So we’ve already had Black Friday and Cyber Monday and we’ve just discovered here at Skout HQ that this coming Monday is being billed as Manic Monday. Apparently Monday 8th December is predicted to be the biggest online pre-Christmas spending spree, with almost £500,000 set to be spent every minute.
The fact that all these shopping days now all have their own special names makes me think that these monikers have been created by the retail sector specifically to make people panic buy.
This PR exercise in getting the nation to spend certainly seems to be working. We all saw the crazy scenes on Black Friday where shoppers were caught on camera trampling all over each other to get their hands on a bargain-priced TV. And if those ugly scenes were enough to convince you to do your shopping from the comfort of your own home, chances are you won’t have had much success actually getting online as the big name retailers’ websites all buckled under the sheer volume of traffic trying to access their sites.
As a Manchester PR agency, with some of the UK’s best shopping centres and department stores on our doorstep, we will watch from the comfort of our office, as the shoppers are whipped into a frenzy again on Monday.
I for one will not be participating in Manic Monday and although I’ve hardly started my Christmas shopping, let’s remember that there’s still twenty shopping days until the big day.
Fiona Whyatt has worked in B2B PR for many years. She loves blogging!