It's Time to Cancel Black Friday

Now is the time for America's retailers to make a decision that will help their customer base approach the 2020 holiday season from a more positive place, both emotionally and financially.

Believe it or not, the year is half-over. As I write this, Thanksgiving is 137 days away in the U.S. and there are 166 days until Christmas.

I'm pretty sure that few of us are feeling very festive right now. Quite a lot of us think 2021 can't get here fast enough.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrown personal and business lives into disarray on a massive scale. Even for those who haven't lost loved ones or livelihoods to the disease, political, social, and financial crises have dominated our news cycles and our personal lives.

Stress levels are high. Spending has been down. The public's confidence (not consumer confidence per se, but the public's mood) is largely negative. Even if we found an effective COVID-19 vaccine tomorrow and were back to 2019 levels of "normalcy" by winter, the emotional toll of 2020 is going to take more than a few months to overcome.

As businesses take stock at mid-year and plan for the rest of 2020, now is the time for America's retailers to make a decision that will help their customer base approach this year's holiday season from a more positive place, both emotionally and financially.

Cancel Black Friday.

I'm not talking about embracing "cancel culture," the sort of overreaction that we see too often on social media. I mean canceling Black Friday as an event and a theme for 2020, plain and simple. It's a bold move, and a proactive decision that will help your brand position itself better for the future.

Plan now to skip Thanksgiving weekend as a sales event in 2020 in favor of emphasizing a calendar of promotions that stretches from Thanksgiving week in the U.S. throughout the entire holiday season to the New Year — a measured, balanced, slowed-down promotional cycle that trades up-front hype for a slow build of anticipation, and a new narrative that lifts shoppers' morale with low-key messaging.

A Moment for Radical Thinking

It may seem counterproductive to do something so radical in a year where sales are already hurting — when COVID-19 has not only shuttered stores but impacted every aspect of retail from production, to logistics, to customer experience. 

This year, when customer expectations have already been shaken and the realities of shopping and buying are still in flux, a radical change makes perfect sense. If you take "Black Friday" out of your brand's vocabulary altogether for 2020, you acknowledge the difficulties that come with this year and align yourself with your customer.

If you forego opening on Thanksgiving altogether and make Friday, November 27, 2020 a normal sales day, you remove a good deal of the stress and the negative imagery that the language, images, and events of "Black Friday" impose on your shoppers.

From a consumer behavior standpoint, you change the conversation by giving people a new way of looking at the holiday ahead of them — and a new reason to pay attention to what your brand has to say next.

Think of how erasing Black Friday from 2020 changes the game for a stressed-out, jaded, and (in many, many cases) cash-poor customer base who may be as far from "holly jolly" this Christmas as they could ever be. That's why I'd plan now for a very different holiday shopping paradigm, and announce those changes just as soon as the weather turns cooler and people start thinking long, wistful thoughts of pumpkin spice.

"Cash on the Table" vs. Shopper Goodwill

There also are many good logistical reasons to at least dramatically scale back Black Friday events in 2020. We have no idea what the state of the U.S. response to COVID-19 will be in November. As it stands now, many major markets have limits on store capacities and allowable sizes of public gatherings that would make the crowds and lines of Black Friday as we know it impossible. Canceling Black Friday months in advance doesn't mean leaving cash on the table if October and November find us battling a new, or ongoing, wave of coronavirus cases with restrictions that impact retail operations. 

But even if local regulations allow shoppers to line up and rush in as usual, how much has your customers' behavior changed since last year? Come November, how many people will still want to crowd together in retail stores for deals now that social distancing has been burned into our collective vocabulary?

Does planning "Black Friday" sales and promotions now, under that name and with all that's tied to it, make sense if you don't know for sure whether your stores will be able to open for the kinds of crowds you want to attract?

Cancel Black Friday now, creating a new kind of experience in its place, and you position your brand as proactive and responsive to the concerns many have expressed about COVID-19 and the shopping experience. You also build goodwill among those who see Black Friday lines, crowds, sales and emotions as going against the whole reason for celebrating the holidays. And you make those who start holiday shopping sooner take notice to see what you'll offer them in place of the usual.

This positivity will work in your favor well before the holiday shopping season begins as people decide which retailers to support in the long haul.

One for the Workers

Speaking of public goodwill, this year is the perfect chance to acknowledge the growing push to give hourly-wage workers a Thanksgiving weekend schedule that allows them to spend time with friends and family.

You can position your brand well for this year's realities by taking a public stand to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day.

While "Boycott Black Thursday" and anti-Black Friday movements might not have touched your profit margins, they've definitely touched a nerve with a large number of people. Expect those sentiments to echo even more loudly this year, amplified by the concerns already being expressed over the safety of logistics workers and front-line retail staff whose risk of COVID-19 exposure is higher.

It's easy, maybe even tempting, to spin the message that Thanksgiving night and long Black Friday weekend store hours are a way to give your staff more work so they can afford their own holiday celebrations in a tough year. That line of reasoning might look good on paper, but how will it stand up to public sentiment in the midst of a global pandemic?

It would be nice to live in a world where holiday shopping is predictable and profitable for everyone. It would be wonderful to live in a world where retailers could afford to give everyone Thanksgiving Day off with pay, and open at 6 a.m. on Friday for the hard-core shoppers without worrying about the bottom line.

If such a perfect world ever exists, it won't get here by Christmas 2020. But you can position your brand well for this year's realities by making a public pledge to remain closed on Thanksgiving Day. The image of retail workers already hard-hit by the pandemic being able to celebrate with those they love will resonate with your potential customers.

A Year Without Black Friday?

Canceling Black Friday means a major paradigm shift in your retail messaging. To be successful, you've got to do more than just throttle back on events you plan for Thanksgiving weekend. Your mission is to completely rethink how you approach holiday sales and make 2020 the year you set yourself apart from the pack.

How can you tell your brand's story differently by cutting the words "Black Friday" out of your ads, out of your signage and out of your employees' talking points for the 2020 holiday season?

Think like a storyteller. We all have favorite holiday stories, favorite movies, and favorite fairy tales; even if you don't celebrate the holidays yourself, you probably know the stories very well. Now you have the opportunity to write a new holiday narrative that reminds shoppers of what the pandemic has already emphasized as important: friends, family, and being with those you love ... not cooped up in a house amidst work and school and stress, but with a chance to relax at home for the holidays.

You can find new ways to weave promotions around these themes in the weeks leading up to Christmas, Hanukkah and the New Year. Instead of trying to electrify shoppers with a "sales event" at Thanksgiving for a holiday they're perhaps starting to dread by Halloween, you can reduce the emotional stakes by changing how your brand celebrates.

Here are questions your team can be asking now:

• How can we tell our brand's story differently by cutting the words "Black Friday" out of our ads, out of our signage, and out of our employees' talking points for the 2020 holiday season?
• How can we help our shoppers feel better about the coming holidays by creating new experiences that help them focus on the entire season, without the stressful "Buy now!" imagery that Black Friday conjures up?
• Can we build more cheerfulness and positive sentiment by taking a "less is more" approach to the holidays in 2020? Do we decorate our stores after Thanksgiving instead of weeks ahead of time? Do we dial back the holiday music and mix the carols in with other upbeat, positive songs? Do we make other changes that help our customers find the familiar and comforting aspects of the holidays, even in a stressful and unpredictable world?
• How can we change up our promotions so that we're building online traffic and store traffic throughout the season, rewarding both early shoppers and those who wait for later deals?

Once you have a story and an approach that fits your brand's voice and promise, you can start to do what all of us shoppers are already doing. Scale back. Keep it simple. And focus on what's really important for the holidays.

In a year that's been anything but "business as usual," it's a change that could make for a very happy holiday for you and your brand ... and one your customers will remember throughout the year ahead.

I've worked in Content Marketing for B2B firms serving Retail, Hospitality, and Electronic Components Distribution. The opinions I've expressed here are my own and don't necessarily represent my employer.