In an interview with Paul Vigna of WSJ MoneyBeat, Chris Kerns, Spredfast director of analytics and research, says there were over 1.4 million tweets referencing Black Friday in the seven weeks leading up to it, up from last year’s total of approximately 1.2 million. The most mentioned brands on Black Friday were Kohl’s, REI, and similar to its domination of deals last year, Amazon. The most-used terms associated, both branded and unbranded, were:
#BlackFriday
#KohlsSweepstakes
#CyberMonday
#OptOutside
Black Friday shopping has become a major shopping season for retailers, with 135.8 million American shoppers planning to shop over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. Last year, in a TechCrunch article, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday shopping was predicted to break approximately $89 billion in sales in the U.S. alone. Black Friday shopping, however, is extending to retailers worldwide. The event continues to catch on and this year, has trended not just in the United States, Germany, and France, but also in New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand.
Eye-catching campaigns, according to Kerns, included greater diversity in both traditional and untraditional campaigns. One of the most successful was the #OptOutside campaign which stemmed from REI’s plan to remain closed on Friday, in order to allow and encourage employees and customers to enjoy the outdoors instead. The Opt Outside campaign resulted in over 300,000 tweets over the past week for REI, doubling last year’s mentions during the same period of time.
Kohl’s also dominated social media with traditional campaigns that included sweepstakes resulting in about 10 percent of the entire Black Friday conversation. Another campaign Kerns mentions is the Victoria’s Secret campaigns which weren’t unveiled until November 23 and required tweeting and social sharing in order to unlock special Black Friday deals.
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