My inbox is full, it’s Black Friday overload. The news is full of negative PR are the deals really deals, since when did a day become a week and are we encouraging people to take on more debt?
And looking at the deals in my inbox, there is the expected and predictable Amazon, eBay, Hotels.com, Ikea, but also some more surprising ones.
An office furniture company – really do I look around and think oh yes that reminds me we need new desks? Then again perhaps if I wanted a new desk I might choose this one over the Swedish equivalent! The list goes on, train companies, airport parking, racking, servers, software companies, energy suppliers the list is endless.
At the end of the day, I guess all these companies cannot be wrong can they, I mean marketeers never just jump on a bandwagon and do something just because everyone else is, do they?
So does it work?
Well, I have several clients we have supplied ads and collateral for and they all point to sales growth year on year so I guess it must. No doubt everyone running these offers are aware of the dangers of sales cannibalisation and delayed purchase. So last weekend my Mum was in John Lewis, for many years a company that studiously refused to follow the herd, about to buy a new coat the lady serving her said to her if she waited a week it would probably be in the Black Friday offers. Awesome customer service but if anyone in the marketing team found out they might just be reaching for the headache pills. I guess that’s the sales assistant version of the clumsy dragon in their awesome Christmas ad.
In all honesty, the data I have seen in previous years says it works but this year if I was the big chief in charge of the marketing abacus I would be looking closely at the numbers before planning next year.
So it works. In that case here is a Guerilla Creative black Friday offer.
For any existing on new Client who places a new order for work to be completed before Christmas, we will halve our hourly rates.