Black Friday, a North American commercial tradition that promotes aggressive discounting, has spread globally and is now one of the biggest sales campaigns of the year in just about every sector that involves buying and selling. Due to its place on the calendar, it also comes at a strategically important junction, just before another key window where a significant percentage of annual sales are concentrated… Christmas.

The metaverse represents a whole new playing field for selling goods and services, both digital and physical. Faced with events like Black Friday and Christmas, the metaverse could create value and achieve a double objective. Firstly, by strategically positioning themselves as better than their competitors by taking a giant leap towards virtualisation at just the right time, companies that bet on the metaverse today will be able to draw on technological innovation as a contributor of value to their brand.

Secondly, by establishing a kind of testing ground – both technologically- and commercially speaking –, companies will be able to open up new markets and opportunities in all sectors they choose to be involved in. This way, they’ll be able to access new sectors and develop new products and services.

What is Black Friday?

Black Friday is celebrated in the United States on the day after Thanksgiving. Since 1961, it’s been the day on which North American retailers start massively discounting their goods in the week after the Thanksgiving celebrations, a very important part of American culture.

The name ‘black’ was taken from the code used by police and traffic wardens to designate dangerously crowded roads and high levels of vehicle and pedestrian traffic. The influx of people taking to the streets on this day, both on the busy shopping avenues and adjacent roads, often led to genuine traffic chaos, forever giving this Friday in late November its name.

Now, and thanks to globalisation, Black Friday – and even the entire week leading up to it and after it – is now a familiar fixture throughout the world promoting aggressive discounting, although most people probably aren’t aware of its cultural origins.

Preparing Black Friday and Christmas campaigns in the metaverse

Although the commercial outlook doesn’t differ all that much whether Black Friday takes place in the metaverse or in the real world, there are a few things about the virtual world that everyone should consider when implementing a strategy like this. As a minimum, you should always consider the following:

• Product types: You need to decide if you’re going to offer NFTs, applications, software and improvements for avatars in the metaverse itself – meaning digital products, designed for consumption in the metaverse – or discount codes or similar benefits that people can redeem in physical stores in the “real” world.
• Sales space in the metaverse: It’s vital every brand has its own dedicated space in the metaverse, acting as a virtual showcase for products, and a space where users can interact with one another via their respective avatars.
• Exclusive virtual strategies: The possibilities offered by virtual reality headsets mean you can run product demonstrations in real time in the metaverse, organise influencer streams to show off the products you’re selling, hold exclusive giveaways and other types of events that could only take place in an environment like the metaverse.

The metaverse is undergoing a crucial phase at the moment, as it takes its first steps. Looking at big dates in the calendar like Black Friday and the Christmas season through the “lenses” of the metaverse offers a very promising picture for those keen to bet on technological innovation.