How brands handled Black Friday & their communication around the sales frenzy

And psychological tactics driving (over)consumption

Welcome to The Crisps–your weekly newsletter on anti-greenwashing and honest fashion communication. In this issue, we’ve got some analysis of how brands handled Black Friday and which psychological tactics are used by marketing and communication professionals to drive sales (and overconsumption). Make sure to be a pro subscriber to read the entire issue.

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The economic situation is hard for the fashion sector – especially for all those medium- and small-sized companies. We’ve seen many of them go out of business this year so we understand the pressure to keep up with discounts and take part in Black Friday (especially when your stock is FULL).

From a consumer perspective, the topic is equally complex. With rising prices and inflation many have to cut back and might only afford discounted product – or save up to finally be able to buy from a specific brand.

While we have a tendency to which kind of Black Friday actions we think are acceptable, we don’t want to tell you how to handle Black Friday in this issue. Because calling everyone to boycott doesn’t take into account the different economic realities of brands and consumers. (In an ideal world Black Friday wouldn’t exist because prices would be calculated fairly, consumers would cherish and care for what they’ve got and not make any impulse buys, brands wouldn’t aggressively persuade consumers to buy products they don’t need, etc.) Instead, we want to give you an overview of what routes some brands have taken in dealing with Black Friday.

One, this is for sure though, we are all (or better should be!) well aware of how discounts and Black Friday drive overconsumption – but we will get into the psychological tactics fuelling (over)consumption later.

That being said, let’s look at how different brands handled Black Friday and the communication around it.

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Workshop time

Get your calendar out and take notes! We’re giving an hour-long workshop on anti-greenwashing communication in fashion on December, 20th at 5 pm CET. If you’re a pro subscriber of The Crisps, you can take part for FREE! And we would love to see you there. For our non-paying subscribers the workshop will be 25€ – still a good deal if you ask us! So come join us and let’s end this year on an educational note.

Reserve your spot by mailing us at thecrisps@substack.com

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1. Classic discounts

Image source: hessnatur

Hessnatur

First up, sorry it’s a German ad. But we’re pretty sure everyone can understand it. It says: “20% on the current collection + 20% additional discount” which applies when you enter a code. Pretty simple, pretty common. Whenever we see discounts as high as 40, 50 or even more percent, we ask ourselves about price transparency and margins. Of course, discounts are included in the calculation – but does it have to be that much? And what do we communicate to the consumers when they are trained to get everything for half the price? And big discounts are proven to trigger our brains into buying more than we need (more on that later).

But let’s also look at another aspect: the “Green Choices”. Obviously, we’re not the biggest fan of them, because the term “green” really has no meaning and is extremely vague. On a first look, you might even think your “green choices” are connected to some charitable cause. We know where it’s coming from and like the gound idea to play with the colors black and green. But it feels like we’re way past “green” phrases.

Image source: Organic Basics

Organic Basics

Here’s another example of a pretty high discount by Danish brand Organic Basics. Let’s look at their “Good deals, Good deeds” phrasing. It speaks to “doing good” and the moral behavoir of improving the well-being of others. But it leaves very much…