The fraud, fakeness and fatigue of Black Friday

This piece was originally published on Nov. 21, 2018.

Black Friday is Amerika at its best. It's vulgar, artificial and narcissist.

If it's Black Friday in Chicago, Head Office thinks it must be Black Friday in Canada too. We deride it but would miss it. Bolted on to our cultural psyche, it legitimizes and reassures us that it's OK to officially start shopping. 

It's 50 per cent off and we can "Ho-Ho Hold" the credit card payments. We've grown smarter and empowered and cynical of the deals, but the Wacky Wavy Tube Guy and Mr. Bezos and their data are smarter.

Retailers will use any reason to get us into a store — be it mobile, concrete or in the cloud — to make us swipe our credit cards that we pay off with our lines of credit.

We hop from Amazon's Prime Day to back-to-school to Canadian Thanksgiving specials to Halloween deals, then Black Friday officially kicks off the holiday season. This selling-by-yelling frenzy morphs into Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, early holiday specials, Santa's Secret Deals, Christmas Eve Something, early Boxing Day sales and actual Boxing Day sales or events. These, like the screaming, "But wait there more there's more!" infomercials, are miraculously held over until the New Year specials, and Super Bowl Savings. 

It's all messed up, like London Drugs not being just a pharmacy. Don't forget Costco was selling Santas in mid-August and there is no online and offline anymore.

'Once the wallet is open, it will remain open for a while'

Canadians look for fights on social media and smugly ask what possesses these grown adults (silly Americans) to go out and fight over Air Jordans and TVs? Well after spending a day with your dysfunctional family, avoiding your racist uncle and reruns of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, any reason to leave the house will do.

It's not like Canadians are immune to it. Just fast forward to Dec. 26.

For some, planning the thrill of the hunt and lining up early to snatch a deal is fun. Who wants to go on a bargain hunt and return home without a kill? Who can resist that shiny second thing while the adrenaline (or is it the dopamine) is still high? It seems like a good deal. 

The hardest part is getting you to step inside the store. Once the wallet is open, it will remain open for a while. Remember the last time you went to Costco and left with all those things that you didn't know you needed?  You even had a list. 

Consumers are human, which means they are irrational, contradictory and hypocritical.- David "Stormy" Williams

Aren't you supposed to be empowered? Being wiser, you may drop by the mall later or, as an even more intelligent shopper, take a cursory browse on your mobile phone. You're in control. So how did you end up succumbing to the 50 per cent off deals with free shipping and four-star customer reviews?

The customer fights and riots are less fierce, especially after a Walmart employee was tragically trampled to death. There's also that ubiquitous Amazon thing. If they remade A Christmas Story the broken leg lamp would be replaced in two-days on Amazon Prime. 

'Our Boxing Day scuffles are more polite'

Black Friday does not start at 6 a.m. It's now subtler, but the result is the same. Driven by data, it seeps into our mobile phones (sorry, lives). In marketing speak, you are on the purchase funnel starting your customer journey on the seamless touch points of an omni-channel ecosystem. Didn't you realize that? Don't worry the predictive analytics of the big data algorithm knew.

Consumers are human, which means they are irrational, contradictory and hypocritical. We know that online the store is always open and the stocks are endless. We sense the price for the Instant Pot on Amazon differs from two days ago, the brands on sale and prices seem to be nearly identical to last year and that our LCD (or is it an LED?) TV looks good enough. We pride ourselves on outwitting retailers and "the system." 

But in this FOMO (fear-of-missing-out) era, marketers are great at triggering that lingering doubt that we might be missing a genuine deal. We rationalize that perhaps we do need, or secretly want, that North Face jacket or that iPad mini. We'll just take a peek at the flyer, the mobile site, that ugly newspaper ad. Before we know it they have our (borrowed) money.

If Black Friday is quintessentially American, Dec. 26 is quintessentially Canadian. Our Boxing Day scuffles are more polite. We queue in freezing winds. This year, we can even legally pretend not to be high. 

Remember, those rowdy Americans did it before us. If it isn't a Lexus December to Remember, and there was no NX 300 in your driveway wrapped in a bow, there will always be The Brick's Christmas in July Tent Sale.

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