Black Friday… For AV?

Chris Spence
2 hours ago
4 min read

Will Chasing Discounts Save Your Office?

By Chris Gore - Group Strategic Director, SPOR Group

Black Friday isn’t real.

Well… not in the way people think it is.

Every year I watch people throw themselves into “exclusive discounts,” “one-day-only deals,” and “never-to-be-repeated offers,” and all I can think is:

It’s literally the same price with a darker background and a strikethrough.

But funnier still?

The exact same Black Friday mentality is what breaks AV projects.

(And I am going to explain exactly why… so keep going.)

The Black Friday Trap — And Yes, Even AV Falls Into It

You’d think AV buyers. You know the team, IT, Facilities, Workplace, Real Estate. You would think they would be immune to the whole discount-frenzy thing.

Nope.

Every November my inbox fills with: “50% off webcams!”, “Lowest price displays!”, “FREE installation today only!”

And suddenly a company with 200+ staff is planning its meeting room strategy based on a flash sale.

As if a £29.99 soundbar is going to hold your all-hands meeting together. (BTW, if you do find a £29.99 soundbar, please let me know)

But it happens every year.

Why?

Because Black Friday teaches the wrong lesson:

Cheap feels good. Cheap creates chaos.

And in AV? Chaos gets expensive fast.

Let me explain why

Where the Discount Mindset Actually Leads You

Let me tell you exactly where “discount-first” AV thinking lands:

• Screens that refuse to talk to each other

• Microphones that pick up HVAC more than humans

• “Plug-and-play” devices that neither plug nor play

• A patchwork of warranties that all expire at different times

• And a team frantically Googling “HDMI not working” minutes before the CEO arrives

You get the gear…but you don’t get the solution.

And suddenly your “Black Friday saving” becomes a £150k refurbishment because the whole workplace experience is crumbling.

Thats not all though.

The Real Reason AV Explodes in Cost — And It Isn’t Your Discount Strategy

AV doesn’t fail because of price. It fails because it’s brought in far too late.

Black Friday is a last-minute rush.AV?It’s the complete opposite.

When AV gets dragged in during the final month of a refurb, two things happen:

My team has to fit the design around whatever has already been built.
Everything becomes twice as expensive to fix later.

Suddenly your “discount mindset” creates:

• Extra cabling

• Extra containment

• Extra engineering

• Extra rework

• Extra stress

• Extra invoices

Let me show you a better way to do it.

When AV Is Done Properly… It Feels Nothing Like Black Friday

Proper AV is never an impulse purchase. It’s a system. A workflow. A carefully designed, end-to-end experience that supports:

• Hybrid work

• Boardrooms

• Huddle rooms

• All-hands spaces

• Video conferencing

• Global consistency

• Reliability

• Scalability

Most importantly?

Consistency. Across every floor. Every room. Every region.

No mystery boxes. No price-slashed surprises. No “Why doesn’t Room 4 work like Room 12?”

(You see where I’m going, right?)

Excuse me for being sarcastic

Black Friday is supposed to be this magical day where everything is suddenly cheaper.

Except at SPOR?

I already give away the most valuable thing we have —every single day.

Not on the fourth Friday of November. Not behind a countdown timer. Not hidden under a flashing red banner.

Every. Single. Day.

It’s called:

The AV Bundle

Your complete guide to designing AV properly before anyone starts panic-buying random deal-of-the-day equipment.

While everyone else is wrestling for a bargain TV and a £5 HDMI cable…

You can get something that will actually save your office thousands.

And here’s the part I love saying:

My AV Bundle is the only Black Friday deal worth claiming —and it’s free all year round.

But let me explain why i have offered this for free.

What’s Inside My AV Bundle — And Why It Matters More Than Any “Deal”

Most companies don’t have an “AV problem.”They have an AV timing problem.

So I built the AV Bundle to fix exactly that.

Inside, you’ll get:

✔ AV Room Standards - Everything from huddle rooms to boardrooms — no guesswork.

✔ AV Budget Guide - So you avoid “surprise costs” halfway through your refurb.

✔ Risk Map - The 7 mistakes that add 20–40% to AV costs if you don’t avoid them.

✔ Pre-Construction Checklist - To stop AV becoming the last-minute panic purchase.

✔ Meeting Room Calculators & Templates - So you know exactly what you need, why you need it, and how it all fits together.

This is the stuff that prevents the expensive problems later. The stuff that stops your invoices from doubling.The stuff that makes everything work reliably.

And no Black Friday discount will ever fix those issues.

But here is the best bit.

AV Buyers Don’t Need a Sale — They Need a Strategy

You don’t need 20% off.

You need:

• clarity

• consistency

• warranties tracked properly

• early design

• a plan, not a panic

• and a partner who actually stays with you beyond installation

That’s the whole purpose of the AV Bundle.

It’s how we’ve delivered consistent, global AV estates for clients like Deloitte, NFL, OVO, Microsoft — without the chaos or the last-minute firefighting. Want to see what these clients did? Check out the case studies.

When AV is designed early with the right framework?

Everything becomes easier:

Your budget. Your timelines. Your workplace experience. Your sanity.