Black Thursday: Forget the Turkey and Your Family and Go Buy More Stuff!!!

Will our ever-growing obsession with Buying More Stuff end up turning the entire 24-hour period now known as Thanksgiving Day into Black Thursday?

Probably. And how depressing. At least The Miami Herald’s brilliant political cartoonist, Jim Morin, managed to convey the craziness with a little humor.

Last year, major retailers including Walmart, Toys R’ US and Target threw their doors open on November 22^nd to throngs of holiday deal-hunters. Consumers by the millions shook off the post-turkey tryptophan lethargy and dashed away shortly after Thanksgiving dinner, afraid of missing bargains on the most in-demand gift items.

And that meant possibly hundreds of thousands of low-paid employees had to forsake their family celebration to be on retail sales floors, ready to smile and cheerfully risk a serious bodily injury to greet the oncoming stampede. Take a look at this disturbing video of a mob scene inside a Walmart store as crazed shoppers nearly climb over one another, screaming and having tugs-of-war over marked-down smartphones. 

Looks like a cattle round-up gone horribly awry, doesn’t it? Well, it also looks like this year a handful of sensible retailers are saying no to the insanity and keeping their stores closed until it’s actually Black Friday.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently announced that, with the exception of three stores in New York City, Las Vegas and Hawaii, all Apple stores will be closed on Thanksgiving so employees can relax and spend the holiday with their families. Several other retailers, including Nordstrom, Costco, Marshall’s and Home Depot have also decided to buck the Black Thursday trend.

“Call me old-fashioned, but I feel that it’s an easy decision to make,” BJ’s Wholesale Club CEO Laura Sen told the Huffington Post, adding that workers deserve “a nice holiday with their families.”

Amen to that. How about just being thankful for what we already have?

Now, I can put on my marketing hat and acknowledge that yes, stores need to remain competitive and yes, the period between Black Friday and Christmas Eve is by far the most important of the year for retailers. In fact, for some, it represents between 20-40% of annual sales, according to the National Retail Federation.

Furthermore, putting in long, grueling work hours during the holiday shopping season has always been a fact of life for retail employees because that’s just the nature of the beast. And they know that.

But isn’t it enough that most big retailers already open at 12 a.m. on Black Friday? Giving employees those few extra hours to enjoy their Thanksgiving feast with loved ones doesn’t seem like too much to concede.

Last year Brendan O’Kane, CEO of OtherLevels (a ThinkInk client), mused in a guest post on Retail Merchandiser – after reading that Macy’s would be open around the clock the weekend before Christmas – about the possibility of a holiday shopping season where stores just don’t close at all.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this scenario actually becomes real within a few years.

And on that wildly cheerful note, I and the whole ThinkInk staff would like to wish our readers and clients a beautiful and peaceful Thanksgiving holiday close to their families and far from the madding crowd at the mall.

Managing Our Expectations in 2013

There's no disputing that technology has changed our life - and our expectations. Nearly 20 years ago, I was living in the UK and working with a company who was, at the time, a pioneer in ecommerce for high-end kitchen, gourmet and lifestyle goods. The company no longer exists, but it did have some great products and ideas, one of which was to provide speedy service and delivery to customers.

While that may seem like a given in our customer-centric world today, back in 1993 customer and service were rarely used in the same sentence let alone acted upon. One of the “customer service differentiators” that we employed at the company was next day and two-day delivery. Again, this is a given in today’s environment but in the early 90s (and throughout the decade), it was considered as a special service.

What we came to realize over a decade was that the more “special services” we provided to our customers, the less special they became. Instead, they were expected and we were constantly looking to up the ante in terms of faster order processing times, fulfillment and delivery.

But there is a point when those special services become too much. Case in point? A recent article in the New York Times “Instantly Yours, for a Fee” looks at the lengths that some online retailers are willing to go to compete with Amazon.com. Since 2009, the ecommerce behemoth has been offering same-day delivery service in selected US cities to retain its competitive advantage. And after having lost a long and expensive battle with California, Texas, Pennsylvania and other states over charging sale taxes, Amazon is building additional distribution centers in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco to increase customer’s same-day delivery options.

Some may argue that same-day delivery is a wonderful thing and ask “how did we ever live without it?” Most consumers, I suspect, won’t really care. In fact, same-day delivery will simply drive up the cost of goods we buy, put smaller online retailers out of business, and create another level of unrealistic expectations.

The technology may exist to facilitate such a service, but as consumers, we’re not driving this demand. Amazon is. 

So how about we start 2013 as we mean to go on, and manage our (technology) expectations?  Will our lives be better or worse off by not having same-day delivery?

I know how I feel about this, but you tell me…

Black Friday About to Steal Cyber Monday’s Thunder Thanks to Mobile

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

I’m about to date myself, but remember the “Happy Days” theme song? You know, “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Happy Days. Thursday, Friday”… you get the point.

Aside from the jingle’s addictive tune, it also had a point: every day was a happy day. There were no distinctions.

And despite all the marketing, retailing and consumer hoopla over the recently passed Black Friday and Cyber Monday – once billed as distinctly different days, one largely an in-store affair and the other mobile – the truth is mobile commerce has become an essential component to all types of shopping on any day of the week.

Happy now?

A recent infographic posted by Mashable along with an article on the holiday weekend underscores that point. Over half of in-store Black Friday shoppers, 58%, used their mobile phones to augment their brick-and-mortar buying. In addition, tablets of all sizes were getting in on the buying act too with iPads being the distinct frontrunner. Fully 88% of traffic to the mobile web came through iPads, garnering 10% of total online shopping.

But wasn’t online buying supposed to be on Cyber Monday or Mobile Monday as some pundits began calling it not too long ago?

Yes. But from a PR perspective, it’s entirely possible the names we’ve ascribed to these retailer do-or-die days are failing to keep pace with technological reality. Think about it. Even the term “Cyber” sounds so nineties and may need upgrading. Cyber, it turns out, (thanks to cyberspace) comes from the word cybernetics, first coined in 1948 by author William Gibson and his novel, Neuromancer, and was a prefix common during the early Internet. Today we have words like: cyber security, cyberbullying, and yes, cybersex.

The same type of misnomer applies to Black Friday too, which has morphed into nearly a two-month-long holiday in and of itself. Which, of course, is augmented by mobile. So whether we call them Black Friday, Smartphone Saturday, Cell phone Sunday, Cyber Monday, Tablet Tuesday, Web Wednesday, or Tech Thursday, mobile shopping and mobile price comparisons have woven themselves through each and every day of the week.

In other words, “Goodbye gray sky, hello blue [mobile’s here and you know it’s true”]

Communication Gap and an Un-American Decision: Sandy Sinks More Than Property

By: Vanessa Horwell, Chief Visibility Officer

Sometimes 140-characters isn’t enough.

In my continuing efforts to practice what we preach at ThinkInk when it comes to the importance of social media, yesterday I tweeted about two retailers, The Gap, and American Apparel and their careless  (some would add heartless and foolish to the list of descriptors) marketing ploy. Both tried to weasel their way into “competitive advantage” following the devastation and destruction wrought across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic by hurricane/super storm/nor’easter/post-tropical storm/Frankenstorm Sandy.

Both companies reached the absurd conclusion that marketing to customers during a tempest that rivaled the ferociousness of weather not seen since 1888 was a smart idea - and a novel way to win loyalty.

Wrong. And this Tweeter needed to go on her own tear.

American Apparel’s 36-hour, 20% off “in case you’re bored” sale was geared toward residents in nine of the 11 states in the grip of the crisis: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Why Rhode Island, a New England state where summer cottages fell into the sea and West Virginia, pounded with some 3 ft. of snow in higher elevations, were left off the “generous” list remains unknown. For its part in the PR fail, Gap sent out a tweet that while telling people to be safe, also nudged them to consider a dose of retail therapy.

Needless to say, the public reaction has been swift and the Twitterverse is alive with derision, with “the lowest of low,” being a very common tweeted and re-tweeted sentiment.

Misery loves company as the saying goes, so of course there are plenty of examples of Gap and American Apparel-like PR blunders. Just last year Kenneth Cole’s Twitter account tweeted:

“Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online.”

Really?

But returning to the recent crisis at hand, as a PR professional I wanted to go on record and add my voice to the chorus of disapproval. It’s truly disturbing that someone, somewhere, likely paid a decent to very decent salary, had the light bulb go off in their head and thought, “Wow, I’ve got the brainiest of ideas! Let’s use a natural disaster for our own gain and corporate greed.”

Well, I’m sure that in many Gaps and American Apparels across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic their light bulbs (and their heat, and phone lines, and computer systems) really are off now. Perhaps time spent in the cold and dark, thrown back for a moment to simpler times, will remind executives and higher ups at these retailers and beyond that the almighty dollar is not always king.

Many of our clients speak about the importance of driving quality experiences. Having a dose of humility and knowing when not to hard sell, soft sell, or anything-else sell is also a respectful way to move beyond the pettiness and triviality of our daily lives.

When New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a staunch Republican, praises President Obama for a job well done handling this historic calamity, you know you’re approaching the humility, honesty and transparency of which I write.

Eventually, every state impacted by Sandy’s arrival will rebuild. Beaches will open for summer. Amusement parks will charge overpriced tickets. Communities will come together and the lights will come back on. Just know that for every American Apparel and Gap blunder, there are other companies, nonprofits, communication companies, and everyday citizens all-too-eager to lend a hand and help.

None of them come 20% off. They’ll be there 100%.

Shame on American Apparel and the Gap – two companies whose despicable actions won’t fast be lost to the waves, nor this PR executive.

And if you would like to help your fellow citizens who were impacted by the storms, here are a couple of links where you can donate money or blood to the relief efforts.  If they were half-clever, that’s what American Apparel and Gap should have been encouraging people to do, not banking on others’ misfortune.