Is Prime Day a Real Holiday Now?
6/23/202656 min
Happy Prime Day! Amazon Prime Day just turned 11 years old, and what started as a single day invented to fill a sales lull has become somewhat of an actual holiday. How do we celebrate? We buy stuff!
In this episode, our panel digs into celebrations engineered by brands and commerce (Cyber Monday, Small Business Saturday, Starbucks Red Cup Day) to question whether these types of moments build real community or just psychologically condition consumers to spend on cue.
Joining the conversation is Pearl Servat, a fractional CMO who helped scale Verizon's Visible brand from zero to over a million customers and led the brand's Visible Acts of Kindness campaign, a movement that grew organically out of a single email. Pearl brings the brand-side perspective on building trust, avoiding the "race to the bottom," and the difference between a manufactured sales event and an authentic cultural moment.
Our panel breaks down why Prime Day works (consistency, trust, FOMO, basket-size psychology), where it may be falling short (personalization, social impact, fulfillment promises), and we pitch our own potential improvements, including hyper-personalized deals and a charity-driven "freeze the deals" concept that is up for grabs.
Connect with Pearl Servat
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pearlservat/
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Disclaimer
A quick disclaimer. We are going into this somewhat cold and nothing we say should be construed as legal advice, financial advice or anything that would get us in trouble. These are our views and opinions. We’re here to ask the kinds of questions everyone’s thinking, have an engaging conversation and maybe come to some conclusions that we feel are worth exploring.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMelissa· Panelist0:01
Welcome to We Fixed It. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.
Aaron· Host0:10
Today's not my birthday. It's not a major holiday. It's just a day. But wait, is it? Actually, happy Prime Day. And how do we celebrate? By buying stuff. As you probably remember, a few years ago, Amazon picked a date on a calendar, called it Prime Day, and said, "Come shop. We've got extra deals for you." It worked. They boosted sales a lot. So they keep doing it. 11 years later, they've expanded on Prime Day to the point where it's become an institution, and it's not the only one. Prime Day is one of many events that are driven by brands throughout the year. From Starbucks Red Cup Day to Cyber Monday to May the Fourth, companies are increasingly inventing or benefiting from moments that feel like culture but also spike sales. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Everyone loves a good deal or the chance to get something exclusive on one day only or to be part of a community, so anything that brings us together instead of dividing us can't be all bad. But are these invented holidays and celebrations driven by brands brilliant examples of inclusive marketing or just highly effective cash grabs we've all agreed to throw money at? That's what we're here to fix. And to help us unpack that, we've got someone who's actually built one of these moments from the inside, Pearl Servat. Pearl is a fractional CMO who helped scale Verizon's visible brand from zero to