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Neither Black Friday nor Cyber Monday are truly the biggest shopping days of the year. But the period beginning around Thanksgiving does mark the start of an increase in retail sales that peaks around the Sunday before Christmas. In fact, in the ad industry and media pros have long called the eight weeks starting the week before Thanksgiving and ending the week of Christmas the “hard eight” because of the volume of advertising that occurs during this period. Contributer Larry Woodard of Vigilante wonders “if we can use the principles involved in Black Friday and merchandising seasonal merchandise to help spur our economy in this difficult retail climate. Both are short-term efforts at using advertising to grab our attention and hold us for the time it takes to give us information, which we then choose to accept or reject. Ideally, marketers could convert that short-term behavioral change into more long-term behavior.”Read the full article at ABC News