Make Your Black Friday Impact Last
Black Friday – the single biggest shopping day of the year for US brands, and an idea that’s spread well beyond America. It’s a day when data science comes into its own, as marketers compete to work smarter on Black Friday – getting the right deals to the right customers at the right time.
But Black Friday isn’t just about discounting and promotional strategy. With the right moves, it can be a day to reinforce your brand-building efforts too. Here are three strategies you can apply to your Black Friday executions to help build your brand beyond the holidays.
Get emotional
It’s widely known that emotional advertising is the key to long-term brand building. But how does that help marketers in the frenzy of Black Friday? Emotional response is also central to short-term impact, but it’s the intensity of response, not just positivity, that matters.
Your creative for Black Friday should be strongly branded, but also aim for an intense emotional impact, ending on a high. That will make the work cut through and drive quick action, but also maximise your chances of creating positive longer-term associations. For more on our Spike Rating, which predicts the short-term effect of creative work, go here.
Be more right-brained
Black Friday is all about getting the customer’s attention. But what kind? Psychologists have identified 5 discrete types of attention, and 4 of them are governed by the right brain, which has a wider focus. Only 1, goal-oriented attention, is the domain of the left brain.
But what does this have to do with your execution? As Orlando Wood explains in the IPA-published book Lemon, modern advertising tends to neglect features which appeal to the right brain. Elements like dialogue and non-verbal communication, wider cultural references, characters with agency, and wordplay delight the right brain. All these elements can fit into short (and in some cases static) creative work, and will help it cut through and win that precious attention. Right-brained elements are also associated with higher long-term growth, so you’ll be doing your brand a favour at the same time. For a summary of our Lemon work, download the free Slice Of Lemon PDF here.
Use a fluent device
The motor of long-term brand growth is often brand fluency – the extent to which people quickly recognise and process a brand’s assets. Across several studies, we’ve proved that Fluent Devices – repeating characters or scenarios which drive the work’s storyline – are superb at generating both emotion and recognition for brands. A campaign that uses Fluent Devices is 30% more likely to generate profit growth for a business than one which doesn’t.
Fluent Devices also help make great activations. In our experiments, we ran display ads with and without Fluent Devices – the ones with them had higher dwell time, i.e. they kept people’s attention for longer than the ones without. They also created more positive emotion. That’s great news for your Black Friday executions – if you have a Fluent Device you can use, do so and it’ll help in both the short- and long-term. If you don’t have one… well, get working on it for next year! For more on our Fluent Device work, download the free PDF here.
Good luck, and happy Black Friday!