No one will be able to shop The Ordinary on Black Friday. Its stores and website will be closed on November 29. It is a statement against Black Friday’s inherently rushed and panicked profile as a period of big savings and part of a campaign by Uncommon that pokes truth at Black Friday madness to encourage consumers to shop slowly.
Around the Black Friday closure Uncommon has built thoughtful OOH campaign using the brand’s charaxteristic minimal art direction and beautifully written executions to highlight the misinformation around Black Friday “deals” across every category. The Ordinary believes Black Friday sales can do more harm than good encouraging people to buy quickly vs. intentionally and often for no good reason with most sales being misdirects.
In a category obsessed with faces, the first outdoor work from Uncommon focused on beautifully written words speaking to the brand’s philosophy of science over celebrity and marketing claims. The new Slowvember campaign continues this copy-led approach, this time with a Black Friday twist, encouraging consumers to shop with intention, consideration and time. Instead of the shifting deals brands can offer to drive FOMO on Black Friday, The Ordinary is providing a blanket promotion of 23% off all month long.
To amplify its intention to trigger considered buying, the new outdoor work uses luminous price tags and mimic sales tactic language to expose the hidden truths behind Black Friday’s deluge of discounts and deals. On average, global consumers spend £410 on Black Friday sales, much of this is driven by an increase in sales tactics used to distract people into getting things they might not need, including false scarcity, misleading deals, and full-on scams. The Ordinary’s flashy, price-slashing stickers are accompanied by clever copy that warns shoppers of the false, disingenuous deals they may face. The neon stickers were hand-scanned and applied physically to the artwork to capture these deals as if they were seen in physically in-store.
The out-of-home executions will be live throughout November across sites in the US and UK.
