“Black Friday” was just a day well-established as a popular shopping day, due to it being a day off industrial and office workers had in the run-up to Christmas.
The “Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale” was always a clearance sale. The stuff you were getting “for cheap” was inevitably products that the store needed off the shelves before they pulled out the next line of high-demand kitche. So you could get clothes a year out of fashion or electronics a step behind the curve. But the store wouldn’t restock this stuff because it was inevitably the last bits they still had in inventory.
This - combined with hypersensational news coverage of “Incredible Unbelievable DEALS!” - sparked a slew of deadly crowd crushes that created the impression of sales so amazing people would die for them. But it was always just clearance sales, with the occasional scam or flim-flam thrown in. Once savvy consumers started to notice the degraded state of the merchandise and more conservative retail shoppers saw the crowd crush as a scary hazard rather than a bandwagon to climb aboard, the sensationalist news coverage dimmed and the marketing strategies changed.
But the rise and fall of “Black Friday” was never actually about it going to shit. It was always shit. It just took time for retail shoppers to notice.
Doesn’t help that they go on to run them elsewhere afterwards too so they aren’t even exclusive anymore.
If you watch the playoffs (or sometimes even the late season), most of the commercials are also aired during that. It’s like an additional penalty for the folks who actually follow the game.
They pretty much feel like regular ads now. Doesn’t help that they go on to run them elsewhere afterwards too so they aren’t even exclusive anymore.
Feels weird to be reminiscing about ads, but they really did use to be entertaining.
it used to be an opportunity for creatives to spread their wings with a larger budget. but the “optimization” of capitalism removes all the magic
just like ‘black friday’. once it hit mainstream with lots of media and news coverage, it went to shit.
“Black Friday” was just a day well-established as a popular shopping day, due to it being a day off industrial and office workers had in the run-up to Christmas.
The “Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale” was always a clearance sale. The stuff you were getting “for cheap” was inevitably products that the store needed off the shelves before they pulled out the next line of high-demand kitche. So you could get clothes a year out of fashion or electronics a step behind the curve. But the store wouldn’t restock this stuff because it was inevitably the last bits they still had in inventory.
This - combined with hypersensational news coverage of “Incredible Unbelievable DEALS!” - sparked a slew of deadly crowd crushes that created the impression of sales so amazing people would die for them. But it was always just clearance sales, with the occasional scam or flim-flam thrown in. Once savvy consumers started to notice the degraded state of the merchandise and more conservative retail shoppers saw the crowd crush as a scary hazard rather than a bandwagon to climb aboard, the sensationalist news coverage dimmed and the marketing strategies changed.
But the rise and fall of “Black Friday” was never actually about it going to shit. It was always shit. It just took time for retail shoppers to notice.
If you watch the playoffs (or sometimes even the late season), most of the commercials are also aired during that. It’s like an additional penalty for the folks who actually follow the game.