Amazon October Prime Day vs. Amazon Prime Big Deal Days: A Lesson in Bad Marketing?
What do you do when you’re the largest online retailer in the world, the owner of the largest e-commerce platform ever built, and you already have a successful franchise that you want to replicate? How about going for a radically different franchise that will likely confuse your hundreds of millions of audiences?
That’s exactly what Amazon did with its product Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (which starts on October 8). Amazon Prime Day is a well-established, perfectly functional event that has been around for almost a decade (it was launched on Amazon’s 20th anniversary in 2015).
The October 2022 introduction of Big Deal Days (which some also call Big Deals Day) was seen by many as a cynical but pragmatic move by the retailer to suck some of the air out of Black Friday/Cyber Monday . – which takes place six weeks later.
As it turned out, the peak trading period was becoming increasingly busy as hundreds of other retailers crowded the online landscape. By forcing shoppers to spend their hard-earned cache before Black Friday, rivals like Walmart or Best Buy will have less to contend with.
Ironically, Amazon was the pioneer that started the whole online BF/CM bonanza, while other retailers jumped on the bandwagon over the years as it became clear how lucrative that venture could become.
October Prime Day or Big Day deals?
The internet has spoken loud and clear. October Prime Day (OPD) is by far the preferred way to refer to Big Day Deals (BDD). GoogleTrends. In 2023, OPD collected almost 60% more search volume globally during Big Day Deals week compared to the other search, and Google predicts this will get even worse in 2024.
What’s even more interesting is that in the US, the largest territory for Amazon, the gap between the two is even wider, with search volume OPD almost twice as high as BDD in 2023. 2024 will be even more lopsided with Google Trends expects OPD to be three times more popular than its counterpart.
The same trend is happening on YouTube, another Google property that has become a popular battleground for all things Prime Day (October or July); Big Deal Days is still a country mile behind its unofficial name and there’s seemingly nothing Amazon can do to reverse the trend.
A changing landscape
The first day of Prime Day in July 2023 was Amazon’s biggest sales day in its history. No such announcement has been made in 2024, which may indicate a slowdown in the global economy. With more than 200 million paid Prime subscribers, Amazon is a bit of a bellwether for economists.
Dropping the Big Deal Days label for just Prime Day in October could help boost sales by simplifying messaging across Amazon’s vast marketing ecosystem. This could help reduce the current confusion among its millions of customers while strengthening the overall Prime Day brand. I wouldn’t discount a third such annual event in the near future. Rinse and repeat.