My Love-Hate Relationship With Black Friday

Is a Black Friday marketing deal real value, or just a fake discount?

Usually the latter. Most Black Friday offers in the marketing world are the same product sold all year round, "50% off" a price nobody ever actually paid. That is not value, it is theatre. Genuine value is when the thing is worth far more than you pay for it, on any day of the year, discount or not.

Why I love it and hate it

I have a genuine love-hate relationship with Black Friday.

I love it because if I am in the market for a new AI-powered, WiFi-enabled RoboHoover that does the dishes after it has finished vacuuming the carpet, I know I can get a properly good deal.

I hate it because everyone who sells marketing training spends a solid month hammering us with ads and emails about their "deal of the century", which turns out to be the same course they have flogged all year, waved in front of you at "50% off" a made-up number it never actually sold at.

The problem with a discount off a made-up number

Here is the thing about that kind of discount: it only works if you do not look too closely.

A price is only a price if people have paid it. Inflate the "was" figure, slap a red sticker on it, and the "now" figure can look like a bargain while being exactly what the thing was always worth. The percentage is doing the persuading, not the value.

Your audience is not stupid. Do this often enough and all you teach them is that your "full price" is fiction and your real price is whatever the current sale says. That is a hard reputation to walk back.

What genuine value actually looks like

This is why, until recently, we never ran a Black Friday sale at all. And when we finally did, we made sure it was one we would be proud of: over $2,500 worth of our best tools, trainings and templates for a couple of hundred pounds.

The test is simple. Strip the countdown timer, the red stickers and the percentage off, and ask one question: is this genuinely worth far more than I am asking for it? If yes, you have an offer. If the only thing making it look good is the size of the discount, you have a gimmick.

Value that survives having the sale removed is the only value worth building a promotion on.

Meet Brian

If you want your marketing to sell without leaning on fake urgency and made-up discounts, the trick is making the marketing itself something people enjoy. That is exactly what Brian, our AI Comedy Marketing Machine, is built for.

Brian helps you create ads and content that earn attention on their own merits, using the frameworks our own team uses, so your offers land because they are good and well told, not because you shouted "LAST CHANCE" the loudest.

Take Brian for a spin and sell with genuine value instead of a fake red sticker.