Kibbe on Marketing: Cyber Sanity

Fresh from taking in some Cyber Monday deals while doing my holiday shopping online, I reflected on what a nice experience it was. Cooling down from my morning walk, Christmas carols playing on my computer, no crowds, no pepper spray…

I was appalled, like all of you, to hear the reports of violence on Black Friday, the so-called shopping day after Thanksgiving when retailers traditionally turned a profit. Everything from cat fights to robbing at gunpoint to pepper spray attacks, to say nothing of the now-expected stampedes through the doors all in the name of unbridled greed and overconsumption. And this is to say nothing about store clerks dragged away from family gatherings at some ungodly hour, whether or not they made time-and-a-half for the privilege.

Seriously?!!

Isn’t this supposed to be the time where Christians celebrate the Nativity of the Lord, Jews commemorate the miracle of the oil lamps, others honor the hearth and home of the solstice time and everyone brings a little more cheer, charity and peace to the world? A greater, and frankly sadder, irony could not exist in the mockery Black Friday has made of the season.

I could debate the desperation of people in this economy, mob psychology, Occupy This and That as causes behind the frenzy, but the fact is Black Friday craziness is just that. I am frustrated and ashamed that retailers allow the extremism to continue. Are they really making so much money on that one day that they can turn a blind eye to people actually requiring hospitalization after visiting their stores? We arrest the tramplers and pepper-sprayers but aren’t retailers who allow this to continue somehow culpable as well? Since the once-shocking, now routine incident of someone being trampled during a Black Friday door rush, I have boycotted specific retailers and Black Friday in general. What if more people also boycotted Black Friday? Do you think there might be a retailer out there with enough backbone to think of some other way to stop the insanity and still make a sale?

I've come up with a simple solution for all this nonsense – bring more cyber sales to Black Friday. If retailers must partake of the insanity the holiday shopping season has become, start offering more online deals earlier. Go ahead – offer fantastic prices on Kindles, hexbugs, flat-screen TVs (to be sold on Ebay, not used at home, of course) and Tickle Me Whatevers starting at 9 p.m. Thanksgiving night between football games. We can shop from the relative comfort and safety of our own homes (relatives not withstanding), retailers don’t have to overstock stores or hire security guards, clerks can stay home with the fam, and nobody is trampled, shot, stabbed or sprayed.

Here’s to a safer, saner and still profitable Black Friday 2012. Let’s see if we can’t do a little better next year, OK, people?


Cindy Kibbe, an editor for a New England business publication for nearly a decade, can be reached at cindykibbe@comcast.net.