Black Friday & Brand Identity: Don’t lose yourself in the race to the bottom

I am not a savvy shopper, definitely not a committed bargain hunter, but I am obsessed with brand identity, authenticity and the emotional connection between brands and their consumers. 

Everything about walking into a shop in sales season puts me on edge - the jumbled rails of mismatched items dangling by a shoulder from the hanger, the elbows, the frustration and palpable anxiety bubbling just below the surface in my fellow shoppers. There’s also the stories of people getting stretchered away after midnight stampedes and security guards getting battered out of the way, around the world. Online sales are a little easier for me - less elbows, less bubbling rage, more filters. But, you can still trawl pages and pages of ‘load more’, find exactly what you want and then discover it’s only available in a size 6 (not my size by the way). I’ve often used up the last of my short attention span to get to this point and the frustration is too great, I bounce. 

So, it’s no surprise that on Black Friday, rather than queuing from 3am to get my hands on an Xbox, I’m analysing how brands have approached the dangling carrot of a revenue feast and whether they’ve managed to hold on to the meaning of their brand, the message they want their consumers to believe that they believe in, or if they’ve left it trampled on the floor below the shelves piled high with goods, bought in to flog to the frenzied crowds. Have they harmed or enhanced the loyalty consumers feel towards their brands? 

Some brands have nailed Black Friday. They’ve cut through the noise and most importantly, they haven’t lost themselves along the way:

Dewerstone are an outdoor lifestyle store and brand. The first line of their ‘About Us’ page on their website says ‘We’re people that love the outdoors.’ And what did they post on Black Friday? ‘We’re shutting the shop, office & warehouse doors on Black Friday, we’re just not into it. We’re going adventuring instead.’ They don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk. They are prioritising their team and the outdoors for a day. As a brand who want to be part of the outdoor community, who typically are interested in quality, and the environment, the risk to their revenue in not taking part in Black Friday, was outweighed by the risk to their brand if they did. In case it isn’t clear enough whether they care more about their customers’ loyalty or their bottom line on Black Friday, they even take a moment to thank their followers for being customers every other day of the year. 

Patagonia, another outdoor brand state very clearly on their website that their mission is that they are in business to save ‘our home planet’. In 2016 they launched their Black Friday campaign ‘100% Today, 1% Every Day’. They pledged to donate 100% of their Black Friday sales to grassroots nonprofits working on the frontlines to protect our air, water and soil for future generations. And guess what the final sales tally was for Patagonia that day? $10 million. Good call.

Pieminister turned Black Friday in to Black Pie Day in 2018. Since their inception, Pieminister have donated pies to good causes, from homelessness hostels to community fairs to fundraising banquets. They call these donations Little Acts of Pie-ness and their website states that they’ve put over 200,000 pies to good use in this way already. Every Black Friday they give away pies in their shops and pop up shops around the country in exchange for donations to Shelter, raising thousands of pounds. The purported values of the brand, what they care about, what they think matters is clear to any consumer. It isn’t a gimmick, it’s who they are. So, they lose a days sales, but they gain a loyal band of pie eaters in the process. 

Cards Against Humanity have always maintained a policy of no deals, no discounts, for their game. Before Black Friday 2013 the game had always been $25,and the makers felt that doing any kind of deal or discount would undermine the simplicity and honesty of the game. This is a really important brand value and really difficult to uphold in the maelstrom of deals that is Black Friday. In 2013 they settled on their angle, they raised the price of the game by $5 and saw a huge sales spike as a result. Their campaign parodied the slightly stomach turning marketing concept of establishing scarcity, leading people to purchase when they wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) normally, due to a manufactured sense of urgency. They crossed out the $25 dollar price tag and listed the new $30 dollar tag, with phrases like ‘Today only!’ And ‘Once-in-a-lifetime-sale!’.

This year they’ve gone fully dystopian pitting their human staff against a bot to see who can come up with the most popular pack of new cards. Again, no discounting and a perfect illustration of their playful brand identity, hopefully creating new encounters with their brand for new customers. Genius. https://www.cardsagainsthumanityaichallenge.com/

Two Thirds, a sustainable fashion brand, founded by a group of surfers committed to protecting the oceans have turned Black Friday in to Green Week: ‘Black week turns green - one order = one tree’. They offer to plant a tree for every order placed in Green Week. They haven’t ignored the discounting element of Black Friday, offering ‘special discounts for a better future’, but they’ve added meaning. To date (since Sunday 24th November - in 6 days) they have planted 4673 trees. That gives me, as a consumer, 4673 reasons to believe them when they say they care about the oceans, and that they believe that without green, there is no blue. They are acting in support of their words and getting my buy in as result. 

Defining what your brand means, and what you believe in is the first step in any branding journey. Long before you have a logo and a colour palette, you define your identity. Then, you need to build and protect consumer belief in that message. Once lost, never regained. The excesses of Black Friday leave me feeling a little queasy and, particularly in a time of environmental disaster, a burgeoning debt crisis in the UK, and increases in homelessness and poverty, the idea of manufacturing a sense of urgency to encourage people to spend when they might not if they had longer to think about it seems wrong. It leaves me cold. 

Offer to plant a tree with every order? I’m pulling out my wallet. Shut up shop to go adventuring on Dartmoor? I’ll be queuing up the next day for you to open the doors. No brands can afford to ignore huge retail events like Black Friday but what you do about it can help you define who you are as a brand, or it can destroy the identity you’ve worked so hard to communicate.