Ok raise your hand if you knew the term “Black Friday” was first coined in the City of Brotherly Love, my hometown, Philadelphia. It’s ok if you didn’t know that. I was born and raised here and I didn’t even know it.
According to Time Magazine, “The term Black Friday itself was originally used to describe something else entirely — the Sept. 24, 1864, stock-market panic set off by plunging gold prices. Newspapers in Philadelphia re-appropriated the phrase in the late 1960s, using it to describe the rush of crowds at stores.”
As Johnny Carson would say, ‘I did not know that.’
What I do know, however, is the cultural, societal and retail phenomenon Black Friday has become. It has become symbolic for marketers and advertisers across the land as it signals the start of what they hope will be a very fruitful and beneficial holiday shopping season.