The Biggest Shopping Day of The Year vs. AdBusters
By: Howard Campbell
On the Day After Thanksgiving Kohls, KMart, Caribou Coffee and other American retailers will open their doors at 5AM for the holiest of all shopping days in America.
Buy Nothing Day: November 25, 2005
There are more circulars and advertising inserts incenting purchases for this specific day than any other day of the year, according to Media Week. Countering these massive energies is the grassroots declaration of Buy Nothing Day, a resistance fortified by AdBusters.
What is this all about? AdBusters’ Brian Highley explains, “We ask people to go 24 hours without buying anything. Some find that they can’t and we encourage them to ask themselves, ‘Why not?’”
Buy Nothing Day will be celebrated in a record 65 countries this year. Fueled in part by a growing anti-American sentiment, more folks in more countries will be hanging posters and discussing global consumerism. AdBusters.org has downloadable posters and paraphernalia to spread the word of Buy Nothing Day.
In America, it is unlikely that Buy Nothing Day will reach your attention unless you read Adbusters. Wired and The Christian Science Monitor ran articles this week covering Buy Nothing Day, but the vast majority of the rest of the coverage will only come if participants make a big enough spectacle of themselves to become newsworthy.
Why so little coverage? The efforts of AdBusters are well-meaning but poorly orchestrated. There is no press release, a basic tool of a communication society.
AdBusters has few facts to readily give out on Buy Nothing Day, like the full name of “Ted Dave” who started Buy Nothing Day, the year of its inception: 1992, but that’s about it.
In years past, AdBusters was thwarted from buying spot TV time to run a thirty-second commercial questioning the consumption of American and Canadian citizens while promoting Buy Nothing Day. Thwarted? AdBusters called stations directly. If their goal was truly to run their ad they could have had their ad run with the help of a Spot TV Buying service. Instead, it appears that their goal was to get rejected so they could play the martyr card and generate sympathy.
Martyrdom is a questionable tactic, with limited repeatability. Questioning shopping on the biggest American shopping day will no doubt prove ineffectual in America. Asking consumers to restrain their shopping habit in the face of the most media advertising for the best sales of the year taking place over the longest shopping day of the year is like asking a smoker to quit and taking them to Vegas. Not a prescription for abstinence. To provide day-long distraction, residents of San Jose, CA have organized a bike ride and folks in Washington County, Wisconsin are organizing an all day film festival.
Reaching mass Americans is only likely if local participants make themselves newsworthy. In Fairbanks, AK Buy Nothing Day activists are planning a demonstration around WalMart. In Northern California, folks calling themselves the People’s Revolutionary Organization is staging a full day of direct action throughout their county in support of Buy Nothing Day, staging events at 7 different shopping centers in the area from 9am-5pm.
Granted, AdBusters has gotten better at promoting Buy Nothing Day. To begin with, they stopped selling calendars and Tshirts to promote themselves. However, their efforts continue to communicate “Look at this fabulous idea of AdBusters” instead of giving helpful tactics towards increased effectiveness.
Many activists question the efficacy of AdBusters. Why would they launch BlackSpot Sneakers when NoSweat was already making an eco-friendly shoe made by workers paid a decent wage? Why don’t they promote/review the best books? Why wouldn’t they put a link to the WalMart movie in their magazine? Does nobody else make a decent video or media literacy kit? Why is every piece of media they sell and promote branded AdBusters?
AdBusters, AdBusters, AdBusters. Me, me, me.
AdBusters recent removal of page numbers makes the magazine more of an art object than a tool for disseminating discussion fodder. If changing behavior is their goal, then they have an obligation to get better at disseminating what’s working that isn’t branded AdBusters. There is a huge opportunity for AdBusters to grow by better suiting the needs of its users and occasional users.
Employing the crass techniques of big business seems to go against the culture of AdBusters. There are no goals for Buy Nothing Day. There are no means of measuring success. It is time for AdBusters to get better, to get professionally organized, to use basic tools of planning and communication.
Howard Campbell,
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