Retailers Have The Blues Over Black Friday Ads - Or Do They?

A brief explanation for readers outside of the United States: "Black Friday" falls this year on November 23rd, it’s the day after the U.S. holiday Thanksgiving. Traditionally, it’s the official start of the Christmas shopping season, the busiest shopping day of the year, and the chance for web and brick-and-mortar retailers in a struggling economy to move from the debt of red ink to profits signified by black ink.

Over the last several years, it’s become a holiday tradition / challenge of sorts for Web sites to try to be the first to post an early copy of the Black Friday ad for Wal-Mart, the worlds’ largest retailer. However, this year, the tradition has taken some unique turns.

Wal-Mart, which has always asked Web sites not to post the information, is now using a more persuasive approach. Letters threatening legal action have been sent to numerous Web sites, urging them not to post this year’s ads, or face civil and possible criminal penalties. The legal letters have been highly successful in discouraging the posting of Wal-Mart’s Black Friday ads. However, as we all know, once something has hit the internet, even if it’s taken down within hours, it’s just about impossible to keep it off of torrent sites.

One theme that’s been truly surprising this year, is the amount of Black Friday ads that have hit the Web from a large assortment of other retailers. Black Friday ads from electronics retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Office Depot, and Staples have all been posted at blackfriday.info.

Department stores such as JC Penney, Sears, and Target have also had their Black Friday ads posted at blackfriday.info. Looking for something for the kids? Ads for KB Toys, Toys R Us, and Babies R Us are also posted, along with a diversified collection of other retailers.

blackfriday.info uses neatly organized text descriptions of sale items instead of scans of the printed ads. Although this may be less impressive than scans, it’s been suggested by some that text descriptions may lessen BlackFriday.info’s potential legal liability, as scans could contain images of copyrighted graphics. However, if it’s scans of the Black Friday flyers that you’re looking for, check out BFads.net, which has PDF scans of what appear to be the genuine flyers. One important note here, we can neither guarantee the accuracy of these sites nor the legality of downloading their files; we provide this information simply as a news item.

You may be wondering how these flyers could possibly leak out in the first place. As someone that’s worked in print publishing, I don’t really find it surprising, since the number of people involved in a process such as creating these ads is truly remarkable. There are photographers, graphic designers, copy writers, proof readers, editors, print specialists ... what would be more surprising is if this kind of information never leaked out.

Still, there’s another issue at play here. I think some of these retailers may actually want their ads to leak out, particularly if they have impressive sales planned. Think about it. Advertising executives are among of the most clever business people you’ll find. And if they planned the advanced release of their Black Friday ads, they’re getting free advertising now on BlackFriday.info, BFads.net, and probably dozens of other Web sites, plus links to these sites from Google, Tom’s Guide, and uncounted other news and enthusiast Web sites. And if that was all planned in advance as a marketing method, all I have to say is: "nice work".

Free advertising is a pretty good deal. Maybe Wal-Mart should stop complaining.

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