Obviously, Black Friday will be a failure.
Disposable household income is down. House values are down. Stock values are down. Net worth, at least by any honest measurement is down. Savings return no income, and have no prospect of doing so. Government employees are in some danger of losing their jobs and, unless they have cognitive problems, should know that their pensions will start later and return far less. Europe is about to fail. China has a trustworthiness factor of approximately zero. And then there’s the minor detail that the world is drowning in debt and there’s no prospect for growth, so there’s no hope for any of this to improve without a reset, and the politicians aren’t going to let that happen.
So we know Black Friday will fail. How will they spin it.
Some recent strategies have been:
1. Lie now, and revise the assessment later.
2. Confuse. Cite anything but actual sales volume. For example, breathlessly cite “increased traffic” or “more items purchased”.
3. Streeeeeetch. Instead of having Black Friday run from 5:00 a.m. to midnight, do it 24 hours. Or 36 or 48.
4. Accounting tricks. Change the numbers being compared and put a footnote somewhere. Either make last year’s numbers lower, or this year’s higher, or more likely, do both.
5. Eliminate the negative reporters; accentuate the positive reporters.
Whatever the approach, I’m sure the press release was written months ago.
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