Barnes & Noble's Black Friday Win

How a bookstore leveraged experiences to drive traffic on Black Friday

Author

Ali Kaltman
November 03, 2024

Brand: Barnes & Noble

Campaign: Signed Editions

Read time: 3 minutes

💬 Overview 💬

Happy unofficial / official start to the holiday marketing season!

Even if many of you already have your Q4 campaigns set, I’d love to spend this month exploring some of the best holiday campaigns of all time.

One of my favorite BFCM campaigns is the Barnes & Noble Signed Editions Black Friday activation.

How do you surprise and delight your most passionate brand fans?

Barnes & Noble cracked that code in 2014.

Let’s get into it…

💙 The Branded Moment 💙

Who doesn’t want a signed copy of their favorite book?!

(Irrespective to the holiday season) Barnes & Noble will, on occasion, offer signed copies of new or popular books (often for a premium).

They call this program “Signed Editions”.

In 2014, Barnes & Noble decided to surprise fans by putting their Signed Editions program to work on Black Friday.

They put out hundreds of thousands of signed books across their 600 stores… to be sold at cost.

It became a novel challenge (pun intended) to find your favorite signed book.

And they didn’t just feature signatures from top artists.

They’ve offered signed books from:

  • Reese Witherspoon

  • Ina Garten

  • Dale Earnhardt Jr.

  • Michael Ovitz

  • & so many more athletes, celebrities, and influencers

They teased the books in advance via their BN Insiders email list (inviting those who were not already signed up to join).

AND because securing a spot at Barnes & Noble as an author is not easy, the retail giant was able to secure even more signatures for space on their shelves.

This initiative proved to be a successful Q4 strategy…

💡 Results 💡

While there aren’t exact figures on the success of the event, the campaign has officially been running for 10 YEARS!

To this day, there are many reddit threads devoted to discussion and speculation of which books will have signed editions.

Barnes & Noble has become a staple on many people’s Black Friday Cyber Monday shopping list for this reason.

When many retailers try to undercut on cost and promotion, be like Barnes & Noble and provide an experience no other retailer can provide…

🎬 Take Action 🎬

What do super fans of your brand care about?

For Barnes & Noble, their biggest book worms are so excited to hear from the authors and get limited edition versions of their favorite books.

Where do you have relationships where you can excite your followers? Can your biggest influencers sign your product? Can you offer meet & greets for your founders?

In Q4, a little differentiation & experience goes a long way.

What’s New This Week

One new product I tried this week 👉 Promix Vanilla Bar — Delicious & great macros

One new campaign I’m loving 👉 Elf x Pottery Barn — Clever way to make culturally relevant festive decor

One new piece of content to watch/listen to 👉 The Aviator Nation How I Built This came up in conversation for me this week. Reminded me how great of a story it is.

Brandkeeping

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it on to 3 marketers you know!

And if you have a brand or campaign you want to spotlight, please reply directly to this newsletter.

Let’s chat!

See ya!

Ali

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