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.