Nick Kaplans Fight Club - Elevate your game. You're not in it? Get in the game. It is here.

"I wonder if Black Friday has any relevance anymore?" - me paraphrasing Nick Kaplan before his spot on the show returned. Nick's handle on the vernacular is far superior to mine, so I always put this words in my own. Today though, is different. I am quoting you directly Nick Kaplan Your wisdom cannot be for the benefit of your wife and kids along.

Some immediate thought tracks emerged:

Has Black Friday peaked before it started?

Are there any products worth talking about?

Buyer fatigue and the constant discount cycle. So what motivation are we tapping into.

More thoughts, now from me.

Why do retailers not change their promotional cadence.

We, the consumer, are passive in our interaction with retail and tech. Our need state is purely convenience. We don't need to be entertained in stores, just let us get in and get out. (the majority of us). This makes tech development futile for the most part. (not saying we should stop, but.)

We the consumer have all the shit we need already. What else can we possibly put in BNPL?

This a moment in time where a few forces are converging and changing the next decade IMO. We are reverting back to a technology purchase cycle similar to the early 2000's - select the platform and chip away at it over a few years allocating a predetermined budget to a priority issue and solve this - that's your lot for 2025. Get used to it.

Consumers are fatigued. We are fatigued. Our choices will be more considered into the next 5 years. Need over want. The classic #DTC brand growth story will become harder to achieve. DTC + Celebrity = product launch not brand growth. We need to separate these things. I think that energy drink was the one that nailed it for me. Thje Mr Beast one. Prime. In 10 years will anyone remember the fastest growing drinks brand in the world? Feels like a customer and cash grab - but thats ok. That's the formula - Think about that Nick Kaplan - we are building launches, not lifelong brands. Just filling gaps in a way that private label does, but with a branding wrapper we feel closer to. We need that comfort blanket to serve another of Maslow's hierarchical need states.

The ILA strike made me fear for Q1, I kicked that can down into early Q3 next year. Watch for it. But back to Nick. Poetry in Motion. Before I share his monolgue verbatim, I wanted to set the scene slightly.

Rule 1 of Retail. We don't talk about retail in the negative.

Rule 2 of Retail. See above.

Nick's stream of consciousness drew on history, experience and people who shaped his views on many things. The rest is just Nick, pure, from the head and heart in equal measure - both operating in conflict and harmony and respecting each other just enough to create his poetry.

Fight Club

Fight Club is?not a film about fighting: it’s a narrative about life, and it’s about ridding ourselves of the corporate and cultural influences (or perhaps the confluence of the two) that control our lives. Following are some of our favorite minimalist quotes from the film.

1. The things you own end up owning you.
2. It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.
3. You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
4. Reject the basic assumptions of civilization—especially the importance of material possessions.
5. We’re consumers. We are the byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.
6. We’re the middle children of history, man: No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war; our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact.
7. Explaining consumerism:?We are all part of the same compost heap.
8. Drawing a metaphor for the modern consumer-driven life:?How embarrassing—a house full of condiments and no food.
9. And the eighth and final rule—if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.
10. If you are reading this, then this warning is for you: Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think everything you’re supposed to think? Buy what you’re told to want?

Thanks to the minimalist for articulating the above.

Now back to the subject Matter at hand - Black Friday. Where does it fit or not anymore?

Kaplan's Corner October 4th 2024 - From the Watson Weekend - A view from the Producer

So I guess for me now, the question on TAP for today is, has the vaunted Black Friday, Cyber Monday version 2024 begun, and I guess I'm gonna start the answer to that question with a little bit of a faux pas. I'm gonna answer a question with a question, which is, did it ever end, and I think, you know, the answer to that question is I don't think it did. I don't know that it ever ended, and with Amazon's big deal day, its prime deal days looming, October 8th 9th, and if, you check out your Amazon site, the wallpaper is flowing all over the place. You know, many, I think, retail operators, a lot of our clients are sort of thinking about this.

So I guess let's let's delve in for a second. Let's start at the beginning, the beginning.

In 18/69, unbeknownst to me, but a little research on something called Google pointed out that Black Friday begins when two very, American like, entrepreneurs try to corner the gold market to which it crashes, and we now have borne Black Friday. Fast forward to the fifties when the Philly police term Black Friday Black Friday in advance of the not so historic no. Any longer, Army Navy football game where people pour into the city to spend money and loot the stores. That that that the Philadelphia tries to change it to Big Friday, which fails. In the eighties, it is adopted by the industry, and this is where we learned the, red to black term, and we have.

Black Friday is born, and I remember going to the Palisade Center Mall to experience my first Black Friday in, the late nineties when the lines were out the door and people were waiting for the 10 televisions that number 3,000 in line was hoping to get, and the lines, to your point earlier, Jess, gave way to the mobs to where we saw assault, and we had a store in the Valley Stream, Green Acres Mall where, in fact, someone didn't did sadly perish during the Black Friday. It there was a stampede, and in 2005, Black Friday gives way to, cyber Monday, and Cyber Monday changes everything, and I think that, you know, it really changed the game.

I remember being on the last enjoyable family Thanksgiving we had in, 2014 when we were prepared for what we were thinking would be a really interesting Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all of a sudden, everybody broke price to the degree with which we'd never seen before, and it's never been the same since, and so the land grab was had and the genie, from a total digital perspective, was out of the bottle, and I don't think we as an industry have found a way to put her back in, and so, you know, recently, I wrote something, and we've talked, Rick and me, a lot about, you know, quality really is the intersection of price and trust, and I think as people think about this period, they need to kind of ask themselves that question.

Long ago, when I was a young pup working at my first job, which was at Saks Fifth Avenue, still my favorite job as the women's coat department manager. I love that job, and it was a holiday weekend, a 3 day weekend in October. I don't even know what to call it any longer. My children will reprimand me, and all of our coats were on sale. It had yet to be cold out. Everything was 25 percent off, which for us at the time was a big deal, and I asked my mentor, a guy named Bill Lynch, great guy, very hard on me, but I needed it as I'm sure you can imagine.

He said. I said, Bill, why is everything on sale?

He said, we're a bicycle chain. If Bloomingdale's or Neiman's or someone else, Macy's goes on sale, we go on sale, and the world is a bicycle chain, and our industry needs to take note of that. So as a result, with brands' aggressive behavior and consumer expectations of these amazing deals, here's my advice. Your period has begun. You have to ask yourself a simple question. What problem am I solving during this holiday period? How much are external factors gonna challenge me? Am I ready?

Because if I'm in athletics or home, it's very different than being in beauty and fragrance, so it's not a one size fits all model. Manage your inventory. I'll say it again.

Manage your inventory kills, and brands and businesses during this period need lots of experimentation, new acquisition channels, reactivation strategies, revenue streams and opportunities, things you've never done before, change your content and messaging.

You know what? Consumers have very, very short memories about the blur that's about to happen, and there's tons of forgiveness. Last year, Walmart began official Black Friday activity in November 8th. Last year, the industry, over the holiday period, was 1,270,000,000,000. Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Any guesses as to what it was, gang?

It's burned out of my brain. A 148,500,000,000 dollars done over that period over 10. Percent Think about that. So what I'd say is if you are not already in the game and plenty of you never got out of it from last year, You're in it? Elevate your game. You're not in it? Get in the game. It is here. We are now in the Black Friday cyber month.

Nick - I cannot wait for 2 weeks time. Kaplans Corner the medicine that does not go down easily.

#strategy #brandstrategy #marketing #retail #usretail #bfcm