Black Friday Really No More

As stores began opening earlier for "black friday" this year than ever before, initial stats from Black Friday show that sales are down on one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Obviously, some of those sales are pulled over to Thursday as retailers keep trying to beat one another out. Retailers argue that the new strategy is better for all allowing people that enjoy staying up late able to get deals in the evening and people that enjoy getting up early able to get deals in the morning. However, retailers are NOT thinking of the consumers. As each retailer fights to open earlier than the previous retailer, it is just a fight to get the consumers' dollar before the competitor gets it. But how are consumers feeling about it? What is happening to a great holiday that consumers have to be thankful for the things in their lives? Marketing is beneficial for businesses to enhance awareness and provide incentive to purchase the business' products, but there is a point when the business crosses the line of helping the consumer. Is entreanching on Thanksgiving day helping or hurting the consumer? In my opinion, retailers need to realize where they need to draw the line. Thanksgiving is a holiday. Consumers enjoy having this holiday. Allowing consumers to fully enjoy a holiday with family will help consumers to be in a better mood and enjoy shopping more. Plus, respecting the consumer and the holiday may encourage the consumer to have an attitude of your company as more respectful and a place where they would rather shop.

Black Friday at WalMart

Often times when we think of Black Friday, we think of sales, early mornings, gimmics, deals on computers and TVs, and of course, crowds. However, this year we also see a coalition of Wal-Mart workers gathering together to protest against low wages and to make their statement more powerful, this group of workers plans to stage their protest on Black Friday. Some may wonder what implications this has on Black Friday sales. Others may wonder if this will take away from the cheer of the beginning of the holiday season (wait... who said there is cheer involved in waiting in line for two hours in the freezing cold only to fight with others to buy stuff that you don't even know if you want).

One of the biggest questions right now is what exactly is going to happen and how will this affect sales for the big day? More than likely, some employees will follow through with their protests, standing outside of Wal-Mart stores picketing against the low wages. In my opinion though, Wal-Mart is a smart enough company that store managers have already analyzed how many employees they expect to join these protests, scheduled in additional employees, and even alerted appropriate authorities to remove protestors that become out of control. Wal-Mart employees are replaceable so I'm sure Wal-Mart is not concerned about the employees. And plus, do you really think the people that are rushing to the Black Friday sales are going to care whether or not the employees are getting low wages? I highly doubt it.

ESPN Gameday Sponsorship

A bit of local marketing for today around the University of Oregon. ESPN Gameday is going on today (the 17th of November) in the heart of the University of Oregon campus. I find it particularly interesting that the Home Depot and Cheeze-Its are the sponsors for the event. First we must ask, what do these have to do with football? Yes, men who watch football may be likely to visit the Home Depot... and eat Cheeze-Its? Kind of strange. Yes, great advertising to a campus of about 23,000 students. However, was Home Depot necessarily the best major sponsor for the event? The University of Oregon colors are green and yellow with orange being one of the colors of the main competitor for the University of Oregon ducks. Yes, Home Depot may be the national sponsor for the gameday events, but students seeing the color orange may instantaneously associate Home Depot with their rivals. It's a small similarity but could have a big influence. In any case, just a reminder that sponsorship is another form of marketing communication that is often forgot about.

Windows 8 Advertising

Windows 8 came out for consumers at the end of October.  In a variety of different advertising mediums, Windows has tried to get the message out about their new operating system. However, reports have come back that consumers are left more confused than informed. The advertisements showing a mobile like (and also very Apple like) graphical user interface leaves consumers wondering... how do I use this? This reminds me of when Apple came out with ads initially introducing the first version of the iPhone. Consumers thought it was neat but didn't understand how to use this new type of phone. Apple quickly realized that they needed to introduce "how to" ads to show consumers how to use the new device. Seems like Windows needs to consider something similar.

Companies too often assume they know consumer's needs and desires with regards to advertising but fail to conduct adequate copy testing before sending ads out to market... or they conduct copy testing but push their own agenda so much as to forgo actual consumer feedback. Advertising needs to answer consumer questions, inform consumers of news/changes, remind consumers of purchase opportunities, and/or provide consumers with the resources to get more info. Is Windows 8 doing this? Not really - they are informing consumers of the new opportunity but failing to answer the key consumer question of how easy is this going to be to use? Consumers wonder, is this going to be like the big changes when the Office 2007 suite came out? If so, what is the motivation to upgrade to this new operating system??? Key here - focus on the customers and their needs, not on your own thoughts and desires as a company.

Buying clicks to go viral

Now you don't have to go to all that extra effort to promote your video on Youtube in order for it to go viral. You can pay a company such as Buyral to click on your video continuously and make your video appear as if it is going viral. This could then potentially lead to the video actually going viral as a result of consumers believing the video is already on its way to being viral. Does this sound fishy or what? It seems like something that may work for a short time but as soon as companies catch on, consumer skepticism of video views is going to grow higher causing money paid for clicks to be wasted. Other thoughts?