Kohls Resorts to Desperate Black Friday Promotions

Desperate times call for desperate measures on Black Friday.

In an attempt to boost sales during a weak economy and a holiday retail season that’s expected to be disasterous, Kohls is advertising a promotion that definitely does not have me planning to set my alarm clock early on Black Friday.

Check out the ad I saw on Yahoo! today, pictured below.

What do you think? Will you get up at 4:00 a.m. on Black Friday and head to your local Kohls for, “300 early bird specials?”

By the way, you can find tons of Black Friday deals on the Black Friday 2008 website, most of which do not require that you get up before the sun rises.

Image: Kohls via Yahoo!

Susan Gunelius

Susan Gunelius is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc. and Founder & Editor in Chief of an award-winning blog, WomenOnBusiness.com. She is a 25-year veteran of the marketing field and has authored 10 books about marketing, branding, and social media, including the highly popular 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing for Dummies, Blogging All-in-One for Dummies and Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps. Susan’s marketing-related content can be found on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes.com, MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, and more. Susan is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She has worked in corporate marketing roles and through client relationships with AT&T, HSBC, Citibank, Intuit, The New York Times, Cox Communications, and many more large and small companies around the world. Susan also speaks about marketing, branding and social media at events around the world and is frequently interviewed by television, online, radio, and print media organizations about these topics. She holds an MBA in Management and Strategy and a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing.

Comments

Scott says

November 25, 2008 at 10:49 am

Unless they’re offering coffee & donuts, better yet a full breakfast bar, I’ll be in bed at 4:00 AM. Why is earlier better? Why not just offer the same deals during normal hours and have a good stock of the items that’ll most likely be in demand? Oh wait! That makes too much sense…
Pat says

November 26, 2008 at 3:33 pm

Sounds like a great offer to me. 300 items to chose from….i don’t have 300 gifts to buy so that many specials sounds like it’s worth checking out.
Margarita says

November 30, 2008 at 8:19 pm

I know a few people who were crazy enough to join so many others there at 4:00 AM on that morning and they go every year regardless of what they are or are not offering. While they say they get some pretty good deals, they do not seem to be much different from the deals they may get on a regular basis, and definitely not worth getting up at 4:00 AM for. The ad itself seems to be pretty ineffective though, 300 is a big number, but 300 what? Who knows what items the deals are offered on and if I don’t know…then I’m definitely not going.
Susan Gunelius says

November 30, 2008 at 8:24 pm

Margarita, I agree – 300 items isn’t compelling. It could be 300 things that aren’t products people want. Specific deals are definitely more compelling with so many competing promotions going on.