Unpacking Black Friday, Cyber Monday

I lied. It’s impossible to unpack them, what with all the hype, razzle-dazzle stats, misinformation.

If you read much of the nonsense on the web, Black Friday was a big fail, Cyber Monday a big success – even though old-fashioned shopping brought in about six times the sales throughout the five-day period. 

My three favorite stories/stats:

Social Media Drove Just 1% of Black Friday Online Sales
by Seth Fiegerman
IBM found that just about 1% of purchases and traffic on ecommerce websites for Black Friday and the week as a whole were directly generated by social media sites.

Cyber Monday won’t kill Black Friday for a long time
by Lydia DePillis
Online sales are also still a tiny percentage of overall volume -- only 6 percent, according to the Census Bureau.

Tablets Are Becoming More Important Than Smartphones For Online Shopping
by Emily Adler
…Tablet-focused advertising shows promise. The data shows that audiences are surprisingly receptive to interactive tablet ads…

This all sounds vaguely familiar…

The Social Media - WOMM - Web Advertising Posts (2005-Present)

04 November 2013
Smartphones & Tablets, Apples & Oranges
Clients and just about everybody else seem to be confused about advertising on all these new-fangled gadgets…

Bottom line:

Social media sites drove $148 Million in online sales between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, a two percent share and flat compared to last year.

$148 Million.  Out of multiple Billions. 

The silliest piece I read won’t be linked to because I’m too nice a guy.  It was written by someone who did a Boolean search of the term “Black Friday” and discovered:

…The term “Black Friday” mirrors what actually happened: Cyber Monday stole the show.  I measured through the end of Cyber Monday, and this is the word cloud:

So tons of people on the web were searching for and babbling about what’s on the web. Wow. That means a lot.

More reading:

Delighting In Digital Dumbness
If you have a healthy sense of the absurd, there is great joy to be found in the dumbness of some digital mediacrats.

GrandBoomers Redux

Since it’s that time of year again, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and just going out shopping any ol’ time and/or flopping on the couch with your tablet looking at tablets to buy loved ones – let’s look at some old news wrapped up as new:

The Old (so old that once you get there the links may have withered):

05 November 2006
Grand-scale Grandparents
Baby Boomers are all over their grandchildren - and Millennials in general…

"Boomers think their grandkids are too programmed, and they're looking to stir things up."

13 February 2007
Grandboomers
… As with just about everything, Baby Boomers are redefining what grandparents are supposed to be – and do. Such troublemakers…

10 February 2011
Green GrandBoomers in Toyland
A few of these Green toy companies might get the smarts – and market their products directly to Baby Boomer grandparents.

The New:

Why You Should Be Targeting Grandparents This Holiday Season
… They have the money and the desire to splurge on things they truly want and are redefining what it means to grow older.

Culled from my book © 2005/2007:

It will be the Baby Boomers who will be the first to pick and choose, to ignore or be seduced by leading-edge technology marketing. There’s a simple reason for this. We have the money to buy this stuff. Experts say we’ll continue to have the money for at least the next twenty years. Write us off at your own peril.

Boomers are slyly redefining what it means to be the ages they are. Included in this new definition are some youthful attitudes - but the real change is that instead of winding down, many are winding up.

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, or everything old is new again.  Take your pick.

A Mishmash of Topics

ADD or multitasking? Whatever it is, you’re getting a mishmash of topics:

The newsonomics of the surprisingly persistent appeal of newsprint
by Ken Doctor
… It’s print subscribers — now being priced up and upsold into all-access digital plans — who are responsible for the only bright spot in newspaper revenue growth. Though 85-95 percent of these subscribers are staying through these rounds of price increases, only a minority of them actually use the newspapers’ digital products much. They like newsprint.

I wonder why…

15 April 2007
Positioning Magazines for Baby Boomers
There are active and passive parts of our day. Without getting into too much psychobabble, as you get older the passive side needs more nourishment. It’s not really passive. It’s focused absorption. At some point you have to climb out of your frenetic digital nest and concentrate on one thing. It might be reading a book, watching a TV show or movie, listening to music, looking out the window.

Or immersing yourself in a magazine.

Or a newspaper.
                                   
                                          «»

Late-life Metamorphosis
These boomers — born again as entrepreneurs — are the stars of their own second acts
By Hanah Cho
… For more than a decade, 55- to 64-year-olds have started more new businesses than any other age group, according to the nonprofit Kauffman Foundation, which promotes business ownership.

Sounds familiar. From my book ©2005/2007:

17 September 2009
Late Bloomer Boomers
… Many of these folks are writing fiction and non-fiction, becoming graphic artists and photographers, and playing and composing music. And just as many are doing astonishingly creative things in the business world, often as entrepreneurs.

Another book you should check out:

Creating Results surveyed hundreds of 40+ American consumers (Gen X, Baby Boomers and Silent Generation members) to find out:

• What turns them on — and what turns them off — when they visit websites.
• How websites and social media influence their housing decisions.
• Their concerns regarding social media marketing and social networks like Facebook.
• How attitudes have changed since the agency’s 2010 study.

The findings from this research have been collected in a new eBook, with analysis and insights to make your digital marketing more effective with Baby Boomers and beyond.

                                      «»

Marketing to Caregivers
By Andrew Kaufman
… By understanding the daily challenges and decisions that affect the lives of caregivers (and their patients), you’ll start to identify how your organization can address those needs in ways that strengthen your brand and increase your exposure among this influential audience.

AARP Sends a Thank-You to Caregivers
By Jane L. Levere
AARP and the Advertising Council are beginning a new advertising and social media campaign this week designed to illustrate the many roles caregivers play and to thank them for this assistance.

Sounds like good ideas to me:

14 May 2010
The Daughter Trap
…What an appreciated relief it would be for a couple of major outfits to acknowledge and support caregivers.

Let’s hope I can focus next time around.

Smartphones & Tablets, Apples & Oranges

Clients and just about everybody else seem to be confused about advertising on all these new-fangled gadgets.

Added to the mix are odd, stupefying concepts like digital and mobile and native. Most of this stuff is gobbledygook, but I’ll try to separate the chaff from the chaff:

07 December 2012
What is Digital Advertising?
… The newest buzz-phrase has me completely baffled: Native Advertising.  One social media guru described it as advertising that is ‘baked into’ the content. I guess it’s sort of like the old Burns & Allen Show where  one episode had Gracie baking a cake using Betty Crocker Cake Mix, a sponsor…

Television is now digital, commercials are shot with digital cameras – so are all  commercials digital advertising?  Are digital spots on digital radio digital advertising?  Print ads are created on computers, usually rendered as PDFs, delivered digitally. Digital advertising?  Magazines, both editorial and ads, are digitally produced.  Digital advertising?

07 January 2013
Tablets
Moses and the pharmaceutical industry once had exclusive dibs on this word.  Nowadays, tablet commonly refers to a specific type of computer doodad technology.

… The mobile/social media soothsayers will have you believe that there is this unknown, magical mode of persuasion that has never been thought of before – and will reveal itself any day now. 

If you believe that, I have a Blackberry in Brooklyn I want to sell you…

23 October 2012
The Future Of Consumer Doodad Technology
… You should stop thinking about the next big thingamabob and whose will be best.  In five or ten years there will be all sorts of thingamabobs for just about everything.  You’ll have two or three or ten thingamabobs.  Tablets/Smartphones will be big, small, thin, simple, complex, active, passive, out the door in your purse or pocket, lost in your couch cushions.

What is mobile advertising?  It used to be placards on the sides of buses.  Some people still think so.

If I tuck a magazine under my arm and take it with me, is that mobile advertising?  If I’m home on my couch flipping through Flipboard on my tablet that I don’t take anywhere anymore because the thrill of brandishing it is gone, I just use it at home - would those big, almost full screen ads be traditional advertising?

I’ve written about this before:

01 May 2010
Foretellings
…That silly retronym “traditional advertising” will remain the premiere force for introducing people to a product or service, along with sustaining its shelf life. Television, print, radio, and billboard ads will continue to have the visceral power they’ve always had – if only for their sheer size, simplicity, and cutting-edge audio/visual qualities.  Advertising on smartphones will be considered an annoyance, invasive, and rather dinky…

And this:

15 April 2007
Positioning Magazines for Baby Boomers
There are active and passive parts of our day. Without getting into too much psychobabble, as you get older the passive side needs more nourishment. It’s not really passive. It’s focused absorption. At some point you have to climb out of your frenetic digital nest and concentrate on one thing. It might be reading a book, watching a TV show or movie, listening to music, looking out the window.

Or immersing yourself in a magazine.

Tablets are getting bigger, lighter, faster, easier to handle.

Those 6.4 ounces make all the difference when, as you recline while reading or watching a movie, you conk out and the iPad falls forward to bonk you on the nose. The Air won’t hurt you the way the old iPad did.

Smartphones will stop getting bigger – unless some evolutionary quirk transforms human hands to the dimensions of baseball mitts. 

Advertising on smartphones?  Only if you think something half the size of a matchbook cover will catch and hold anybody’s attention. 

Smartphones & Tablets.  Apples & Oranges.  Don’t confuse them.

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