Like the rest of the big box retailers, Best Buy is gearing up for Black Friday, or as we like to call it around the Techfaster office, Black Thursday. Best Buy stores will open up at 8pm local time in all of their cities and have door busters planned accordingly. In fact the craziest of the crazy Black Friday shoppers have already pitched tents outside their neighborhood Best Buy, where barricades went up last Wednesday in anticipation of the crowd.
This year Best Buy is hoping to own Black Friday at the register and in the social sphere. One of the big social events they have planned is #VineInLine. The Minnesota based consumer electronics giant wants customers to shoot six second Vine videos and share them across social media while they’re waiting in line.
Best Buy tries to keep things pretty uniform and even told All Things D’s, Jason Del Rey, that they’ve already had dress rehearsals for Black Friday and they are prepared. One thing Best Buy has done for years is have an all hands meeting early in the morning a couple weeks before Black Friday to get the blue shirts all amped up.
The shenanigans at Best Buy stores across the country vary by location. Some Best Buy’s bring out food trucks, music and entertainment to get the crowds excited. It can be exciting to be at the front of a Black Friday line and for the most part people are in a festive mood. That’s the atmosphere Best Buy is hoping to capture through Vines.
Del Rey isn’t so sure though. There have been incidents of trampling, fist fights and even stabbings at big box stores as customers wait in line for Black Friday. Del Rey wonders what happens when a Best Buy shopper uploads that video to Vine.
Best Buy has no way to control what people Vine because they can’t control who uses a hash tag and who uploads to Vine. Hashtags through Twitter, Instagram and Vine can be very positive and engaging for big brands but as Mashable points out they can go very, very wrong.
Take McDonald’s for instance. The fast food giant ran a hashtag promotion with #McDStories hoping that customers would be all warm and fuzzy with the golden arches. Social media went wild with negative Tweets like “I haven’t been to McDonalds in years, because I’d rather eat my own diarrhea #McDStories” hardly the kind of tweet McDonald’s social department was hoping for.
Things could be all warm and fuzzy right until 7:59 pm when the doors are about to open, but we can bet there will be more than one Vine of someone who doesn’t get that amazing deal because the store ran out.
Del Rey thought that the #VineInLine campaign was a high risk low reward campaign. Best Buy spokeswoman Amy von Walter didn’t seem to agree, “We know our customers are excited to be out doing their holiday shopping, so this is a fun way for them to share the experience with friends and others via social,” she told All Things D.
What if nothing goes wrong and no one uploads a video of someone sucker punching another customer? Del Rey suggests that could end up being a “tad bit boring”
