Cyber Unday

There’s a lot we don’t get about “Cyber Monday”. Why the name has to be so awful, for one thing. But the biggest mystery is why so many online retailers even bother. They think it’s the perfect way to introduce themselves to new people. But loss-leader prices are wasted when you don’t do what you need to do to keep those people coming back. What do we mean?

Take us, because we’re obviously so awesome and stuff. Here we have the Martian Notifier Watch for a mere $20. Of course, it’s a “holy shit” deal in and of itself. It’s an actual watch but with smart guts. It works with, like, a thousand different iOS and Android apps to send you notifications of everything from texts and calls, to your favorite team losing yet another game, to your stock portfolio crashing, to your heart rate soaring. It doesn’t look half bad, either. As far as we know, it’s the kind of deal that people are going to buy, to share, to tell their friends about.

But that’s just the beginning.

When they or their friends come back tomorrow or whenever, they’ll find another deal in the same league of spectacularity. They’ll find a buzzing community of fascinating folks. They’ll find ridiculous videos and the Internet’s weirdest copywriting. They’ll find us pulling out every trick we can think of to make them like us.

It won’t be everyone’s mug of Celestial Seasonings. But we’re trying. We’re trying to stick in your figurative craw just enough to pop up during idle moments, maybe even make you say to someone “you gotta see this.”

Compare that to the Cyber Monday deals we see from the likes of TopCameraBargains or Kloodzi or GizmoDudeMan or any other retail rando who thinks that that one viral markdown will write their ticket for the rest of the year.

Once you’ve bought that thing, is there any reason to go back? Nothing about the experience is memorable. Nothing about the store is notably better than shopping at Amazon, and a lot of things are notably worse. Nothing makes you want to tell your people about it. The retailer took a loss on that deal for nothing.

The concept of Cyber Monday is as stupid as the phrase “Cyber Monday”. But anybody who’s going to do it should at least make it work. Give your new customers a reason to remember you. Make them want more. Keep the deals coming year round. Get some kind of community going. Hire some weird people to make weird stuff. Just not our weird people. They’re taken.

But almost no other retailers will do any of that. So they won’t draw people back, much less inspire fans to spread the word. You Mehtizens are our secret weapon, the straw that stirs the discount drink. We might not pay you directly to send an embarrassing promotional tweet, but bigger and better crowds mean bigger and better deals. Unlike sports fans, what Meh fans do does affect the action “on the field”.