I’m not sure about you but I can’t think of any scene that suggests we may have got Christmas all wrong more than a good Black Friday brawl. I’m sure we all remember that notorious footage of shoppers going bananas in a London Asda a few years back, heedless of the fact that Santa had officially entered his annual period of behavioural scrutiny. It was a very black Friday indeed.
While it could be argued that you can’t blame Black Friday for this kind of ruthless pillage any more than you can blame the dead person for a fight at a funeral, taking a stand against the massive discounts and shopping frenzy will certainly make your brand stand out from the crowd. Why not make your Black Friday campaign an anti-Black Friday campaign?
After all, recent research by GfK has shown that the lucrative millennial demographic who came of age in a time of economic instability, are less likely to define life by “stuff” than previous generations. With this in mind, making a social statement with an anti-Black Friday agenda can’t fail to turn some heads.
I came across a Marketing Week article highlighting some of last year’s best anti-Black Friday campaigns. Here are the UK brands that did it best…
Lush
Chock-full of fancy-pants soaps, you can smell Lush looming on the high street from a mile away. Last year they chose to take a stand against global government-backed internet shutdowns with their #keepiton campaign, launched on Black Friday. A study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business revealed that 90% of MBAs from business schools in Europe and North America prefer working for organisations committed to social responsibility; by using an anti-Black Friday campaign to demonstrate theirs is a brand that chooses purpose over profit, Lush made a very smart move that was bound to appeal to the millennial crowd.
Asda
The supermarket chain was initially one of the first big UK brands to make Black Friday a buzzy in-store event. Only, as previously mentioned, this move ended up biting them on the bum as a tidal wave of enraged shoppers, all but frothing at the mouth, tarnished the supermarket’s family-friendly image by transforming their stores into a scene from Coventry on a Saturday night. Keen to distance themselves from the mayhem, Asda used a spot of humour to make their mark with a 30-second mannequin challenge video re-creating the notorious Black Friday scenes of carnage before comforting customers that you can rely on Asda to offer low prices every day – not just on Black Friday.
Pieminister
When pies are your raison d’être, there’s no way a gem like ‘Black Pieday’ can be tossed on the backburner. The restaurant chain and premium pie brand celebrated their own special day last year by giving away surplus frozen pie stock in return for donations to homeless charity Shelter. With the creation of catchy hashtags #blackpieday and #littleactofpieness, the brand sought to help people remember what Christmas is really all about. The campaign was a success with Pieminister’s blog revealing it gave away over 2,000 pies last year and raised thousands of pounds for charity. Support a good cause and get a pie in return? Well, it beats getting a slap in the face over a widescreen TV any day of the week.
Sometimes it’s all too easy to let your content campaigns go a little stale, especially during some of the busier times of year when you’re preoccupied with the day-to-day running of your business. For an injection of fresh content ideas from the experts, contact M2 Bespoke today.