That Scourge: Black Friday
The "delete" button in my email app is getting a healthy workout.
I am a fan of the columnist Molly Jong-Fast, admiring her wit and facility with words. When she had a regularly slotted newsletter on The Atlantic (that I gladly pay for) I mashed that subscribe button hard enough to need a new keyboard.
Alas, she was poached away to write for Vanity Fair. So, I gave them my email address so that I could be notified of her posts (I get to read 3 of them before they cut me off, and frankly that is about as many as she writes a month, win-win).
And that gets me into their marketing funnel.
The annual online subscription is like $29. But at least three times a week, I get an email from Vanity Fair with a “special,” “limited time offer,” “last chance” to get a subscription for just eight bucks. Oh, and they will also send me that quintessential freebie, a “tote”
But, next week is Thanksgiving here in the USA, and that means the huge cultural phenomenon called “Black Friday1” is on tap.
On one hand, black Friday brings back memories of my mother. She was a fanatic for the deals, and thus by 6 AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving, she was hitting the department stores.
That is my only fond memory of it.
As the “formal” start of the holiday shopping season, it became a rather chaotic event, but at least you had to be physically in a store.
Now, in the era of e-commerce, the event is smeared across the calendar. Starting 2 weeks before Thanksgiving you start getting barraged by come-ons and pleas to save money on the “early access” Black Friday sales.
Feels a little phony to me.
Which gets me back to Vanity Fair. Remember, I get at least three appeals to take advantage of their ultra good deal, and subscribe for a full year for $8, saving $21 off the normal price.
Yesterday, I got the predictable Black Friday offer.
And the deal? $8.
AYFKM? I can get that deal any damn day I want by clicking on your emailed offers.
How the hell is this considered a Black Friday special?
Why ‘black’? This is because in the before times (pre-internet) most major retailers were unprofitable (in the ‘red’) until the savior of the holiday shopping season, when the business became profitable (wildly profitable, to the point of funding the rest of the year). E-commerce has altered the calculus, but the psyche of the American shopper is partially attuned to the Black Friday phenomenon. And like McDonalds, we have infected much of the first world with this cultural behavior - albeit not as nutty as we do it.
