerson, baseball players Rod Carew and John Smoltz, NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick, hockey goalie Ken Dryden, to name a few.) If they give you a correct answer, give them something to remember your brand, like a jersey with the number 29 and your logo.
• Sponsor a jump-rope fitness event to leap for your health. Sports sponsorships abound, but a jump-rope event is unique.
• There are plenty of animal kingdom members associated with leaping, such as kangaroos, frogs, lemurs, lizards, rabbits, grasshoppers and crickets. Marketing loves to make animals into advertising icons. Choose your favorite leaping beast and build a one-day campaign out of it.

February 29 lends itself to some fun promotions for your brand. It is a day that people are willing to step out and try something innovative, so wrap your brand around the novelty of the day. Be creative and people will remember you.