advertising | organised castle

In a retail shopping context, Black Friday refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November) in the United States.

Although Thanksgiving is not a traditional celebration in Australia the last 10 years has seen a steady rise in Black Friday sales. This has been strongly driven by online retailers but everyone seems to be keen to get in on the act. What was originally one day of concentrated sales hype has now been extended to include Cyber Monday.

The avalanche of Black Friday emails is astounding. The first one arrived on 3rd November – a full 3 weeks before the traditional Black Friday sales. At first it was a trickle of emails but in the past week has become an absolute flood. They all just go straight to the trash folder as soon as I see them but if I was interested I could have bought anything and everything from travel insurance, stationery, books, ink cartridges, cruises, phones, electronics, holidays, wine, fabrics, magazines, flights, overseas currency, menswear, outdoor equipment, magazines, event tickets, personal care and food.

Anyway, they can send as many emails as they like, Black Friday or otherwise, but we spend our money when and where we choose and not as a result of mega-amounts of advertising about what we supposedly need to make our lives complete.

The ‘cost of living crisis’ is headline news almost every day but I wonder how many will succumb to the Black Friday sales pitch for stuff that they almost certainly do not need to be buying.

Here is a timely reminder from an old blog post – almost 9 years ago. As relevant as ever.

As you would be aware from my previous posts, Sunday 8th September was Sustainable House Day here in Australia.

We decided to register our house as open for the event and were happy to show people the features of both the house and garden. We had 4 groups of people come to visit and while the number may seem disappointing, there are some very positive ways of looking at this.

We were able to spend time in direct one to one conversation with the visitors
Security issues were not a concern
The people who came were really interested and committed to making a difference in their own homes

I was pleased that 3 of the groups were young couples who appeared to have clear visions of what they wanted to achieve and we hope that seeing what we have achieved with our property went at least some way to inspiring them.

I do not anticipate registering next year as we are likely to be on holidays. If I decided to participate in the future, I would definitely do more to promote the day, particularly with the local council. I was surprised by the lack of organised promotion of the overall day, especially since it has been an annual event for more than 10 years. A lot of the advertising seemed to be left up to the individual homeowner and unfortunately I was interstate for the week immediately prior to the event. This was due to circumstances beyond my control.