Black Friday. Retailer’s favorite day of the year… except for last year when sales were down 3.4% from 2007. I worked in retail most of my working life (starting at age 15, a wild and crazy 12 years ago and ending 3 years ago when I no longer needed my 2nd job working at a grocery store) so Black Friday was always a fascinating day that I hated with the intensity of a billion white hot super novas. So this year, watching from afar, I started thinking about Black Friday 2009 and the effects it’s success or failure will have on our industry. This is where things get fuzzy for you people who love facts and citation, because I don’t know a lot of this for sure. So put on your speculation helmets. You should also note that I’m writing this on Monday morning, before any results are published and before Cyber Monday has even jumped into full gear. Like I said before, Black Friday sales for 2008 were down 3.4% from 2007( Gather.com ) and the projections are down for this year. Aside from cries from armchair economists of “the economy is in full upswing and fine now!” that increased sales numbers would bring, what would it mean for retail advertising going forward? I don’t have any numbers on retail ad spending for 2009 (because no one does yet) and I don’t have any numbers on Black Friday specific ad spending for 2009 (because no one outside of agencies buying media for those ads and the companies themselves probably ever will), but what I do have is reports all year about how spending on advertising in general will be down 5-8% for 2009. So what does it mean for us if retailers managed to grow sales while cutting ad spending? This year’s Black Friday was different than previous ones, in that a lot of stores (most notably K-Mart and Radio Shack) started the festivities on Thanksgiving day, staying open through the holiday and starting their sales early. Other retailers opened earlier this year than the traditional 6am. Best Buy stores were open at midnight, Old Navy opened at 3am. Then there’s the price cutting. I’ve heard speculation that prices were slashed to all new lows this year, especially on electronics. So the formula for Black Friday 2009 appears to have been: Stay open longer, cut prices deeper. Notice the lack of anything that has to do with advertising in that synopsis. I didn’t go to any stores on Friday. I try to avoid the masses of crazed soccer moms and teenage girls trying to get shoes, computers, clothes and whatever else they have to have at crazy prices. (I worked it for 9 years, I’ve had my fill of angry, tired shoppers) so I can’t say that it seemed more crowded than last year, or that there was a lot of in-store advertising going on. My instinct tells me that other than signs that say “This is where the 5 $159 laptops we had at this store were” in-store advertising wasn’t any more or less than is normally is. So what happens to us? What would increased sales with decreased advertising mean for the industry? I feel fairly certain it will start discussions between CMOs and CEOs about “how necessary is all this advertising spending really?” Will retail advertising become a more depressed area of our already depressed industry? I don’t know the answers to these questions. I don’t know if we’ll even have to answer them yet, since we don’t have the sales results for this year yet. But what if we do? Would it be the first sign that advertising as we know it is becoming less important in modern marketing? And if so, how do we adjust to stay relevant?
