Christmas miracles do still happen

The retail industry has spent millions shooting itself in the foot… and unwittingly helped children (and parents) everywhere. That’s the power of Christmas, says Adam Burns.

I just did a Google search for ‘Christmas retail figures 2013’. The results do not make happy reading, especially, one imagines, if you work in UK retail. By and large, here on the High Street, things are down: footfall, spending, corners of mouths. 

We can blame it on the weather. We always do (‘unseasonably warm’ being my current favourite reason for retail fail). And of course it’s too early to panic. And the traditional Boxing Day sales can still rescue things. Or can they?

I checked stories about the US, hoping Thanksgiving weekend may offer some clues. Main Street isn’t faring much better, Black Friday figures were mixed, so thank goodness for Cyber Monday, which, according to USA Today, clicked in ‘with record sales’. In fact, so record were these sales that ‘retailers from Target to Sears are fast evolving Cyber Monday into something more akin to Cyber Week, as online deals stretch well beyond Monday’.

I am reasonably sure that sentence contains the seeds of Cyber Monday’s eventual failure. Just as the Boxing Day sales brought down Christmas. The reason why starts with my family.

Despite appearances, the day Nanna could only walk backwards, and little brother’s flat-out refusal to smile in photos, my family is normal. Average, even. Between us, we have six children under 16, one at 17, and two at university. This year, only one of them – the youngest, aged six – asked for an actual, physical present from anyone other than parents (a gumball machine). The rest have asked for money. Last year, just two of them wanted proper gifts you could put under the tree. I’m calling this a trend.

I ask my son why he wants money. “Because I can spend it on whatever I want,” he says, reversing over an informant.

“Uncle Mark would only buy something you asked him to,” I say.

“Yeah, but I can get more after Christmas,” a pause as he fires some rockets into a shopping mall. “Everything’s cheaper.”

We all love a deal. Retail marketers understand this, and spend lots of time and money on psychological research to, as The Economist so sweetly puts it, ‘take advantage of consumers’ innumeracy’ (in other news: David Ogilvy spins in grave).

They should be more careful who has the last laugh because, if my family is anything to go by, the next generation have a very firm grip on one piece of basic numeracy: buying anything for Christmas day is a rip off. And, culturally, they’ve moved past the need to open lots of presents that day (stockings full of oranges, whoopee cushions and Calvin & Hobbes comics excluded). They like it – don’t confuse the two – but they don’t expect it. Their greedy gush comes after.

The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment posited that children who could stop themselves from wolfing one plump marshmallow now for two plump marshmallows in 15 minutes would have better life outcomes. How we parents gnashed our teeth at yet another way to fail.

We needn’t have worried. The thing that we could not instil in our children has been done for us. It’s cost millions of pounds and has used some of the top marketing brains in the business. Delayed gratification. It’s the modern Christmas miracle.

Unless you’re in retail.

Topics:

Marketing