September 25, 2023
Photo: Canva
Are Retail Holidays Becoming the Norm? Nike SNKRS Day vs. Yeezy Day
While there is already a National Shoe The World Day on March 15 each year that focuses on “the importance of footwear and the need for quality footwear for millions of people worldwide who can’t afford or don’t have access to it,” Nike and adidas have taken it upon themselves to create their own shoe-themed holidays.
Nike SNKRS Day, an event originally created in 2017 to celebrate the launch of the Nike app in 19 European countries, is now supposed to be a massive yearly celebration for sneaker enthusiasts. Nike recently concluded its 2023 event this past Sept. 9 with its first worldwide debut. However, as the hours ticked by, many were left wondering if the hype truly matched the reality.
Nike only launched a limited number of exclusive products, leaving consumers uncertain about the holiday’s value. Much to the fans’ disappointment, there were no restocks of previously sold-out items that many had anticipated.
According to multiple posts on social media, while securing a pair might have seemed feasible, it was a frustrating day for many. Queues were long, and by the time fans made it through, many sizes were already sold out. One person on Reddit claimed that “SNKRS day was absolute trash,” and another stated that they checked every hour, but Nike didn’t drop anything new. Another commenter added, “So what exactly was supposed to happen today? Re-stocks? Shock Drops? Raffles? What made today SNKRS Day? Because it honestly felt like any other day.”
With bitter tastes left in their mouths, the overall sentiment seems lackluster for any future SNKRS Day holidays. This is unfortunate since past Nike SNKRS Day events proved more successful. The first anniversary of Nike’s app and SNKRS Day “restocked some of the most exclusive and sought-after sneakers,” with the Sean Wotherspoon x Air Max 1/97 model being “one of the brand’s most grailed drops in recent memory.” Regardless, SNKRS Day this year still succeeded in bringing attention back to the Nike brand and giving fans something to look forward to and talk about.
Nike SNKRS Day 2022, in comparison, had plenty of stock for their limited releases, ensuring that most customers were able to purchase what they wanted. Live performances and other surprises also kept Nike fans entertained all throughout the day.
Even if this year’s SNKRS Day was underwhelming, it doesn’t mean all brand holidays follow that trend. Since 2019, Yeezy Day has been successful, offering a combination of new releases and restocks of previously sold-out styles. Even after adidas dropped the brand, the final Yeezy Day on Aug. 2 this year “proved to be a tremendous monetary success for adidas, as they amassed a revenue of $437 million USD solely from Yeezy sneaker sales. Despite this significant intake, consumer demand far exceeded the supply. A total of $565 million USD worth of Yeezy product orders were placed,” according to Sole Retriever.
In a similar fashion, Amazon has its yearly Prime Day sales event, and many big-name retailers hold yearly anniversary sales, like the recent Nordstrom holiday from July 17 to Aug. 6.
A retail brand’s holiday could be an excellent platform to surprise its loyal customers and fans while creating a genuinely memorable experience. It will be interesting to see which companies take full advantage of this potential.
BrainTrust
Melissa Minkow
Director, Retail Strategy, CI&T
Brian Numainville
Principal, The Feedback Group
Ryan Mathews
Founder, CEO, Black Monk Consulting
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Should all big-name brands establish their own yearly holiday that offers sales, exclusive products, restocks, entertainment, and more? What can other companies learn from Nike SNKRS Day and Yeezy Day?
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Any firm can declare a ‘day’ for any purpose. Indeed, almost every day is something. Today, for example, is National Quesadilla Day. However, to have an impact, firms need to put some effort and energy behind the occasion – that includes special launches, promotions, events, limited-time deals, free giveaways, and so forth. It sounds like Nike did very little of this, which is a mistake and led to its day being something of a flop and a disappointment. As for Yeezy Day, not sure who’d wish to celebrate this after Kayne’s comments!
Quesadilla Day? OK, I’m in.
The last thing the retail world needs is another ‘sale’ event. But any event that can put emphasis on new innovations, or launches, or cause related events would be terrific. The race-to-the-bottom, driven by promotions and discounts, has plenty of energy already invested in it. How about a race-to-experiential that puts theater and storytelling and treasure hunt back at the center of retail? Yes, that’s a lot more difficult than adding a new BOGO or a deeper discount to the next series of ads.
Well said, Jeff. Sometimes, I think all the marketing people know is price. If price is the only tool to drive sales, the product may be too high.
Retailers are smart to create their own annual event; annual is important because it causes customers to look forward to it each year. My company has retail clients who make bank on annual event days.
But are retailer created days profitable? They can be, but it can take time to build momentum. Product, current offering, and the company’s dedication to marketing plays a major role.
SNKERS Day doesn’t mean much to me, but I am not its target customer. I do pay attention to Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale because sales don’t happen there as often as they do at other stores.
I’m all for retailer-specific holidays. Nordstrom has a history of being successful with it. But obviously, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right. These moments are particularly enticing to the most loyal customers, so they’re also the ones with the greatest expectations of brands on these days.
All that is happening here is companies are copying Amazon’s initial innovation, and, like Neil Saunders stated earlier this morning, anyone can declare a “day”. And at some point people are going to be overwhelmed and not care unless it is right in front of them and they happen to want whatever product is enjoying “a day”.
Last Tuesday, for example, was “talk like a pirate day” Who knew? Argh!
The real star of any big retailer or brand “event” are the uber-loyal enthusiasts. These high loyal advocates create the buzz that attracts interest, attention and ideally a fear of missing out that pulls occasional shoppers further into the franchise or store. If a retailer or brand has enough of these high loyal advocates, and their marketing is strong (to Neil Saunders point on this thread), they will have a successful event. If they don’t have those relationships, the marketing alone will be challenged to deliver.
Too much of a good thing means burnt out consumers. If shoppers are presented with too many options they tend to shut down, including sale event options. Curating a small but well timed selection of national sale events will have far better results than offering an overwhelming buffet of individual retailer extravaganzas. And these targeted events only matter to loyal customers, who are already engaged with the brand. A small handful of retailers like Nordstrom and Nike have been able to stake out a relevant place in the spectrum of annual events, but if every day becomes a special day it will only further push customers to shop by lowest price, which is a losing scenario for every retailer.
When every day is “special” no days are special. If every brand has its own day, its own category day, its own seasonal shopping days, etc., etc. eventually consumers will just turn off all the hype at some point. Also – as in the case of Yeezy – linking a brand to a celebrity and/or influencer and then creating a day around them isn’t always a blueprint for success.
Retailers have been having “special” sale days for as long as I’ve been in the business, which is many decades. This is a new spin on an old formula. Create buzz about your products, put them on sale to generate business, and talk about how great the sale was to create more buzz.
Please, no. There are too many already; that they aren’t even more annoying is due to the fact that most of them can easily be ignored.
While it seems like many retailers already do this and try to emulate others, the uniqueness and excitement of these type of events is paramount. If it’s just another version of the same type of event, no thanks.
There is a “day” for everything. If you want it to be impactful, it needs to encompass a few elements 1) Strong focus: it should resonate with those individuals who are passionate about your brand or segment. 2) Innovation: new product or features to ignite excitement 3) Exclusivity: a sense that this isn’t going to take place every day for every single product launch or feature. The result is excitement in the marketplace that starts with the base and spreads in a viral manner.
Annual branded holidays, such as Amazon Prime Day or Nike SNKRS Day are a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, when executed successfully, they can become a staple event, even driving competitors to respond with their own like-minded offerings, such as Target’s Circle Week which launched in response to Prime Day.
On the other hand, these kinds of events often lead to high customer expectations, something which Nike experienced. Their problem this year was two-fold. Firstly, the brand set high expectations with successful events in years past. Once the bar is set high, customers expect the bar to continue to rise year after year, if not at least stay the same. In addition, Nike failed to successfully communicate to its customers about the event in a way that was meaningful this year. Nike did not clearly set customer expectations about what this years’ event would encompass, such as limited edition drops or steep discounts, and how it would benefit customers. Ultimately this led to a lot of confusion and frustration for customers. Once an event lands unsuccessfully, such as SNKRS Day did this year, it can be hard to recoup the customer interest and loyalty for future such events.
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Any firm can declare a ‘day’ for any purpose. Indeed, almost every day is something. Today, for example, is National Quesadilla Day. However, to have an impact, firms need to put some effort and energy behind the occasion – that includes special launches, promotions, events, limited-time deals, free giveaways, and so forth. It sounds like Nike did very little of this, which is a mistake and led to its day being something of a flop and a disappointment. As for Yeezy Day, not sure who’d wish to celebrate this after Kayne’s comments!
Quesadilla Day? OK, I’m in.
The last thing the retail world needs is another ‘sale’ event. But any event that can put emphasis on new innovations, or launches, or cause related events would be terrific. The race-to-the-bottom, driven by promotions and discounts, has plenty of energy already invested in it. How about a race-to-experiential that puts theater and storytelling and treasure hunt back at the center of retail? Yes, that’s a lot more difficult than adding a new BOGO or a deeper discount to the next series of ads.
Well said, Jeff. Sometimes, I think all the marketing people know is price. If price is the only tool to drive sales, the product may be too high.
Retailers are smart to create their own annual event; annual is important because it causes customers to look forward to it each year. My company has retail clients who make bank on annual event days.
But are retailer created days profitable? They can be, but it can take time to build momentum. Product, current offering, and the company’s dedication to marketing plays a major role.
SNKERS Day doesn’t mean much to me, but I am not its target customer. I do pay attention to Nordstrom’s Anniversary Sale because sales don’t happen there as often as they do at other stores.
I’m all for retailer-specific holidays. Nordstrom has a history of being successful with it. But obviously, if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right. These moments are particularly enticing to the most loyal customers, so they’re also the ones with the greatest expectations of brands on these days.
All that is happening here is companies are copying Amazon’s initial innovation, and, like Neil Saunders stated earlier this morning, anyone can declare a “day”. And at some point people are going to be overwhelmed and not care unless it is right in front of them and they happen to want whatever product is enjoying “a day”.
Last Tuesday, for example, was “talk like a pirate day” Who knew? Argh!
The real star of any big retailer or brand “event” are the uber-loyal enthusiasts. These high loyal advocates create the buzz that attracts interest, attention and ideally a fear of missing out that pulls occasional shoppers further into the franchise or store. If a retailer or brand has enough of these high loyal advocates, and their marketing is strong (to Neil Saunders point on this thread), they will have a successful event. If they don’t have those relationships, the marketing alone will be challenged to deliver.
Too much of a good thing means burnt out consumers. If shoppers are presented with too many options they tend to shut down, including sale event options. Curating a small but well timed selection of national sale events will have far better results than offering an overwhelming buffet of individual retailer extravaganzas. And these targeted events only matter to loyal customers, who are already engaged with the brand. A small handful of retailers like Nordstrom and Nike have been able to stake out a relevant place in the spectrum of annual events, but if every day becomes a special day it will only further push customers to shop by lowest price, which is a losing scenario for every retailer.
When every day is “special” no days are special. If every brand has its own day, its own category day, its own seasonal shopping days, etc., etc. eventually consumers will just turn off all the hype at some point. Also – as in the case of Yeezy – linking a brand to a celebrity and/or influencer and then creating a day around them isn’t always a blueprint for success.
Retailers have been having “special” sale days for as long as I’ve been in the business, which is many decades. This is a new spin on an old formula. Create buzz about your products, put them on sale to generate business, and talk about how great the sale was to create more buzz.
Please, no. There are too many already; that they aren’t even more annoying is due to the fact that most of them can easily be ignored.
While it seems like many retailers already do this and try to emulate others, the uniqueness and excitement of these type of events is paramount. If it’s just another version of the same type of event, no thanks.
There is a “day” for everything. If you want it to be impactful, it needs to encompass a few elements 1) Strong focus: it should resonate with those individuals who are passionate about your brand or segment. 2) Innovation: new product or features to ignite excitement 3) Exclusivity: a sense that this isn’t going to take place every day for every single product launch or feature. The result is excitement in the marketplace that starts with the base and spreads in a viral manner.
Annual branded holidays, such as Amazon Prime Day or Nike SNKRS Day are a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, when executed successfully, they can become a staple event, even driving competitors to respond with their own like-minded offerings, such as Target’s Circle Week which launched in response to Prime Day.
On the other hand, these kinds of events often lead to high customer expectations, something which Nike experienced. Their problem this year was two-fold. Firstly, the brand set high expectations with successful events in years past. Once the bar is set high, customers expect the bar to continue to rise year after year, if not at least stay the same. In addition, Nike failed to successfully communicate to its customers about the event in a way that was meaningful this year. Nike did not clearly set customer expectations about what this years’ event would encompass, such as limited edition drops or steep discounts, and how it would benefit customers. Ultimately this led to a lot of confusion and frustration for customers. Once an event lands unsuccessfully, such as SNKRS Day did this year, it can be hard to recoup the customer interest and loyalty for future such events.