Black Friday doesn’t mean a black stamp on creativity

Т Another year passed and with it – another Black Friday campaign. Since it is one of our favorite campaigns, we kept a close eye on the competitors’ campaigns, successful case studies from previous years and everything that could have been helpful.

Unfortunately, we found an unpleasant trend – Black Friday campaigns, frankly, are getting more and more boring with each attempt. But we got it quite well this time (and the previous ones, in fact), so we are happy to share our work. Our creative is a bomb, honestly.

But let start from the beginning – the first campaign we ever did for Black Friday was in 2016. Back then we sat down wondering what’s stopping customers from indulging in the wonderful fever around the big Friday. The insight came relatively easily because in Bulgaria the problem is quite obvious – well, people simply do not believe in discounts and their real “win over the brand”. In our country, for years, there is a widespread belief that just before this special November day, prices are artificially increased, and then that 50% discount is actually 10%.

That’s why we decided to stick with the truth, without too much sugar-coating it. Our visuals were simple, but we escaped the misleading rates and gave the real figures weeks in advance so that everyone could track the credibility of the promotion:

„NОT PROMISES, BUT FACTS“

Needless to say, our idea worked out because no other shopping center has dared to base its Black Friday campaign not on empty promises, but on real facts with a promise of concrete prices for specific products. With this campaign, we also gave tenants the opportunity to promote their brand and promotions.

So far so good. Next year, we met a new challenge. One of the local corporate giants had patented the phrase “Black Friday”, so we had to be twice as creative. In fact, it turned out that the phrase is not so necessary. Everyone already knew which Friday we were talking about and it was enough to call it simply “The Big Friday”. And our visual was right on point:

And our subtitle naturally resulted from the insight that Black Friday is generally the arena for trophies. Well, „HORNS AHEAD“ then.

Our idea even received a modest international response and was loudly applauded by neighboring Romania.

Thus, by raising our own bar, we have reached this campaign’s KPIs with great expectations and glances aimed at us. We needed something so hot that it was burning. And the client already definitely trusted us, so the brief was short “Be brave“.

So… we were totally blocked. We had a lot of ideas, but not a single one was as good as we were hoping. However, it all ended well when after tons of associations with the word “black” we came to the reference to the well-known Bulgarian phrase “white money for black days”, similar to the English idiom “penny for a rainy day”. After a brief game of words, the simple, super-accurate and mega-creative slogan was born:

„DO YOU SAVE FOR BLACK DAYS? THE BLACKEST OF ALL IS COMING ON 23.11“

As we already said – our creative is a bomb piggy bank. So we decided to add to it a wick and it became quite real indeed:

We reached over 100k online users, over 1k of which liked our main visual, and another 100 shared it. 

And the billboard looks really great:

And any kind of in-mall branding actually:

We were particularly pleased with the video cover for Galleria Burgas & Stara Zagora’s Facebook page, in which not only does the wick burn, but you actually hear “BOOM”:

The visual was spread across all online channels and we even went into a fun discussion with occasional passersby in our feed.

Final words:

Colleagues advertisers, do not waste time in unnecessary fluctuations, “be brave“, the pleasure is immeasurable.

Dear clients, give freedom to the creative teams that work for you and ask for more each time you hit the same old Black Friday campaign.

And we will continue to tell you about good campaigns, do not stop following us.