Well, it’s the time of year again. Lights are being put up, Christmas trees are being bought and people are lining up 5 days before a sale to go shopping. Wait, what? Yes, it is indeed almost time for one of the most anticipated sales of the year, Black Friday. There are sales, big sales, huge sales -and then there’s Black Friday. I don’t think there is any other shopping related event during the year that causes quite as much frenzy, excitement and hysteria as Black Friday does. What about the event makes it so appealing? Might it be the marketing surrounding the event or the obnoxiously low prices that are advertised? 

In an attempt to understand the “Promotion” section of our class better, I thought it would be interesting to try and relate Black Friday to the concept. We could argue that Black Friday is not so much an event as a product in itself – it’s a “service”, an intangible good.

Getting the right message, to the right audience, through the right media. Black Friday pitches definitely have this one down – they’re advertising cheaper than dirt prices, for quality products that you might otherwise be paying double the price for, the right message. Black Friday is set just less than a month away from Christmas, they know that everyone will be in the Christmas mode – frantic to buy the perfect present and willing the pay the price, the right audience. Everywhere you go, you see advertisements for Black Friday ; you hear advertisements for Black Friday on the radio; you see a tweet about Black Friday; you see a Facebook post about Black Friday. Black Friday is literally everywhere. Given that our current society is addicted to social media and Black Friday hits all the channels of media, how can they go wrong? The right media.

Whoever was behind the genius idea of Black Friday, I salute you. Not only are they getting all the right messages across, their message is being properly encoded by the consumers, they’re responding by buying heaping amounts of products during the sale and thus gives the sellers feedback. The perfect communication process. Since the ads are reaching the consumers directly, and the consumers go to the malls/stores/outlets to make their purchases, Black Friday would be using direct marketing to reel their unsuspecting consumers in.

With all that being said, I will probably be one of the shoppers amidst the angry hoard of people aimlessly grabbing at products. Minus the anger and aimless grabbing – I’ll go for the fun of it and hopefully be able to identify some Promotional aspects.

While reading through James’ blog post titled “Dunkin’ Donuts Went Black and Now They’re Going Back“, I was very intrigued by the topic of discussion, namely racism and marketing combined as a single issue.

I agree with what James has said in his post regarding the fact that it is ridiculous that the charcoal donut campaign by Dunkin’ Donuts has been faced by claims of racism. To me, it seems as though in Western cultures, most notably America, racism is such a sensitive issue that it is brought up in situations where it is completely irrelevant. We try so hard to contain the racism that it is seen in many situations in which it does not even exist. Mix racism with marketing and every little possible stab at a certain race is magnified. With anti-racism playing such a large role in our current society, it is difficult for marketers to create a wholesome ad that does not offend. Not only for race issues, but cultural, societal and political issues as well. This is why ad campaigns are usually targeted to their specific demographic and geographical location.

In this particular situation, we can see that this ad was originally targeted at the Thai demographic. The fact that the complaints did not come from Thailand but rather America, and that the American branch of Dunkin’ Donuts had to apologize on part of their Thai branch is somewhat ridiculous. To me, it seems as though the viewers of this ad are skewing their perception of what it actually is and making it seem like a racist advertisement when it reality, it is only portraying a colour. It is not making any connection to people with darker skin tones and it is not sending a degrading or demeaning message. The fact that people have jumped to the conclusion after seeing an advertisement with the colour black on it, with someone who is painted black to advertise their product – just boggles my mind.

Referring to Newsfeed’s article about the Dunkin’ Donuts advertisement, it says that the CEO of Dunkin’ Donuts Thailand insists that the outrage for the ad stems from “paranoid American thinking” which I can’t completely disagree with. Stepping back from the whole race situation, in a marketing point of view, it was the proper step for the American branch to take in apologizing. There would have been no benefit to the company to justify their position and would have only damaged their company reputation further – to reiterate James’ statement in his post. All in all, the issue of racism is subjective and is perceived differently by everyone. Such was this blog post – made up entirely of subjective thoughts and opinions on this particular “racial” issue.