Amazon Prime Day - The Best and Worst of the Internet
posted Sunday Jul 19, 2015 by Scott Ertz
If you have watched any content, be it online or on the television, over the past few weeks, you have been inundated with ads for Amazon's Prime Day sale. The promotion was to celebrate Amazon's 15th anniversary, and promised more deals than Black Friday only for Prime subscribers. As with any promotion like this, the Internet was all abuzz with the excitement of deals on gadgets and nonsense.
The sale, however, was not exactly what people were expecting. Amazon may have lived up to its promise of more deals than Black Friday, but what they didn't do was maintain the imbalance traditionally found on that day. Black Friday may have deals on things like clothes, but the real winner of the day is technology. Gadgets and home electronics are what people tend to go out or browse the web for on Black Friday; things like televisions, tablets and laptops tend to be the big draws. In addition, home and high fashion items tend to do well.
For Prime Day, however, there were very few actual tech-related deals. Among the products offered at a discount were several brands of women's underwear, a lip enhancer, a "female urinal" and a 55 gallon drum of lube. These deals did not exactly excite the majority of people who had been waiting for Prime Day, but it did create a fascinating reaction on social media. In fact, during the day, the hashtag #PrimeDayFail trended ABOVE Amazon's official #PrimeDay hashtag. The tweets from disappointed customers were creative to say the least.
As the day went on, and the disappointment was growing, Amazon got quite defensive. In a statement, Greg Greeley, Vice President of Amazon Prime said,
Prime Day peak order rates have already surpassed 2014 Black Friday. Prime members have already bought tens of thousands of Fire TV Sticks, 35,000 Lord of the Rings Blu-Ray sets, 28,000 Rubbermaid sets, and 4,000 Echo devices in 15 minutes. The Kate Spade purse was gone in less than a minute. We also sold 1,200 of the $999 TVs in less than 10 minutes. And there are thousands more deals coming.
Despite the company's attempt to spin the scenario into a positive, it is important to note that the products listed in the statement are all traditional Black Friday success stories: a high-end purse, Blu-Rays, Fire TV Stick, a television, etc. While the company maintains that the day was a huge success and will repeat it in the future, it is likely they will make adjustments to prevent the public relations disaster that this year's event created.