Amazon October Prime Day vs Amazon Prime Big Deal Days: A Lesson in Bad Marketing?

What do you do when you’re the largest online retailer in the world, own the largest e-commerce platform ever built, and already have a successful franchise you want to replicate? How about a completely different franchise that will likely confuse an audience of hundreds of millions?

He did exactly the same thing with his Amazon Amazon Prime Big Deal Days (which starts on October 8). Amazon Prime Day is a well-established, well-functioning event that has been taking place for almost a decade (it began on Amazon’s 20th anniversary in 2015).

The introduction in October 2022 of Big Deal Days (also called Big Deal Day by some) was seen by many as a cynical but pragmatic move by the retailer to suck some of the air out of Black Friday/Cyber Monday – which takes place six weeks later.

As it turned out, the peak trading period was becoming increasingly crowded as hundreds of other retailers crowded the Internet. Forcing shoppers to spend their hard-earned money before Black Friday means rivals like Walmart and Best Buy will have less to deal with.

Ironically, Amazon was the pioneer that started the entire online BF/CM bonanza, and other retailers have joined the bandwagon over the years as it became obvious how lucrative this venture could become.

October offers Prime Day or Big Day?

The Internet has spoken, loud and clear. According to Google Trends, the overwhelmingly preferred way to refer to Big Day Deals (BDD) is October Prime Day (OPD). In 2023, globally, OPD garnered almost 60% more searches compared to other queries during the big deals week, and Google expects this to worsen in 2024.

What’s even more interesting is that in the United States, Amazon’s largest territory, the gap between the two is even greater, with OPD search volume in 2023 expected to be almost double that of BDD. 2024 will be an even more bumpy year with Google Trends expecting OPD to be three times more popular than its counterpart.

The same trend is happening on YouTube, another Google service that has become a popular battleground for all things Prime Day (October or July); Big Deal Days continues to lag behind its unofficial name, and there’s nothing Amazon can do to reverse the trend.

A changing landscape

The first day of Prime Day in July 2023 was the biggest sales day in Amazon’s history. There was no such announcement in 2024, which may indicate a slowdown in the global economy. With over 200 million paid Prime subscribers, Amazon is something of an economist head.

Dropping the Big Deal Days label for October’s Prime Day can help boost sales by simplifying messaging across Amazon’s vast marketing ecosystem. This could help reduce the current confusion among millions of customers while strengthening the overall Prime Day brand. I wouldn’t rule out a third annual event like this in the near future. Rinse and repeat.