BLACK FRIDAY’S LYING PROBLEM
In the wake of Black Friday, I took some time to talk to friends, family, and fellow marketers about their Christmas shopping, or lack thereof. This year, I noticed a throughline: annoyance.
Losing The Culture
Gone are the days of lining up outside the mall and battling it out for doorbuster deals on flatscreen TVs and buy-one-get-three-free t-shirts from your favorite clothing store.
There’s a tendency to make COVID and Amazon the scapegoats for the lessening pull of brick-and-mortar Black Friday shopping but there’s something else happening too: brands have lost touch with the culture. Cyber Monday and Black Friday differentiation has been blurred making them effectively identical and eroding the sense of urgency. With the increasing default to online Black Friday shopping, Cyber Monday is a redundancy. A deal doesn’t feel like a deal and the buzz is gone.
Then we arrive at something that compounds with the changes in the way we shop: the “sales” themselves. I noticed two types of marketing tactics: misleading spin and straight-up deception.
Misleading Spin
TikTok was buzzing after a user revealed a sneaky “sale” tactic used in Target stores.
A viral TikTok video that raked in 44.4M views (a number considered a success for an A-lister pop star music video) showed Target stores placing an identically-priced Black Friday sale sign right over the sign from the day before. In effect, they were marketing a zero percent sale as a doorbuster.
via @djdowneygirl on TikTok
Amazon is another top offender by charging the same price as the day before but adding a “Black Friday Sale” badge alongside an inflated list price that they never actually charge so they can make it look like a 70% off sale.
Straight Up Deception
Then there’s blatant lying. I was considering pulling the trigger on buying a few pieces from a jewelry brand based in Denmark. For a week, I had three items in my cart and was ready to purchase them as soon as the Black Friday deal arrived. A few days before, an email blast hyping up the Black Friday sale claimed the entire collection had quickly sold out the prior year.
On Thursday night, they posted an Instagram graphic claiming Black Friday was “the only sale of the year”. The problem? A week before, they had a “pick three, pay for two deal”. It was an immediate turnoff. It was disingenuous and treated the consumer like they hadn’t ever engaged with the brand before. A little annoyed, I waited for the next day as they didn’t disclose the deal until the day of.
Friday comes. They boasted sales of up to 50% off. After scouring the website, I found that there wasn’t a single sale on any item better than 25% off. Not a single item sold out. My basket price actually increased on the day of the Black Friday sale.
Desperate marketing tactics leave a bad taste in my mouth and erode my desire for brand ambassadorship. This surprised me as the brand is positioned as affordable luxury and has a very refined and classic look. I didn’t expect spammy fast fashion style supersales. They also put a lot of effort into branding. The product didn’t appear cheap. I related with the brand from a tribal/community standpoint and planned on tagging them as soon as I received my product. No longer.
The icing on the cake? The “pick three, pay for two” deal was active again the next week.
Final Thoughts
One of the worst emotions a brand can elicit is spite. Manipulative practices shine a giant spotlight on the obnoxious truths of consumerism that shoppers try to ignore on Black Friday so they can indulge in the fun guilt-free. Customers are already participating in shopping sprees and are willing participants in a day that’s the pinnacle of consumerism, but practices like these are so egregious that they’re a huge turnoff. There’s a correction that needs to be made before the concept of Black Friday fades to irrelevancy and ceases to motivate. And trust that next year, I’ll be avoiding the brands who have blown their credibility.