This Sunday is the third Sunday of the month that has been designated Father’s Day ever since 1972. That is when a 90-year-old lady named Sonara Smart Dodd convinced President Richard Nixon to officially recognize the day as a national holiday. She had been trying to get the day recognized since 1910! That’s right, it took her 62 years to get Father’s Day on the record.

Why did Father’s Day lag behind other holidays in getting its due respect? There is a marketing reason. You simply cannot beat being the first of any kind of celebration. Anything that follows and is similar to the original never has the same luster. It seems that playing second-fiddle to Mother’s Day, which happens a month earlier, gives Father’s Day a less-than reputation. However, there is another reason that Father’s Day is not as popular as Mother’s Day. There are traditional gifts associated with Mother’s Day – namely flowers and candy. Father’s Day does not have the same kind of feel-good consumable or disposable gift that needs to be purchased year after year. If you give your father tools, he will have them the next year. If you buy him a grill, likewise, he doesn’t need another one the next year. So people wanting to honor their dear old dad will have a much harder time finding a gift than they did for their mother. Father’s Day lacks an iconic gift.

Here is the marketing lesson: if you are creating an event that you want to perpetuate year after year, make sure your event is the first of its kind on the calendar. Also, create some sort of iconic imagery around the event – what we would call a brand – so people will know what you are talking about by just seeing the image at a certain time of the year. Make that image readily available to consumers. If you do these simple things, your event brand will grow.

Just for fun - in honor of Father’s Day - I have a few dad jokes.

• An old jukebox was sitting in a barn next to a bale of hay. What did the hay say to the jukebox? Juke, I am your fodder!

• What do they call a bar of soap on an alligator farm? Crocodial.

• Waiter to a dad: How did you find your steak?

Dad: I looked next to the potato.

• Did you hear the guy who invented knock-knock jokes won the no-bell prize?

• Son to Dad: Can you explain a solar eclipse?

Dad: No sun!

• What do you call chickens sitting on top of telephone poles? Poultries.

• Five ants rented an apartment from five other ants. Now they’re tenants.

• A father and son go to a wild game restaurant and look at the menu.

Son: I can’t decide if I want venison or beefsteak.

Dad: Go with the venison because the buck tops steer.

• You should never tell a joke on a teleconference call, because they’re not remotely funny.

• What do you call baby fish swimming headlong toward each other in a Kentucky lake? Kentucky fry chicken.

Happy Father's Day!