The Tray Way: Is There a Downside to Small Business Saturday?

For the 2nd year in a row, the unofficial holiday of Small Business Saturday was celebrated, falling between its more famous siblings of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The day is meant to give attention to small businesses in cities and town across the country and provide them a chance to compete for the billions of dollars spent during this long weekend. In truth, small businesses employ half of all private sector employees in the country and should be recognized for their contribution to the economy and society.

The event received tremendous support - as expected - from business organizations across the country, and even President Obama endorsed the movement. However, some found a problem with this ideas for a simple reason: Small Business Saturday was created by a big business, namely American Express.

The question then became whether this seemingly altruistic movement was truly a scheme to promote the advantages a multi-national organization can offer. As marketing experts that work with businesses small and large, our simple response is, "Yeah, and....."

In our last post on the Tray Way blog, we discussed how NBC saw increased ad sales revenue during GreenWeek, begging the question of whether improving profits and being socially responsible is ok. This situation is similar. American Express, through an intelligent marketing strategy, discovered an opportunity to help themselves by promoting others, and not just others, but a niche that many Americans support. This effort is similar to how many feel about Valentines Day, and how certain industries take advantage of the concept of love and relationships for financial gain (sure, the greeting card and flower industry are benefiting, but who is going to be against love?).

In truth, the marketing strategy that American Express created was so smart and clever that it feels like there should be something wrong with it. But, we would like offer this thought: Be OK with it. Small businesses across the country were helped this past Saturday, and if that meant that American Express saw a benefit also, well maybe they deserve it for leading the charge.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw gigantic numbers this year, and while it is difficult to determine the exact success of Small Business Saturday, the fact that the phrase and hashtag saw tremendous use in the days and weeks beforehand means that "word of mouth" was extremely strong. It is our hopes that this movement continues, and we hope to be an even bigger part of it next year.

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The Tray PML Way is the blog for Tray, experts in the printing, mailing, logistics and promotional products. You can learn more about our organization's capabilities by visiting our website, as well as our Facebook and Twitter pages.