Wearing pink on Wednesday has been made popular by the movie Mean Girls – a timeless teen comedy movie that came out in 2004.

It’s still got a huge following and people continue to use one particular quote to guide their fashion choices.

We’ve got the data to prove it.

Here’s three years worth of mentions of wearing pink:

Why are we talking about this?

Wednesday this week was a special Wednesday because it was also October 3rd.

October 3rd is the unofficial Mean Girls Day, because of this very specific scene.

So a Mean Girls Day (Oct 3rd) which also falls on a Wednesday (when we wear pink) is a special occasion indeed.

In fact, it was the first time since 2013 that October 3rd fell on a Wednesday. It’s like a rare comet – I managed to convince a lot of my friends in Brandwatch’s Singapore office to get involved and get their pink clothes on, too.

Some history

October is always a big month for conversations about Mean Girls.

Looking at historical mentions of people wearing pink, there’s always an October spike that goes into the thousands.

This year, mentions of wearing pink dwarfed 2016 and 2017 mentions because Mean Girls day was on a Wednesday. There were nearly 200k posts about wearing pink.

So, if you’re not a fan, now you understand how monumental this occurrence is.

A great opportunity to raise awareness

While most of the conversations were about the excitement about Mean Girls Day, an interesting segment of the conversation this year was about wearing pink for a very different purpose – raising awareness for breast cancer.

Lots of people choose to wear pink in support of of the breast cancer awareness movement.

This campaign definitely rode the Mean Girls wave in style. It generated a lot of buzz and awareness about breast cancer, which affects both women and men.

5% of the huge amount of conversation around wearing pink on Mean Girls day referenced the cause.

Brands selling clothes relating to breast cancer awareness were smart enough to jump on the trend.

Trends that stand the test of time will always provide a huge marketing opportunity for brands – and luckily they’re ones you can plan in advance.

This is obviously not new information for any marketer, but to incorporate a trend together with a good cause? That is so FETCH.