The number becomes the offer

Walk past any shop window in Riyadh today and it is saying the same number as the one next door.

It is the anniversary number. Riyals off to match it, or a percentage to match it, in every category, from every brand, on the same green background. A coffee chain, a furniture showroom, a phone retailer, a supplements brand on the marketplace: the same figure, arrived at independently, by people who have never met.

I do not think anyone chose it. It is what happens when nobody decides.

Somebody did it first and it was neat, the offer and the occasion in one number. The next year the planning meeting opened with what ran last year. The year after that the number was in the template. Now it is the default, and a default needs no argument, only the absence of one. Nobody has to defend it, so nobody has to think about it.

Look at what the default has done to the day. Tuesday is the one day of the year when the Saudi customer is not shopping for price. They are at home, or in the crowd, or in a car with a flag on it. They are buying, but what they are buying is belonging: something for the children, something for the table, something to be seen with. And on that day the whole market has decided to talk about a discount.

The offer is identical everywhere, so it cannot be a reason to choose anyone. Every brand pays the margin and nobody gets the credit, which is the race to the bottom in its purest form: everyone runs and nobody wins.

The brands that opt out mark the day without pricing it. A window that says something other than a figure. A gift for the household with no code attached.

The default turned an identity moment into a price war. The brands that decline the default are the ones anyone will remember on the twenty-fourth.