As they’ve done each year since the inception of the Google Store, Google has posted all their Black Friday deals in preparation for the holiday shopping rush. While it was already happening prior to the pandemic, COVID-19 forced retailers to really rethink how they position holiday-inspired deals, getting us farther and farther from the actual Black Friday, single-day shopping rush. As it stands right now, the day after Thanksgiving holds less sway than it ever has before and these so-called “Black Friday” deals are simply marketing speak for end of the year discounts.
Google’s Black Friday deals are missing something
Along with these deals each year comes the somewhat-boggling decision to mark down the latest Pixel phones. Every year, Google launches their latest phones and turns around the next month and offers up a discount on those same phones. It’s poor marketing in a bunch of ways, mostly because it tells potential buyers that your brand-new phone is not worth considering at launch since it will be a discounted item in just a few weeks from launch.
This year, however, Google is choosing not to include the new Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro in their yearly deals. I’m sure they have their reasons, but I have a few of my own that I think could be driving Google’s choice not to drop the price of their stellar new flagship phones basically right out of the gate.
Early discounts indicate a lack of confidence
First up, I think discounting a flagship, big-time device within just a few weeks of launch is a pretty big red flag. It tells consumers that the prices you put on your phones are over-inflated and that you don’t really believe they are worth it. It conveys a sense of sheepishness about the quality of the product and – in many cases – that’s the right move for certain products. Not these new Pixels, though. These phones are great, priced right, and will sell all by themselves.
As a second to this train of thought, early discounts on new, high-end phones give users a reason to wait it out when an announcement happens. There’s nothing more deflating than getting hyped for a big phone launch and immediately expecting users to sit around and wait for a deal to happen before they order the phone you just made such a big deal about. Think about it: if the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are as good as Google says, shouldn’t people be rushing to get one? Why give them a reason to second guess and procrastinate on their purchase?
Thankfully, it looks like that is not the case with these new phones. Instead, Google’s choice to skip the yearly Black Friday discounts indicates that sales are going well and they don’t feel the need to discount things any further. It’s a good look that doesn’t cheapen the phones that Google is calling “the first real Google phones.”
Early discounts really make early buyers mad
The worst part of this yearly endeavor is the fact that Pixel phones don’t tend to launch until late October and Black Friday deals happen in early-mid November. So now you have all this hype and build-up around a new flagship phone with all the anticipation shouting “buy this now before it sells out,” followed up by an early discount that basically pulls the rug out from under all those early-adopting fans.
This is never a good look, and when you combine how bad it looks to discount a brand-new flagship too early and how it hurts sales early on, the whole idea of a Black Friday deal on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro just makes no sense whatsoever in my head.
Instead, it really does feel like Google knows they have a winner on their hands this year and they aren’t interested in marketing or treating it like Pixels of the past. They seem to know that people are buying these phones and no deals or discounts are needed this time around to keep the ball rolling. This is all good news, honestly, and hopefully it means lots of Pixel 6’s are flying off shelves, and that means very good things for Pixel owners over the next year or so. With a brand-new Tensor SoC inside, we all want developers to make sure their apps are working properly on these phones and we want Google to pay close attention and fix issues quickly as they arise. If there are tons of Pixel 6’s out in the wild, that all feels like a foregone conclusion.
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