RKG Logo 434-978-4300

Scott Silverman, director of Shop.org, asked me to write about their cyber-Monday online shopping mall. It’s an affiliate charity site with discounts. Proceeds benefit a scholarship fund for students interested in online marketing. Check it out.

Beyond plugging a good cause for a great trade association, why might this interest marketing folks?

The PR angle. There’s marketing power in being the first to name a phenomenon.

Shop.org created “Cyber Monday” in response to “Black Friday”. Black Friday is the day when, according to popular belief, many retailers move into the black for the year. Shop.org wanted it known that, online, the Monday after Black Friday is a Really Really Really Big Shopping Day. (They’re right; it is.) So they invented a catchy name for the day, and the name stuck.

Now, you can argue whether or not Cyber Monday is really the busiest web shopping day of the year. It varies retailer to retailer, and it really doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that Shop.org was able to coin a label that brought attention to just how enormous online retail has become to our economy, and do so in a way that resonated with the popular press, at the just the right time in history.

A year later, the term is everywhere: Google shows 265k results on for the quoted phrase “Cyber Monday” Technorati shows 1900 results for the phrase. (Should the Technorati search have quotes? Not sure, but I think so.)

Cyber Monday. A good nickname. A big PR win. And really smart marketing for an online retail trade association.

If you like this post, consider subscribing to our RSS feed. You can also have new posts sent to you via email.


Related Posts

Your Comment

Tags

RKG

Trackback

http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2006/11/21/cyber-monday-smart-pr/trackback/

Blogs Citing This Post

  1. Pingback: Median CyberMonday Sales Up 32% (and other 11 benchmarks): Compare Your Results By Category on November 28, 2007
  2. Pingback: Online Retail Stats: CyberMonday 2008 vs. 2007 on December 3, 2008

Email Updates

Categories

Recent Comments

  • George Michie: Kevin, Marc, thanks for your comments. Help is coming, but not the solution. There are a number of instances when the CTR on the...
  • Marc Adelman: George, You have been an advocate of “the advanced control option” for years now. Depressing right YEARS! Eh…listen...
  • Kevin Hill: Is what they really need is a fourth match type. Here’s google’s help documentation on broad match: This is the default...
  • Kevin Micalizzi, Dimdim Web Conferencing: Jim (& George)- We still offer a free version of Dimdim. Just click Sign Up Now at the top of the...
  • Tomas: indeed, i can’t talk about it either… :)
  • Philip Price: Thank you for the RegHack, it worked for me, tho at first when i made the reg file with the information i copied from above i also...
  • George Michie: Sorry Jim, this post was written in 2007. Apparently some of those products are gone.
  • Jim: Hey, I checked two products like dimdim and cutepdf but none is free. What are you talking about free and open source?
  • George Michie: If they keep hearing the same message, and seeing evidence in the data to back it up, something will have to give. There is hope on...
  • Tomas: I’ve been having the same argument with Google for months now and in the end there does seem to be a feature in the algorithm that...
  • George Michie: Doesn’t have to be, it can be intra-adgroup as well.
  • Josh: George – I take it you’re referencing a scenario where your exact-match keywords are not listed as negative exact match keywords...
  • George Michie: Melissa, you’re right, it’s always happened to varying degrees, particularly since the advent of extended broad match....
  • Mel66: I don’t think this is a bug. It’s been happening for years. It *is* impossible to manage, and I can’t help but wonder if...
  • George Michie: Thanks Matt, Sometimes humor serves a purpose.

Blog Stats

  • Posts: 948
  • Words: 451,089
  • Comments: 2,875

Administration