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Today is Cyber Monday, 'Black Friday' for online retailers, except it's a Monday, the first workday after the Thanksgiving holiday ... so workers are expected to return to their cubicles today and shop, taking advantage of those T-1 and other broadband pipes the company provides.

Cyber Monday was coined in 2005 by Shop.org, part of the National Retail Federation. Shop.org launched CyberMonday.com last year as a platform to promote online holiday deals. Hundreds of retailers are trumpeting deals that kick off today, the common theme being Free Shipping. As Cyber Monday gets more traction, and I'm guessing it'll be cemented into everyone's mental holiday shopping grid after all the media attention today, consumers who do a lot of cyber shopping will no doubt be on the lookout for deals each Turkey holiday weekend. So if you're a retailer, especially an 'online only' outfit, what's a great way to stand out from the e-crowd? Here's a suggestion:

Go 'brick' in your search for clicks. Hire a thousand sign spinners, and deploy half of them around high traffic, congested metro areas in the 100 largest cities. Take the other half and have them do their thing in smaller markets. Sure, the eyeballs won't be as heavy in lower traffic areas, but the media attention you'll get from targeting cities large and small ... will be quite big. After all, the Amazons and Ebays have customers in every nook and cranny in the country. Let them all know that they're all valued. Imagine the curious surprise of people driving to work when they see a sign spinner with Amazon.com celebrates Cyber Monday with Free Shipping! The pointed end of the sign could end up pointing to the spinner person's t-shirt, which might say Your Computer, since there's not an Amazon.com on the street corner. Temporary signs, and sign spinning especially, are not permitted in every area, but find places with welcome mats, and deploy!!

The great thing about out-of-the-box marketing/advertising efforts like this is that the publicity they create easily quadruples the actual street level eyeball exposure to the signs. CNBC, Fox Business, and every small town TV reporter with a camera will fall over themselves to get a shot of the sign spinners on Cyber Monday. They'll do interviews with people in their cars, get their reaction to the signs, ask them if they plan on shopping when they get to work, and of course there will be ample footage of this new advertising phenomenon, sign spinning, which pumps up traditional ad signs with street theatrics.

A majority of people driving in their cars each day, and watching TV each day, and walking around each day, are also online each day. And each holiday season, the amount spent online continues to jump by several billion dollars. So if you're an online retailer, don't just try to figure out which internet highways and biways your customers will be on ... go out into the real brick and mortar world where they live each day, and give them a good reason to visit you offline on Cyber Monday, and beyond.