Beyond Discounts: Dissecting 4 Unconventional Black Friday Marketing Strategies

Reading Time: 9 minutes

Forget the panic of the price war; the Black Friday marketing game is no longer about who can slash prices the lowest. With brands now kicking off promotions weeks in advance—starting as early as Halloween—the entire month of November has become a competitive battleground. 

The new imperative for B2C marketers is about who can tell the best story, offer the most seamless customer experience, and earn genuine, long-term loyalty throughout this extended selling season.

As a marketer, you know the four-day peak event still holds immense sway. Recent projections, such as those from Bain & Company, indicate that U.S. retailers could see Black Friday through Cyber Monday account for nearly 9% of total holiday sales, representing year-on-year growth of 11%, despite broader market slowdowns. 

To secure your share of these colossal sales, whether they land on the peak weekend or in the early launch windows, you must move beyond generic Black Friday promotion ideas and embrace creative Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing strategies like other industry leaders.

Here’s how four top B2C brands are successfully redefining their Black Friday marketing strategies and campaigns, turning a transactional weekend into an entire season of acquisition and engagement.

Top 4 Omnichannel Strategies and Examples for Black Friday Marketing

1. Walmart: Using Entertaining Content to Create Desired Deals

Walmart didn’t just run an ad campaign for Black Friday; it produced a hit television series. Their strategy was a masterclass in “advertainment,” transforming monotonous deal announcements into a highly engaging, 10-part cinematic miniseries: “Deals of Desire.”

This campaign was the attention-grabbing centerpiece of a well-coordinated and technologically advanced holiday marketing effort. Starring familiar faces, such as Ian Somerhalder and Anthony Ramos, the content humorously spoofed popular TV genres and was deployed across an omnichannel mix, including TV commercials, YouTube, TikTok, and Out-of-Home (OOH) media. 

Walmart leveraged the advertainment strategy to promote its extended sales period. They utilized a three-wave approach across November (including early deals, the main event, and Cyber Monday deals) designed to incentivize loyalty membership. These deals and Walmart’s loyalty program were promoted regularly on Walmart’s website, app, social handles, and email. 

The ultimate goal of their Black Friday marketing strategy was to funnel customers toward the Walmart+ loyalty program with the incentive to secure five hours of early access to all Black Friday deals that were dropped strategically across the Walmart app, website, and physical stores.

Reinforcing this digital focus, Walmart also introduced a beta test of Sparky, its cutting-edge GenAI-powered shopping assistant, on its digital platforms, to help shoppers easily find and compare gifts. 

This strategy paid off. Creative data from DAIVID showed that Walmart’s ad series significantly boosted purchase intent by 5.8%, while ranking well above industry averages for Creative Effectiveness Score (CES). 

Key Takeaway:

• Shift your campaign investment from traditional selling to attention-grabbing “advertainment” for your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing (BFCM) campaigns.
• Create high-quality, memorable, and entertaining content to cut through the holiday noise and earn user attention. 
• Strategically leverage that viral-ready content to drive sign-ups for a critical conversion funnel, such as early-access deals or a loyalty program. 

This approach moves beyond simple sales messaging, helping you secure more customer eyeballs and transforming your creative execution into a high-performing engine for customer acquisition and retention.

2. Amazon: Leveraging UGC and AI for Five-Star Shopping Experiences

Amazon’s recent Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing campaign seamlessly blended high-concept storytelling with cutting-edge technology. Their core strategy transformed their greatest asset—the unique and often humorous customer reviews—into compelling, shareable content.

The centerpiece was the “Five Star Theater” Hollywood-level ad series, featuring actor Adam Driver delivering dramatic monologues based on real customer reviews, like the “banana slicer that saved a marriage.” This campaign was inspired by insights from Amazon’s customer data, which indicated that 80% of Amazon shoppers read customer reviews before making a purchase.

The ad videos were distributed across a robust omnichannel mix, including paid social (TikTok, Meta, Snapchat), OTT content on Amazon Prime (like Thursday Night Football), and Amazon’s owned channels (Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube), perfectly aligning the viral creative with the peak shopping period. 

This approach successfully generated over 1 billion total impressions and sparked widespread customer fandom, including fans creating re-enactments of the ads, validating the brand’s goal of using entertainment to drive interest in their BFCM marketing deals. 

In addition to this, the ad series was complemented by a powerful digital utility: Amazon promoted its newly launched, advanced AI offerings, such as Rufus (a conversational AI shopping assistant), Amazon Lens (a visual search feature), AI Shopping Guide, and an interactive Virtual Holiday Shop (for AR browsing and shopping), across different channels and platforms. 

Amazon also leveraged influencer collaborations on Instagram to showcase viral products daily, while presenting its AI offerings as shopping hacks to help users find the best products and deals. Furthermore, they sent bi-weekly newsletters to promote the BFCM week and AI features. 

The integrated strategy of viral creativity meeting technological utility drove Amazon’s biggest holiday season ever, helping it generate $187.8 billion in Q4 revenue.

Key Takeaway:

• Instead of relying on generic holiday promotions, identify the unique, human truth about how customers interact with your brand: whether it’s a funny FAQ, a common challenge solved by your product, a beloved feature, or any other user-generated content (i.e. UGC). 
• Use the information to create a viral, shareable creative campaign with great storytelling.
• Then take this a notch up by providing offerings such as AI tools to help streamline the customer’s buying journey.

This dual strategy of marrying high-impact, entertaining creative with high-tech utility is the blueprint to ensure the mass traffic generated from your black friday marketing strategy is converted into a superior, frictionless shopping experience.

3. Deciem (The Ordinary, NIOD, etc.): Turning Values into Volume with “Slowvember”  

Deciem, the company behind The Ordinary, has focused on a unique Black Friday marketing strategy centered on anti-consumerism since 2019, opting to replace the traditional sales frenzy with a month-long initiative called “Slowvember.”

For its 2024 Black Friday campaign, Deciem announced a “Blackout Period”—an event where all its brand websites and standalone stores were shut down and made transaction-free on Black Friday. Instead, to encourage mindful shopping, a flat 23% discount was applied to all products throughout the entire month of November.

Deciem also launched a dedicated campaign page for Slowevmber and an FAQ page to explain their intent behind this campaign. This was promoted via their website and app pop-ups and rotating banners, which had a CTA to their campaign page. 

To further emphasize this messaging, they ran campaign ads offline throughout November across major cities in the U.K., U.S., and Canada via bold OOH posters and strategic ads in major print publications like The New York Times and The Guardian. 

Additionally, they utilized social media channels such as Instagram and TikTok to educate consumers about the “10-step shopping routine.” The same was the case in all emails from Deciem’s brands, wherein the content was focused on helping customer navigate the science of skincare by “slow[ing] down” and “shop[ping] wisely”.

This approach garnered significant media attention, reinforcing the brand’s core value of radical transparency. While the results from the 2024 campaign are not publicly available, one of the previous campaign iterations observed a 400% sales lift for the NIOD brand alone and heavily impacted customer acquisition rates, with 51% of customers being brand new. 

Since this has proven to be one of the best Black Friday marketing ideas for brands prioritizing values, Deciem has continued a similar strategy for BFCM year on year. 

Key Takeaway:

• Instead of participating in the crowded, race-to-the-bottom discounting frenzy, consider disrupting the traditional Black Friday shopping narrative by taking a stand that reflects your core brand value (e.g., sustainability, transparency, or quality over quantity). 
• Develop a well-integrated, month-long omnichannel campaign centered around it, utilizing high-impact channels such as OOH and print to amplify your message. 
• Repeat this year, year after year, to reinforce your brand’s authenticity and build trust among your audience. 

This strategy can help you earn significant media attention and serve as a powerful engine for customer acquisition, particularly among value-aligned customers. 

4. Lowe’s Home Improvement: Converting a Weekend Sale into a Loyalty Season  

In the past few years, Lowe’s has brilliantly decoupled the Black Friday shopping event from a single weekend to a loyalty-driven, multi-week campaign that rewards homeowners. The core of its Black Friday marketing strategy centers on its loyalty program, MyLowe’s Rewards.

Loyal members receive a comprehensive suite of rewards, including: 

• Early access to special Doorbusters Black Friday deals online 
• A gamified giveaway where the first 25 members received a free, stocked bucket of mystery products valued at $150 and a discounted coupon 
• Free member gift offers throughout the holiday season
• Exclusive in-store workshops throughout the holiday season

Other recent BFCM marketing activations by Lowe’s include:

• A dedicated landing page on its website and app with gift guides for different budgets and gift types to showcase how Lowe’s “helps [its customers] get more holiday for less”. 
• Improved buy online, pickup in-store options featured on its website and app. 
• Mylowe’s AI assistant to find the perfect gift and deals on them, which was launched this year. 
• Month-long “Early Black Friday” or “Black Friday Buildup” deals (with Buy One, Get One, Two or Three offers on select brands) starting as early as late October to help customers tackle those crucial home improvements and kickstart their holiday shopping at significant savings

• Multiple TV commercials (e.g., the “Holiday Emergency Broken Refrigerator” spot) with the slogan “We Help. You Save.” to promote the seasonal discounts and Lowe’s customer-first features like Same-Day and Next-Day Deliveries, Buy Now-Pay Later, a Low Price Guarantee, and the MyLowe’s AI Assistant.

• Paid ads on channels like Facebook to promote products with deals and reinforce the slogan “Lowe’s Knows Deals.”, which has been used multiple times in previous campaigns.
• Humorous reels on platforms like Instagram reminded customers to grab holiday savings and check the gift guides to simplify their shopping process.
• Emails and physical brochures outlining daily product deals. 

Overall, Lowe’s offers multiple strategic incentives at various customer touchpoints to maximize engagement across the homeowner’s entire journey, whether they are purchasing a high-ticket appliance, a DIY tool, or holiday décor. 

While Lowe’s 2025 Black Friday marketing activations are still underway, the success of its approach is validated by the company’s Q4 2024 results, a notable gain given the industry’s headwinds. 

Similarly, Lowe’s online sales grew by 9.5% in the quarter, which was cited as “record-breaking sales during Black Friday Cyber Monday”. Also, the MyLowe’s Rewards program, which was introduced in 2023, reached 30 million members by the end of Q4 2024. 

Key Takeaway:

• Move away from the frantic single-weekend sale by stretching your Black Friday and Cyber Monday promotional activities across an entire month. 
• Anchor multiple incentives to your loyalty program. 
• Focus on actively gamifying the member experience with unique, in-store, and digital rewards to drive enrollment and repeat visits. 

This strategy converts the holiday shopping frenzy into a powerful, sustained engine that can help you build a captive, high-intent audience for year-round retention.

The New Black Friday Marketing Blueprint: Values, Vows, and Viral Content

The days of Black Friday as a simple, single-weekend price battle are over. The most successful B2C campaigns now execute a winning blueprint that prioritizes sustained engagement and lasting customer retention.

This involves high-impact creatives, such as campaigns like Walmart’s and Amazon’s, that leverage major investments in “advertainment” by turning features into viral content that earns customer attention. It includes values-driven differentiation, as Deciem has proven that strategic disruption and a values-based stance can drive record customer acquisition. It also requires exclusive offers and benefits for loyal customers, such as those offered by brands like Lowe’s and Walmart. 

In addition to this, brands should consider extending the shopping weekend into a full shopping season, as Deciem and Lowe’s transitioned their BFCM campaign into a multi-week strategy where their sales period served as an engine for lifetime value.

Either way, the future of BFCM is AI-powered utility. Both Amazon and Lowe’s demonstrated that launching and promoting conversational AI assistants and smart shopping tools is vital for maximizing conversions and minimizing any friction in the buyer’s journey. 

The ultimate lesson for B2C brands seeking to enhance their Black Friday marketing strategies is to move beyond the use of coupon codes. The focus must now be on delivering flawless, real-time experiences that seamlessly blend high-quality, viral storytelling with sophisticated, AI-enhanced systems to engage and retain customers in the long term. Once a strong foundation is laid out you can always use post-holiday marketing strategies to keep bringing back your customers. 

Ready to Execute State-of-the-Art Customer Experiences for Black Friday?

Discover how AI-powered personalization, real-time journey orchestration, and deep customer insights can transform your Black Friday Marketing from transactional sales into lifelong customer relationships. Get a demo of MoEngage today. 

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