Is Buy Nothing Day about Fake Bombs, Naughty Santa & Felonious Sisters?

On November 25, folks around the world celebrated Buy Nothing Day, a day when folks are encouraged to take a break from being consumers. However, the day passed largely unnoticed, arguably hampered as much as it is helped by the day’s adoptive parent Adbusters, a non-profit Canadian magazine focusing on culture jamming. The efforts of Adbusters may be well-meaning, but they are at least poorly orchestrated, if not corrupting the original spirit of the day—protesting corporate coercion.

In 1992, a Vancouver artist, Ted Dave became frustrated with the rising cost of day-to-day living. He felt disempowered. He responded through his art by creating a series of posters for “Buy Nothing Day,” a campaign to send a message that consumers have power. Dave explains, “Absolutely everything around us in the urban environment is set up to be coercive, to get you to buy things spontaneously…I was getting exhausted and I thought it would be really nice if we could take a break.” Buy Nothing Day encouraged consumers to boycott purchasing merchandise for one day a year, a request that was intended to be apolitical. Ted Dave’s acquaintance Kalle Lasn founded Adbusters, an appropriate mouthpiece to rally support for the day.

Adbusters adopted a difficult challenge. Buy Nothing Day is celebrated the day after America’s Thanksgiving holiday, the busiest shopping day in America. There are more circulars and advertising inserts promoting purchases for this specific day than any other day of the year, according to Media Week. Stores like Wal-Mart and Kmart open at 5AM and many stores stay open later than any other day of the year. Questioning shopping on the biggest American shopping day makes a bold statement, but the effectiveness is not measurable. Asking a consumer to break their shopping habit is tough enough. Making this request one the most advertised shopping day of the year, with the best sales of the year, on the longest shopping day of the year, is like asking a smoker to quit and taking them to Vegas. This is not a prescription for abstinence.

To Adbusters credit, Buy Nothing Day is growing with a record 65 countries participating this year. Fueled in part by a growing anti-American sentiment, the magazine provides a central command for a global questioning of consumerism. If not for Adbusters, it’s unlikely that this many people would celebrate Buy Nothing Day in 65 countries. However, participation could be substantively more.

Adbusters’ approach to promoting Buy Nothing Day is amateurish. There is no online press release, a basic tool of a communication society; there isn’t an encapsulation, a single sentence or two explaining what Buy Nothing Day is; there are neither specific objectives nor measurable results.

Adbusters has positioned Buy Nothing Day as a celebration, “Celebrate Buy Nothing Day.” However, a consistent and concise message, beyond the word celebrate, could bring more people to their party. On Guerrilla News Network a blogger reported that they attended a local Buy Nothing Day planning group, only to find the members had very different ideas of what the day represented and they couldn’t agree on how to celebrate the day.

Adbusters’ Buy Nothing Day director Brian Highley counters, “One of the reasons that we find this campaign so interesting is that there are so many reasons for getting on board.” This strategy flies in the face of traditional branding. AdBusters website and blogs describe Buy Nothing Day as being about protesting opulence, the corruption of Christmas, ecologically unsustainable products, corporatacracy, anti-Americanism, anti-establishment, pro-socialism, pro-Earth among many other diverse ideas. From a brand manager’s perspective the diversity of messaging is irresponsible. Do all these ideas align with the original essence of the day? Do these ideas facilitate reaching and attracting participation for the greatest quantity of prospects? Attracting new participants entails telling prospects what they are standing for when they choose to not buy. Many Americans would be willing to question consumption. Fewer Americans are willing to publicly align themselves with an event promoted with a shredded American flag, one of the many official designs for Buy Nothing Day at Adbusters.org. Many of the official Buy Nothing Day designs cross over the line from apolitical to a criticism of America.

Are Adbusters’ tactics effective? Buy Nothing Day received a modicum of mainstream coverage. The week prior to the event, Wired and The Christian Science Monitor ran articles. Two days after Buy Nothing Day, Google News reported coverage from 50 news sources, about 40 in the United States. However, without a press release, explanations of Buy Nothing Day are varied and sometimes disparaging.

About 20% of the newspaper coverage in America focused on activists being arrested for Buy Nothing Day protests. Garnering the most coverage, the White sisters – Laura, Rachael and Anna White – were arrested for the second-straight year at the Christiana Mall in Delaware. This year they had Santa as part of their crew, but pictures of Santa being arrested were not run in the five newspapers covering their story. Words describing Buy Nothing Day included: protest, demonstration and dissent. Letters to the editor challenging the framing of Buy Nothing Day were not seen in subsequent issues, a common tactic of professional public relations firms.

Without a public press release, a reporter coming across information on Buy Nothing Day is happenstance. Syndicated journalist Jeff Adair writes that he found out about Buy Nothing Day in a peace-activist flyer at his local library. Adair’s column appeared in another eight newspapers.

Many Buy Nothing Day activists were hungry for coverage of their Buy Nothing Day stunts but came up empty-handed. At the Grand Mall in Cainta town, Philippines, a fake bomb scare closed the mall for half the day. Activists claiming responsibility for the fake bombs state they were celebrating Buy Nothing Day, but local news is not mentioning Buy Nothing Day. In New York City, folks on bicycles rode circles around fans and cops for a crowd grew that swelled to about 75-100 before being broken up by multiple cop vehicles including 6 vans, 20 scooters and 1 helicopter.

Responding to charges that Adbusters failed to promote B.N.D. sufficiently, Brian Highley has stated, “Media coverage is welcome but it is not the be-all and end-all of this campaign. You seem to be measuring the success/failure of this campaign based on the amount of media coverage, and I think that’s misleading. There are millions of people all over the world who didn’t spend a dime; many of whom were out at the stores talking to people about the campaign.” While this may be true, for many readers, their first exposure to Buy Nothing Day is of participants being arrested. If there were millions of people all over the world not spending a dime because they were acknowledging Buy Nothing Day, then well done. Substantiating that figure appears untenable.

If not media coverage, Adbusters could discuss theory and tactics of effective demonstrations. Books like TAZ, The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey, are free downloads from which activists can learn theory about creating a branded space, a play book reportedly used by advertising giant Crispin Porter + Bugusky.

AdBusters admirably claims, “We try to coax people from spectator to participant…” Media coverage of Buy Nothing Day participants being arrested is bound to be off-putting to prospective activists. Is this type of activity to be encouraged, discourage or ignored? That’s part of brand management. If publicized arrests are decided to deter participation, then Adbusters could give tips on interacting with security guards and how to legally press the limits of their requests.

Participation follows awareness. Raising awareness must be on the agenda. Adbusters could encourage readers to write opinion pieces for their local news programs and papers by providing samples. Or, provide downloadable templates for press releases, so activists could alert their local media of what their demonstration represents.

Adbusters is not open for commerce on Buy Nothing Day. However, when Adbusters began promoting Buy Nothing Day in the mid ‘90s, they sold Buy Nothing Day calendars and T-shirts. Selling branded products to challenge consumerism appeared hypocritical to many, but it does help get the word out. In the picture above, the T-shirts helped define the space and communicated Buy Nothing Day messages.

Adbusters limits their support to downloadable posters and other paraphernalia with the AdBusters’ logo brazened across the media.

Is this AdBusters’ Day or something bigger? Bloggers online and other critics question Adbusters’ tactics, specifically the quantity of branded products they sell. In NO LOGO, Naomi Klein writes, “Particularly galling to its critics is the magazine’s line of anti-consumer products that they say has made the magazine less a culture-jamming clearing house than a home-shopping network for adbusting accessories.” (pg 295)

Adbusters has become increasing insular and ineffective. Adbusters rarely promotes media for sale that doesn’t have their logo, and when they do their mentions often omit websites or ordering information. Adbusters’ line extensions have become competition to, and jeopardized the finances of, the kinds of companies doing what Adbusters claims to champion, humane and ecologically respectful companies.

Participation seems at odds with the physical magazine, which appears to value aesthetics over usability. AdBsuter magazine no longer includes page numbers, making it difficult for readers to cite and share good ideas with other emerging activists. Page numbers would make locating valuable ideas that much easier and less time consuming to share in a participatory manner.

Adbusters has become a self-serving global brand, serving itself instead of striving for effectiveness.

One hundred years ago, Christians and Jews agreed that commerce was inappropriate on their respective Sabbaths. Today, only orthodox followers regularly take a break from commerce. To this end, several preachers and churches have endorsed Buy Nothing Day. Ted Dave envisioned Buy Nothing Day as apolitical. Maybe we could all rally around a day of rest.