• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, July 4, 2017

It’s the Fourth of July and marketers have been pondering for months what kind of deals to offer consumers on this 241^st anniversary of our nation’s declaring its independence.

Yep, it’s all about great deals.

Well, no, it really isn’t and some marketers get that and some don’t. It’s more about the tremendous debt we all owe to generations of soldiers and other patriots who have made enormous sacrifices to keep our country independent and secure.

I know it’s a holiday and everybody likes to have a day off including me. And what I don’t need is to be bombarded by hundreds of messages from marketers offering anywhere from 10% to 50% off their spectacular line of goods.

I think the best holiday campaign I can remember from the past couple of years was the REI campaign for Thanksgiving, #Optoutside, when the company shut all of its stores on Black Friday—perhaps the mother of all “great deals” days—and told its employees and the rest of the world to go outside and just have fun. A marketer blowing off the biggest sales event of the year. Yeah, that took some cojones.

The kind of cojones that people like George Washington and John Hancock and 54 other brave souls from the original 13 colonies displayed by signing the Declaration of Independence back in 1776. By doing so, they all committed high treason, in the eyes of the British, for a cause they believed in.

That’s something to contemplate on this day, as well as the countless subsequent acts of bravery committed by so many Americans in the name of freedom.

And you know what? That freedom includes the right of companies to market the holiday pretty much any way they wish (no matter what I think) including offering big honkin’ sales. And that freedom also includes the right of consumers to shop or not and take advantage of those deals.

Which is exactly what my wife did today—accruing huge savings at a nearby Gap store on jeans and other apparel. And good for her! She needed the stuff.

I’m not a big Gap person. But there was a well-known retailer just across the street, where I killed some time waiting for my wife to do her shopping.

I might’ve made a killing too. Except they didn’t have my size in anything I liked, or much needed either.

Happy Fourth!