What does Black Friday mean to the UK?

It seems to me that the use of 'Black Friday' as a retail promotional tool is now everywhere in the UK. From Glasgow to Manchester and Plymouth to London it seems to have sprung up from almost nowhere just few years ago into a few days of serious high street and online discounting.

But why is it especially this year that a lot of UK retailers have embraced an American holiday?

Here's a few suggestions:

1. The high street needs to stimulate sales
Following a mild autumn, a lot of people have not raced out to the shops in September and October to buy items such as a new Winter wardrobe (if you don't believe me, ask your peers if many have bought a big coat recently).Consequently year on year takings are down across a number of sectors, including clothing.
2. Autumn sales aren't a new thing
Discounting around this time isn't a new concept and many stores have been having 'mid-season sales' for decades. Yes, a lot of retailers have been dropping prices of specific products and ranges in mid-to-late November, it's just that...

3. Black Friday sounds cool
It's good to give something a catchy name and it seems that yes black is indeed the new black.  I suggest the fact that it refers to the day after the US commemorate a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1621 is pretty irrelevant to the average Brit.

4. The UK is becoming more and more American-ized
As reflected in: the recent growth in Halloween over this side of the pond, the increase in Seattle style coffee shops that sell huge capacity cups of caffeine and the gradual use of "Tuxedo" (an American club that adopted the use of the black suit and tie) over the "Dinner Jacket".

5. The Internet is reducing cultural barriers
I first noticed the use of 'Black Friday' on Amazon.com about a decade ago, when just like today, I couldn't find anything interesting to buy on the site. The increasing use of global eCommere sites like Amazon, eBay and the like have created a boundary-less society that is only too happy to embrace different retailing concepts.

Which leads me to a slightly cynical further idea... Could it be that Black Friday is just another ploy adopted by savvy retailers across the globe to get rid stuff that would never have shifted at full price anyway?

The Dark Side of Content Marketing

I sometimes blog about the more shady side of Internet Marketing and how you should avoid this sort of stuff (if at all possible).
Buying email lists, Black Hat SEO and other nefarious activities are still used though... primarily for short-term gains and only by some digital folk. Despite all the guidance of search engines, advice from reputable online agencies and contributions from best-practice consultants, there is still a fair bit of shadiness still used (and some clients even encourage it).

Content Marketing on the other hand is the discipline of creating and sharing content for the purpose of communicating, educating and informing prospect, customers and anyone else really. The art of great copy writing, coupled with great UX skills and fantastic creativity is rewarded in engaged eyeballs and influenced sales.

But I have been considering recently whether there a dark side to Content Marketing. Activity that isn't entirely legitimate, but that has yet to be defined as dodgy.... yet

Here's some examples I can quickly think of:

1. Writing blog posts with very similar titles & subjects (purely to try and cover a range of search terms for SEO or internal search)
2. Writing unnaturally (either to force a call-to-action or to appeal to search engines with keyword stuffing, repetition, etc.)
3. Creating meaningless (or even completely off-topic) infographics just to encourage their sharing
4. Creating numerous videos from a single original clip and posting them online under different titles and keywords.

Can you think of anything else?

Are you optimising your Digital ecosystem?

Digital technologies are not just for online marketing purposes or for providing your customers with the ability to conduct online transactions. They are there to enable the entire organisation to benefit from: better communications, faster supply chains, improved staff training, assessment & retention and help improve a number of other line-of-business tasks that either make money or save time.

In short, your entire business ecosystem should be complimented by online technologies and processes. This then creates a new type of organisation, one that fully utilises a digital ecosystem.

So what does this digital ecosystem look like? Well this depends on your business and the way it operates. However, there are a few common themes that are pretty generic to any organisation, usually based around typical business lines and support functions. 

Here I've recreated an old diagram I used to have, that gives a representation of a business and the different key departments within it. I've then indicated the main functions (of the left side) where online can then help and enhance the ecosystem.

The aim is therefore for any digital strategy to integrate into these key areas and optimise the business processes, data flows or customer engagement in whatever way possible.


Hopefully I will have time to improve on this diagram in future postings...

Windows 8 isn't the expected hit

For the last week or so I've been considering a new PC and the installation of Windows 8 upon it. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's thought about it and I know at least one friend who has dabbled, installing it as an upgrade on his current home PC ... I've seen his cursing on Facebook as a result.

However, so far I've yet to take the plunge myself, perhaps put off by the ragings of my friend, but also because... well, I just don't need to really. You see, I've kind of got used to my Windows 7 operating system, which was hastily upgraded as soon as it came out, following the disaster that was Windows Vista.

So now I have had a stable and working PC for the last few year, allowing me to get on with the more productive things in life, like actually using it for work.

Am I put off by having to learn yet another user interface? Yes

Can I be bothered to install it on my current machine and risk its stability, productivity and compatibility? No
(In other words, I'm not too sure I can run all the software I have installed on my current box and I'm in no mood to find out by a process of trial and error)

Apparently even Microsoft are admitting that sales of their new version are "disappointing" and to make matters worse... even the story explaining this lack of sales in The Register has scored even more points for Google:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/19/retailers_report_slow_win8_sales

I can't help but feel that Microsoft may not be winning this one...

Have yourself a very merry tablet Xmas

As sales of tablets continue to grow and the market fragments into numerous smaller ones that cater to different user needs (media player, e-reader, games machine, laptop replacement, etc)... The end users and the device makers both seem to be the beneficiaries. Worldwide sales are now predicted to climb to over an estimated 100 million units in 2012 (a 98 percent increase from 2011 sales of 60 million units according to Gartner, Inc.)

Also if you run a website, you will probably have seem the jump in tablet usage from your website analytics over the Chirstmas periods of the last two years. So therefore, it is highly likely that there will be another jump in tablet users this holiday period (I'll also try and use the phrase 'Holiday Period' more often, rather than just Christmas and New Year, as this trend is a global one... with users who celebrate Thanksgiving and Hanukkah also driving sales in the winter months).

So with over 60% of tablet owners planning to research and then purchase holiday gifts, decor and food items this Winter, it is highly likely that you will see yet another jump in tablet usage.  This means that if you have not already considered the compatibility of your website on such a device, you are already behind the curve. To make matters worse, the types of device you now need to build and test for have grown significantly in the last year.

It looks like site owners and online retailers have yet more headaches on the run-up to their busiest period.