Is Black Friday 2025 a litmus test for AI shopping?

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome back to the Performance Marketing Unlocked podcast. We've got an exciting episode of the show for you. It's very timely. I'm joined by PMW's editor, Robin Langford, to talk all about the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. It's less than 24 hours until kick off. It's the biggest sales event of the year and it really puts an exclamation point on the importance of the golden quarter for marketers. So Robin and I talk all about the predictions, the experts have had, what the data is saying, is it gonna be a big booming year or is it gonna be a bit of a flop? You'll have to wait and see, but we talk all things Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. And we offer a little taste for some of our coverage that will be coming in the wake of the event too. So you've got all that to look forward to and more on this episode of the Performance Marketing Unlocked podcast. As always, time to sit back, relax and enjoy. (upbeat music) Robin, hello and welcome back to the Performance Marketing Unlocked Studio. Nice to have you for another editorial app. - Thank you, Joe, good to be here. - Now it's a happy Black Friday eve to those who celebrate. We are less than 24 hours before the official kick off of the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. But I do feel like it becomes longer and longer each and every year. - Yeah, I think even Amazon isn't hiding anywhere cause it a Black Friday week really now. So it's this long gone past, it's post Thanksgiving day traditions in America just to become as weekly sales. - I can't help but think I really want this trend to happen with Christmas instead of maybe just one day. Why don't we just make Christmas a week as well? Or the very least, we can have Christmas Eve, that little gap between Christmas and New Year's. - It's got a name though, Quimbo Limbo. - Quimbo Limbo, yeah. It's not more Christmas, not more getting in more gifts than, am I? - Yeah, I don't know where to carry that on the trade. - We've had an expansion of Black Friday. I'm out here looking for the expansion of Christmas. I wonder what we're gonna get first. Yes, so obviously Black Friday, it is the sales event of certainly of Q4 and maybe the year, Luke Fawshore, the head of brand of marketing at Backmarket in an interview I did with him earlier this year, described it as fundamental to their success every year and called it the biggest sales day of the year without a doubt. How do you think Robin, from what you've seen in the industry and who you've spoken to, how do you think they're feeling heading into Black Friday 2025? - Yeah, I mean, it's a bit muted this year, definitely. We've had another tough year. I think it's been quite a while since we've actually had a strong year for the economy in the UK. So every year we kind of talk about tightening per strings and stuff, but people use things like big sales events to capitalize on that and get more from their money. So brands are very aware of that. From there side, it's like do you squeeze the margins by cutting so deeply or do you try and use more smart, more smart sales tactics and stuff? And for performance marketers, I think Black Friday really is the sharp end of it because all year round you kind of do that warm, gooey brand marketing, get people primed and then suddenly you hit them with these sales discounts or sort of incentives and stuff. And this is really where you get down to the sort of e-commerce marketing, the search marketing, they get those deals in there. But it's that tricky sort of how far you just stay out versus how far you can sort of use that data in sort of better ways, people tailored, tailored deals, bundles and stuff that might sort of not cut those margins quite as much for those brands. - You said slightly muted. And I think I agree that definitely there's been a lot of talk about whether or not this is going to deliver the Black Friday that marketers hope and maybe need. I was certainly skeptical. I published a feature at the beginning of Q-Force titled Something Long Lines of Are We Headed for another peak season flopping. And that was just based on some of the early returns and some of the research we'd seen. This was from UGov. There's a growing census fatigue among British shoppers in particular towards sales events with an increase in that fatigue growing throughout the year. So there's 35% of shoppers feel less interested in mega sales than they were a few years ago and 63% cited misleading discounts and the novelty wearing off as two sort of key elements to that fatigue. But then there's light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately for some marketers because there was some research that came out recently from voucher codes which we published that's forecasting 3.36 billion pounds in spend from UK consumers this Black Friday which would actually be indicative of 5.7% year on year growth. So it's definitely mixed expectations in terms of whether or not this will deliver. Yeah, I think certainly what's happened is people are getting more savvy towards these sort of sales and things. I think also people feel they can make their money stretch further and they're quite. I think one thing I noticed like on Amazon, for example, recently they've got their new Rufus shopping system which will show you when the how much the deals are now compared to 30 days ago and in a 90 day because I think people are quite cynical now like with Black Friday I think actually is this really a sale? Am I really. Or they just kind of move all in for the Black Friday kind of marketing here. So they're getting quite transparent. I think in somebody's big read it says retail as a trying to counter this sort of fatigue that you're talking about Joe by saying. Actually you can check out whether this deal actually is the lowest it's been in 30 days or 90 days here and I think that's part of what they're trying to do. It's definitely interesting because for our own retail playbook that we did where we predicted some of these things two months ago it's quite interesting to see somebody's things play out already in real time. - A hair and apparition is fairing. - Yeah, I'm pretty good actually. There's one I noticed, I just look back on it for this very podcast. I let's back on some of these things. Gillian McPherson is an epsilon. She's been doing research and she said that look out for things like catalogs, good old fashioned catalogs and things coming in the post because that's one way of reaching people above the noise because it's a bit like to quote someone else from our retail play Amy Wright from an automated creative. It's like shouts in a football stadium now for Black Friday. Black Friday deals here there. If you do something out of the ordinary, send someone personalized postcard, which is what she said her GNX daughter saw for a local store opening and they think that's super cool because you actually much more like Z something comes from your doorstep on your doorstep. - Feels like a bit more extra to go into it. - Feels a bit more personal. - And prediction wise, low and behold, I got a catalog from Amazon through a few days ago for their Christmas shopping for toys and things like that for nephews and things. They were way off because I don't have anyone to buy that for but still good play, Amazon, good try. But yeah, I do notice people are trying to go about some of these old school methods because not everyone's thinking about direct mail anymore. - The return of sampling we spoke about with Matt Huntley on the home recent podcast episode. You can go listen to that now is all about how sampling is tried to modernize for the digital first era and it can be a real key part of a Black Friday strategy because a great way to break out from the noise and over saturated spaces, if someone's tried a product already and they know they like it, then they're more inclined to buy it as opposed to a competitor. So there's a few things to consider there. But there's definitely two schools of thought. There's the discounts and just cutting as many prices as possible in order to drive as many short term sales as you can hit all of your Q4 KPIs. And then there's this slightly more strategic school of thought in terms of how market is going to approach Black Friday being look at it as a chance to win over new business and generate long term loyalty by focusing on things like personalization and beginning to build a relationship with consumers no matter which way you frame it. Certainly there's pressure to deliver one way or another in market as needed to perform. But there's a real interesting part of this Black Friday that makes it different to this time last year and you touched on it there briefly when you mentioned Amazon Rufus and it's the presence of AI agents and shopping assistants. The sort of, it's more or less the first real litmus test for how these agenteic agents and shopping assistants as I said there, how they work at big sales events, and are they going to help consumers as much as they're intended to and what kind of impact is that going to have on brands and advertisers? - Yeah, I mean, I think well, Chuck GBT came on the scene in 2022 and it's been growing and people are slowly using LLMs more in their day-to-day lives. But I think, feel like this year, feels like that kind of turning point where that tipping point where perhaps even a majority of consumers might, we've got the research, I'm sure you've got it, Joe, where consumers, more consumers than not are consulting some sort of LLM during their shopping journey. And Christmas might be the time to be doing that. That's might be the first time for some people that don't, not everyone's a super online user that's using it for everything they're buying. But they might be encountering, oh, actually, it's AI agent or LLM, Chuck GBT or whatever exists that whatever exists on Amazon or any other site. It's actually really useful. Actually, it's a much better way to tell your Mike's experience, he can show you upcoming deals, compare things in the way you compare us inside it's car, for example, in a much more personalised and granular level. So I feel like, yeah, this might be the tipping point of this Christmas to really see whether, you know, my sort of change, mark this outlook for 2020's X-Rally. I have double the number. do diligence and I do have the data at hand but you are correct Robin more than a majority according to research so 62% of global shoppers now use AI chatbots as part of the shopping experience which is an enormous amount I mean that that's a majority right there and crucially for Black Friday here in the UK 57% of Brits use chat GPT for product searches and this is nothing to do with Black Friday this is independent of the sales season it's just for their shopping in general we both have been using it for our own experience and maybe that's where we can start how have you been using AI and your preparations for Black Friday we're both consumers we're both going to be spending this holiday season and trying to get the most bang for our buck what have you been doing in preparation well I'm always aware you know the one one really marketing is you are not the customer so you're always kind of aware that we might be super users and these things because we literally talk about it for our jobs but yeah I've been using things like some LLM's or various kinds because I like to try different things to predict Black Friday sales as well so I'm wondering how the other shoppers are doing that because you want to sort of see I actually want to buy this large ticket item and and actually large ticket items are the big things of Black Friday more so than food or because you can make the bigger savings with them basically. Electronics exactly and you can unlike what you'd be able to do with Google in the past you can say ask LLM was this on sale last Black Friday what was the discount and can you can you predict the trend if it would be under the same discount this year deeper and so you can sort of make a more considered purchase decision around that whether you should wait or whether it's even worth making that purchase and I don't think you could really do that before when you're kind of using more you know things like things like Google which wouldn't be as personalized then can't go and steeply into these different areas and comparing across different retailers of course. Well and this is the thing and I should say that researcher comes from Criteo who are people that we lean on but reasonably regularly so we trust Criteo that but as you said we're not the shoppers and we do this for our jobs and obviously talk about it all the time but 57% of people here in the UK using ChatGPT for product searches that's not insignificant and what that tells me as well is people have built a personal relationship with these LLMs but specifically I think about Gemini and I have an account with Gemini and ChatGPT I'm not married to any other than I use a few and have accounts with them so that they can remember the searches I've done previously and that a genty element and it's what Rufus has recently been able to do as well and start building up a bit of a profile for each person so this could be for many shoppers six months worth of research and building up a profile to then ask ChatGPT Rufus Gemini perplexity what have you what is the best deal and discount for me and that's something I've been doing is I've been putting all of my pre-expressions into these LLMs and then I've been saying can you make price comparisons and product comparisons for me here's my budget here's what I want to achieve and I've been tossing up between two or three products what do you think's the best or is there something I'm missing altogether you can ask these questions and from what I've been getting you can get some pretty reasonable responses and the and the conundrum then for brands and advertisers is how do you get seen in those places and it becomes a much more narrow thing it's less about bidding on keywords and stuff like that and being part of more conversation conversational stuff which is what Google AI Mo's all about saying actually if you want to pay high you should be able to be an answer to a question be in that sort of area yes exactly and it's not a million miles away from from good SEO practice to be fair but I mean that's why interest around social media like Reddit is becoming much bigger thing is more social advocacy that kind of stuff as opposed to just you know what user generated recommendations seem to be having carrying much more weight so brands should be on those platforms getting in those conversations and being more sort of naturally I think being an authority helps and being seen as a leader being out to sort of have a high level of quality and recommendations when people works really well. This episode of the performance marketing unlock podcast is sponsored by MediaHawk. Are you struggling to connect online and offline customer journeys? You're not alone. Many marketers miss valuable insights because they can't track what happens before a customer calls while they're on the phone or after the conversation ends. MediaHawk's call tracking and marketing analytics platform connects every customer interaction every call click and conversion giving you a complete view of what's driving leads and sales with deeper insight into online and offline touch points you can optimize spend and maximize ROI. In fact brands using MediaHawk have saved 22% on their Google ad spend and achieved up to a 300% inquiry uplift. See what MediaHawk can do for you at mediahawk.co.uk/pmw. The issue is obviously the risk versus reward when it comes to times like these we've mentioned these good alternatives of optimise around AI and make sure that there's decision for Alessos among consumers this time of year so if a chap wants to tell them this is the best deal they're going to be inclined to believe it so you want to show up in those citations equally direct mail could be a really cool fun way to expose yourself to a new audience and expose your brand to that audience for the first time and build a really good relationship. Likewise this is the time of year that loyalty programs you can really capitalize on those people might have banked points you might be able to offer personalized discounts to some of your people but all this requires investment ahead of time and sometimes the safest thing to do is just pour a lot of your budget into some good off-fashioned search marketing and just filter it all over to Google and the slasher price and how's that best? Yeah and sacrifice some of your margins by going for the deepest discount over everyone else and that's not always going to help you in the long run with your bottom line and be able to be appointed about decision priorities is really important because I think we've got more choices more channels than ever before more products than ever before quite frankly so it's interesting how we were talking before the podcast about that like is AI replacing the person you talk to or the parent you meet after you're going on when you're on the school running you chat and say you know what are you buying what car you get in what what TV if you got are we now asking those questions to AI instead of humans for that sort of that sort of advocacy moment and that word of mouth marketing it used to be so precious it's from up for performance market is that's quite a big deal because that's something you can measure even more so because famously you couldn't measure those little conversations in though in the social clubs and the running clubs over what's you people are wearing and stuff but if people are going home and instead of asking they were like them what's the best to compare these two trainers then that's a whole not a rich seam of data for Marxist of mine sounds a bit sinister to them all we talk about it there you go it's interesting that I used there's I won't there's an interesting example on that I think it's the on the influence of AI on people's habits when it comes to consumption and it's a little bit of a detail but I think it'll hit home for a few marketers I used previously I have people who have long time listeners will know I enjoy my running and in the past I used a subscription service that builds a training plan for your races in the lead up to them so it's uses AI to you know you put in all your information and it optimizes a training plan that's fueled by AI for to come up with sessions and weekly training plans that are meant to get the best performance for you and and help you meet your goals and I was subscribed to this service and used it for a race and it did reasonably well but it was expensive and it's a recurring subscription so naturally I started looking for an alternative because I'm not running a marathon every week just every other year well not quite yet but maybe one day and what I did was I thought well can I get this service for free in a way that still meets my expectations as I'd like so what do you think I did I plugged all my information into chat GPT I said here's my next race this is my level of fitness come up with a training plan for me and also sets some expectations what do you think I could achieve low and behold it worked really really well and I could do a bunch of fun new sessions that I'd done before and the fact that it came up with sessions I'd seen before I was like well it's not just pulling these out of its bum but then it came up with some new ones that I hadn't seen before and I really enjoyed and the result was really positive and it didn't cost me a thing other than a whole heap of my diet I can see you I'm just quite happy to make that exchange I know you can see why I mean the big anticipation in this industry right now is when chat GPT is going to have ads and you can see why Marx is really interested in that because the data people are plugging into it and what it can potentially serve you back would be fascinating the level of personalization then would be huge so yeah knowing all of Joe's running data and stuff would be I'm sure they can use it in some way. Thank you certainly. I'm happy with plenty of ads. That's exactly. That's for sure which is the way that marketers can win me back because I'm notoriously a terrible consumer I've no loyalty anywhere I go exactly where my backpack it tells me to and that's pretty much it. - I'm too sure you don't like return to brands. It is, like not with any real loyalty. Like I've returned to brands if I like the product and it stays within budget, but that's few and far between. And I'm always willing to jump across to a different one of the drop of the hat if I get what I deem to be a better offer. So in some ways I'm a Black Friday dream because you could just hit me with a discount and I'll give you a go. But in terms of getting that long term loyalty, it's really, really challenging. - I think Joe, you might be an outlier somewhere in that whole world, but certainly, yeah, it's a challenge. So there we go, maybe we can set that as a challenge, like get Joe's loyalty. See if that instead of like resale me a pen. - Well, do you have any brands that you're loyal to that you think do this well and at times of year like this, you know you've got a relationship with so you're more inclined to shop with them if you think that's a good deal. - I don't really want to endorse anyone on the podcast necessarily, but I mean, yeah, I'm actually probably more similar to you in that idea. I do kind of, I do look around a bit. I'm actually one of those people and I'm a shopper. I'm slowly converting to places like Aldi and stuff because you're just thinking value is there. - And I think value is probably bigger thing nowadays than it used to be. I think people, everyone, even no matter what class where you are in your sort of socioeconomic levels at the moment, everyone is having to sort of cut back on what they were previously to some degree. So I think value is a big driver. - There we go. So that's the takeaway, basically. I think you've got to produce value. This isn't groundbreaking, but ahead of a big sales event like Black Friday, I think it's important to consolidate and remember what's important, where is the value? Because whether or not there's increased sales fatigue among consumers, sales events are still a huge opportunity for brands to get a leg up relative to their competition. And it can be a massive flop or it can be a huge success, depending on whether or not you do it effectively. So before I let you go, Robin, I should direct our listenership to the website because not only is this podcast out today on the eve of Black Friday, we'll also have our expert predictions. If you wanna hear from people who aren't just myself and Robin, what they think leading into Black Friday and some of the trends that they're predicting. And we will of course have a recap at the event on the website where we will be talking to the industry in the wake of it. We'll have all of the data, how much was spent, what was it spent on, what verticals did well, what advertising channels did well, and which brands and success stories emerged from the wake that is upon us. And I don't wanna over promise, but we have got lined up some actually exclusive proprietary data for Black Friday sales. It will be quite deeply into how it's all performed, which would be useful to our readers, I think. We're not just gonna do the top level stuff, we're actually gonna go quite deep. A deep dive ahead with some expert analysis. It doesn't get me better than that. And that's exactly what you're getting here on PMW. Robin, anything else you wanted to talk about before I let you go? - If put me on the spot there, but obviously we got our massive unlocks event next year, which is gonna feature a huge amount on e-commerce. And that's quite exciting. We've got some very exciting news about that coming up in a few weeks time, which we can talk about, but we'll let you know. - Stay tuned on the website. That's all that that's the best feedback and advice we've got for you all. Robin, thanks as always for joining me. And you'll be back in a couple of weeks time for what will be the last episode of the season. Season four of the performance marketing unlock podcast. We'll be doing our annual Christmas special and we'll be doing some predictions of our own for 2020 seeing. So the listeners have that to look forward to. In a fortnight's time, we've got another episode with a very exciting guest for you all coming up in between that. But until then, thanks for joining me. - Thank you. (upbeat music) - And that concludes this episode of the performance marketing unlocked podcast. A big thank you to my guest this week, PMW's editor Robin Langford for joining me to talk all things Black Friday and Cyber Monday Weekend. Best of luck to all you marketers and advertisers out there listening. I hope you heated our advice and we've offered you some help, some solace, relieve some anxieties or give a new some ideas. And ultimately, I hope that the big sales event and the big sales season in general delivers for all of you and you can get physical consumers like myself and Robin. Spending. Thanks, as always, to you listeners for tuning in each and every week as you do. If you haven't already, can I kindly ask that you subscribe to the show on your podcast platform of choice and find us over on social media. We're on LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube as well as on the website, posting some clips, highlights and full episodes if you'd prefer to watch them rather than just listen, so make sure you go and find all that good stuff over there. We will be back as always in a week's time with another episode of the performance marketing unlocked podcast. Until then, have an amazing week and you'll be hearing from me again, very shortly. Bye for now. (upbeat music)