By Steven Durrant
Till very recently, few in the UK had the dubious pleasure of not knowing what Black Friday was. A day of massive store discounts; Black Friday started as a US tradition, taking place the day after Thanksgiving to kick-start the Christmas shopping period.
The US incarnation has had more UK media attention in recent times, often presented with a thinly disguised sense of horror and derision toward what our cousins across the pond can be capable of. Now we are doing it too.
Although fairly modest efforts to run UK equivalents have been made for over 10 years, it wasn’t until Asda (owned by US giant Wal-Mart) got in on the act 2 years ago that the press really started taking notice.
Now it looks like we risk having it imposed on us as a “news” feature every year. We’re all just supposed to accept it as a thing, even though we don’t celebrate the preceding Thanksgiving, and despite it being disliked by many people who see it almost as a ritualistic orgy of a consumerist cult.
Why do the media play along with the hype, often packing free advertising into the bargain? Basically it’s a “story” which writes itself. Original in-depth journalism is expensive, but Black Friday just requires each news outlet to send someone down to a local shopping centre to get some vox-pops, and hopefully some footage of a delirious tussle for a cheap telly. It guarantees one less item to have to think about, every year hereon in.
It would be nice to think that it won’t last in the UK, being perhaps too tacky for our sensibilities, but many signs are that it’s gathering pace with more retailers of all sizes getting in on the act (I shan’t dignify any of them with name checks).
And it may not even do them much good. Paul Green, business development manager at retail systems integrator, Tryzens told the BBC: “Black Friday makes little sense in the UK. Without Thanksgiving, the event’s focus point, the decision to concentrate so many resources and discounts on a Friday in November seems arbitrary at best and significantly disruptive at worst.”
Has another dollop of unwelcome hype been crow barred into the news agenda? If so, is there anyway of countering it?
Ironically, strong criticism of Black Friday can just add to the news hype – anger often making for a good story (papers like the Mail are likely to run separate articles in both camps – even more space filled!)
More constructively, there is “Buy Nothing Day” – an anti consumerist event which started in Canada in 1992. It has grown to be timed on or about Black Friday, as it now is in the UK.
Buy Nothing Day has been building its own identity and it may take a 2 or 3 years to be viewed as a direct antidote to Black Friday froth in the UK, but if we get the word out in future years there’s every chance it will be.
In the mean time we should question exactly whether a bunch of people trying to buy some cheap stuff really is big “news”, or if it’s actually just lazy padding in place of news.
