In Ireland, anti-Black Friday marketing is reaching its own peak season

The very name ‘Black Friday’ carries with it a similar weight of checkered public perception. Initially referring to absenteeism of American workers on the day after Thanksgiving, then road and store congestion on the first day of the Christmas shopping season (and later gruesome tales of crushings and other horrors), it was only in the 1980s that it took on any positive connotation, when stores would finally ‘be in the black’ after months in the red.

Now, as it arrives once again, that ambivalence is very much baked into the event’s arrival. Following total sales over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend of over $70bn last year, Bain & Co has forecast that the number could top $75bn this year. Retailers are optimistic that these numbers will buoy a physical retail industry buffeted by crisis after crisis, with 183 million Americans expected to do some shopping over the weekend. Last year, 73 million went to physical shops.

Freaky Friday?

The darker sides of this purchasing frenzy are increasingly well-known. An oft-cited stat out of the University of Leeds back in 2019 estimated that 80% of purchases would end up in landfill, incinerators or low-quality recycling, often soon after purchase. This week, thousands of workers for Amazon – a retailer synonymous with Black Friday – announced strikes in 20 countries. Independent retailers overwhelmingly avoid the event dominated by global megaplayers. Calls for boycotts return every year, citing these implications for the planet, workers of retail giants and local commerce. And buyers themselves are increasingly wary of the ‘deals’: British watchdog Which? recently found that nine in 10 on-offer products are cheaper or the same price at other times in the year.

By now, there’s a rich history of brands responding with their own takes on Black Friday, grappling with the perhaps slightly contradictory position of branded advertising with an anti-consumption flavor. The most famous, Patagonia’s ‘Don’t Buy This Jacket’ stunt, set the scene for other sustainability-focused brands way back in 2011: an ad that says not to buy the jacket it is otherwise promoting.

Such cognitive dissonances have seen sustainability-conscious brands dipping in and out of public stances on Black Friday ever since. Some have toyed with a competitor, ‘Green Friday.’ Others have offered repairs instead of deals on new items, canceled contracts with particularly unsustainable suppliers or made price pledges instead.

The most recent attempt to walk this tightrope is cosmetics house The Ordinary, which is closing its physical stores on Black Friday itself, alongside a month-long discount and a campaign built around the message to ‘Shop Slowly’ this holiday season. One industry commentator summed up the obvious criticism: That the brand is “piggybacking on the occasion while trying to pretend it is too cool” for it.

Sebastien Kopp, creative director at sneaker makers Veja, captured the mood last year when the brand announced its own “cancelation” of Black Friday: “Is it possible to cancel Black Friday? No. Is it possible to create new ways? We are trying.”

‘Less buying, more being’

With brands struggling to chart a path through this thicket, perhaps another approach is necessary. Enter a unique new piece of marketing work: a wide-release campaign funded by government with no brand attached, with the express goal of reducing consumption this Black Friday.

The latest outing of non-profit advertising reform group Purpose Disruptors’ Good Life 2030 initiative, ‘Less Buying, More Being’ is the beneficiary of the Irish government’s $5.8m ‘creative climate action fund.’ The campaign’s creative is the result of a ‘pop-up agency’ that draws from 10 leading Dublin agencies, including Bonfire, Core, Droga5 and Verve’s Showrunner.

With around $400,000 in media value donated by the likes of Global, the Irish Times and Talon, the organizers say that its anti-Black Friday message has been seen by 80% of the Irish population.

Across TV, radio, print, out-of-home and digital media, the ads present as “circuit-breakers” amid the deluge of seasonal promotional messaging: static scenes, bird song and taglines including ‘Less fast pace, more open space.’ It builds on the organization’s recent research findings that 77% of Irish citizens think that “the advertising industry should help people lead healthy, sustainable lives” and 45% that “the world would be better off without advertising (in its current form).”

The work, Purpose Disruptors’ Ireland lead Laura Costello tells The Drum, takes aim not just at shoppers’ buying habits in peak season but “the role of the advertising industry at large.” True to recent form, this reflects the organization’s commitment to reforming the industry from the inside by encouraging advertising workers to rethink their relationship with the topic of consumption. “It’s about thinking not only about the harm that my job could do, but the potential of the impact of the industry when its weight is used for something else – something beneficial for people and planet,” says Costello.

‘How beautiful the alternative could be’

Other recent research by Purpose Disruptors, in collaboration with the Institute of Advertising Practitioners of Ireland (IAPI), found that 57% of Ireland’s advertising industry “don’t believe that the industry is currently doing all it can to create a sustainable world.” But the project is proof, Costello says, that creatives will jump at the opportunity to make work that isn’t selling anything.

What we’re talking about here is radical – but achievable, Costello insists. “Is it ‘too big a thing to do’ – to try to change an industry or even to work in a space while looking at it with a critical lens? A lot of people [tell me] it would be easier to work for an NGO… But I came to the conclusion that there really is potential for change.”

“We have to believe that change is possible. We created the industry to be the way it is. It’s people who make up systems. It’s all of us, day to day, doing our jobs, that create the work that goes out into the world. So, yes, I definitely go through the rollercoaster of emotions when it comes to climate and the nature crisis – everything from despair to hope. But just look at the talent; the scope for mass communication. There are beautiful stories and small community projects that show the way of what’s possible, but marketing and advertising can summarize a direction forward.”

This reimagination of the industry just might be a way out of the bind that brands, even those with the genuine desire for change, increasingly find themselves in around Black Friday: by collectively understanding marketers’ role in these events, they can collectively start to change that role – but only if they can come to see themselves as a collective. Costello again: “It helps to look at the industry’s impact beyond just one vertical like fashion or entertainment or food, but as an overall mindset or value-expression. It’s the lens of mindset versus behavior. We’re not necessarily asking people to do one specific thing in terms of behavior change. We really want to look at how people view the good life or what success is. For the industry as a whole, it’s looking at this influence we have as a collective beyond individual campaigns.

“I hope it signals an opening for more questions around what we’re using advertising to do. There’s a shared understanding among most people in the industry that we’re built to create growth at the pointy end of capitalism… But we need to remind people of what the unquestioned day-to-day is. This is an invitation for everybody to reflect and see how beautiful the alternative could be.”