SELLING ANTI-CONSUMERISM
Full-page Patagonia ad in the New York Times published black friday, 2011.
As a subjective but real yearning for a persuasive illusion, glamour is perhaps the cornerstone of advertising and the jet fuel of consumerism. Glamour is what convinces us we want things we don't want and need things we don't need for just long enough to pull the trigger and buy things we shouldn't buy.
"Subjective" is the operative word when it comes to deliberately harnessing glamour this way, that is as a marketing tool. This is why marketers tailor to segments and demographics. Nevertheless it is possible to see macro trends. The grotesque conspicuous consumption and label-mania of the early 2000s has been, I think, gradually giving way to a more sophisticated sales pitch to more sophisticated consumers. Increasingly, we see companies and individuals selling us the absence of things, selling us on negative space, on minimalism. How do you sell things when consumerism itself is passé? You sell anti-consumerism.
Selling anti-consumerism sounds like a paradox, but it functions more like a cliché. Specifically, it's like calling out a cliché as cliché in order to use the cliché without seeming cliché--which is, of course, not a departure from the use of cliché, but the total mastery of it; the ability to bring an old, tired truism back from the dead. And when powerful things resurrect, they tend to be even more powerful than they were the first time. It's hard to argue with a cliché that doesn't seem cliché.
Calling out consumerism is an almost identically neat trick, as exposing and empathizing with consumers' gripes with consumerism creates stronger bonds of trust and loyalty than even the most ideally-targeted pro-consumption ads can.
Stripping away glamour, it turns out, has a glamour of its own. Marie Kondo's promise of spare spaces and aesthetic organization sells books (I bought one). Six years after Patagonia's "DON'T BUY THIS JACKET" black friday ad in 2011, the brand is more popular than ever (I've bought lots). There is a warm, feel-good comfort to Patagonia's fleeces beyond their soft, recycled pile in the company's commitment to environmentalism and responsible sourcing.
This starts to get near the reason why anti-consumerism is so seductive: it not only offers guilt-free purchasable pathways to the rejection of purchasing, but the ability to broadcast that ethos. In a strange kind of alchemy, material things can become signifiers of distain for materialism. It is now possible to buy something in order to show that you're above buying things. And lucrative to sell them. Just because Patagonia is probably one of the best, most ethical companies out there doesn't mean "DON'T BUY THIS JACKET" isn't clever, glamorous advertising and brand stewardship. They're selling us by selling us they're not selling us. But they're still selling us. It's not a reversal of consumerism, but rather another recursive layer embedding the will to buy where it's harder to see and probably harder to cognitively counter.
Recently my most maximalist friend sent around an article from GQ with a request for advice on developing a minimalist wardrobe. No surprise, the author's decluttering process required $5,800 of new spend, including $990 for a single cashmere sweater and $811 for two pairs of sneakers. This is starting to sound like an indictment of minimalism, which it isn't. I enjoyed Marie Kondo's book, and, as previously hinted, own a small mountain of Patagonia. But in this post-truth era of alternative facts, I think it's important to recognize this trend for what it is and unpack the glamour here all the way down to the uncomfortable truth: that anti-consumerism consumerism is still consumption, that a cliché exposed is still a cliché.