Nothing For Money
 

What did you do on November 24th? It was probably a day like any other. You had breakfast, went to work, maybe went out for lunch, on your way home stopped off for groceries and then either watched TV or went out with friends. Unless, of course, you were one of the growing group of people celebrating international Buy Nothing Day, in which case many of these normal activities would have been out of bounds. No shopping, no groceries, no going out to restaurant or a bar, and probably, no watching the TV ads all urging us to buy.

Buy Nothing day is the brainchild of Kalle Lasn, an ad industry executive turned consumer activist. or anti-consuming activist, since the focus of the media foundation that founded and runs in Vancouver is the excess of our consumer culture. Lasn and his supporters attack a system in which, in the words of the TV commercial they have produced, "The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person and 30 times more than a person from India . Give it a rest."

Apart from the Buy Nothing Day, Lasn's foundation produces alternative advertising for activist groups like Greenpeace, and runs a quarterly magazine called Adbusters which skewers the advertising culture.

Buy Nothing Day has probably had the most impact at a global level. It targets the kick-off of the Christmas Shopping season and is hence held on the first day after Thanksgiving, usually the busiest shopping day of the year for American retailers. In 1999, people from over thirty countries observed the event, refraining from consumption - and often doing more. In the US, activists invaded malls, putting up banners denouncing consumption, distributing 'Gift Exemption' certificates and offering credit-card cut-up services.

This year the event seem to have been an even bigger success. In Australia activists dressed as Santa Claus and distributed leaflet. In the UK some set up shop in the Convent Garden shopping area, offering a range of goods - but only for barter, not sale. In the Netherlands activists observed 'Niet-Winkeldag' by dressing up as 'buying virus' that tempted shoppers - before other activists dressed as nurses with huge hypodermic syringes of anti-shopping vaccine stepped in to save them. In North Carolina a sympathetic bookshop removed all its merchandise from its shelves and gave their space over to the performance of anti-commercial skits.

So far, so much fun, but how seriously should one take all this? The antics of Buy Nothing Day, are a part of a larger global anti-corporate movement which companies would do well to take seriously. (Besides, the occasional puncturing of the excesses of advertising culture is probably in its long-term benefit. And we would love to see some spoofs of the more egregious Indian ad campaigns.)

Some of the more violent activities were on view at the Seattle and Prague demonstrations. But they're also visible in the campaigns against child labour or unfair wages being used by several international marketing giants. This movement has also recently received what promises to be its Bible - Naomi Klein's book, No Logo. This is no shrill and simplistic anti-consumption tract, but an intelligent analysis of modern marketing from a rather different position than that taken by most marketing commentators.

Klein's book could almost be an affirmation of the importance that brands and marketing have in our lives. Logos, she points out, are "the closest thing we have to an internal language, by force of ubiquity." Brands these days are selling lifestyles, whole ways of thinking. Virgin stands for doing things in new, 'anti-establishment' ways, Nike for always pushing yourself further, Body Shop for a natural alternative to our chemical intensive culture. And in the process they assimilate the 'alternative' culture - making marginal cultures mainstream.

Klein warns that marketers might be kidding themselves. She writes: "Multinationals such as Nike, Microsoft and Starbucks have sought to become the chief communicators of all that is good and cherished in our culture: art, sport, community, connection, equality. But the more successful this project is, the more vulnerable these companies become. When they do wrong, their crimes are not dismissed as misdemeanours of another corporation trying to make a buck." In other words, companies are playing with fire: the more they promote themselves as being much more than mere products, the harder they fall when consumers discover that this isn't true.

There's an alternative though, and this where companies can take lessons from Klein and the Buy Nothing brigade. What they are arguing for is a more rational attitude towards consumption - and who hasn't felt that way when the credit card bills come home?

Secondly, while companies may scan counter-culture for marketing cues, but if they don't deliver on the spirit - for example, by tolerating child labour in their third party contractors - then Klein and the anti-consumer brigade will be waiting to pounce and deliver a very deserved drubbing. If those lessons are taken to heart, who knows - one of these days you might find the top marketing companies participating in Buy Nothing Day.

Vikram Doctor
From "The Economic Times - India" 6 - 12 December 2000