By Lillie Brown

Marketing is just as powerful when it’s driven in reverse.

Anti-marketing is a guerrilla marketing approach underpinned by principles of reverse psychology that deliberately goes against the grain. It subverts traditional marketing strategies that employ positive selling tactics and tired narratives about why your offering outshines your competitors.

It may seem counterintuitive, but anti-marketing is a breath of fresh air in an increasingly oversaturated advertising and marketing landscape. With hundreds of marketing messages vying for our attention each day, it’s clear that our attention is a precious commodity. Advertising has a long history of persuasion and manipulation, and increasingly the trend of consumers disliking advertising has risen rapidly. It’s no surprise — consumers today can smell disingenuity a mile away.

As creative businesses, marketing is always a challenge. Being consistent, differentiating ourselves against competitors, delivering outstanding customer experiences, and remaining top of mind are every day demands. Anti-marketing can help you cut through the noise by empathising with the irritation that accompanies the barrage of marketing impressions we face at every turn; and offers an opportunity to strategically attract customers to your creative brand.

Anti-marketing is about understanding the assumptions people have about a brand or industry and challenging them head-on through authenticity, humour, and defying the status quo. There are myriad ways to practice anti-marketing, but the common tenets are:

• Attracting rather than promoting
• Challenging tired, cliche marketing messages
• Using humour, sarcasm, or irony
• Being honest and transparent

Ready to go against the grain and flip traditional marketing conventions on their head? Give these tricks a try.

Embrace reverse psychology. Anti-marketing harnesses the power of reverse psychology, a persuasion tactic that involves suggesting the opposite of what you want to try to convince someone to do what you desire. When we are told that we cannot do something, it triggers a sense of resistance. Remember how your mum telling you to “eat your broccoli so you grow up big and strong!” induced eye rolls and a visceral sense of rebellion? Reverse psychology can make us more inclined to want to do the very thing we are being told not to do. Patagonia’s 2011 “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign is a great example of anti-marketing, building affinity with its audience by embodying its values and intentionally disrupting the status quo. However, there’s a fine line between reverse psychology and coming off as pretentious or annoying. Avoid the latter.

Don’t take yourself too seriously. Most anti-marketing approaches utilise humour, sarcasm, self-deprecation, and irony with the intention of viewers interpreting the ad with an appreciation for the honesty and transparency being conveyed. Stack it with storytelling and this is a brilliant way to build brand affinity—the emotional connection between brand and consumer. This buy-in is priceless.

Be provocative. Being provocative is yet another key to anti-marketing success. What do you stand for? What hill are you willing to die on? What trends or behaviours in your industry do you loathe? How are you actually different from other brands? Campaign Del Mar’s Make Marketing Great Again campaign is a golden example of being provocative and edgy while remaining true to its values.

The early bird gets the worm. As more brands embrace anti-marketing, the less powerful it will be. Adopting this strategy early on will give you an advantage over the competition and make you more likely to succeed.

Anti-marketer, beware. If anti-marketing is the antithesis of your brand values and identity, it can backfire and alienate your audience. If you’re a serious brand, you’ll likely come across as awkward or trying too hard, a sure-fire way to kill your cred. Anti-marketing isn’t for everyone and it won’t land with all customers. For your campaign to be a success, it requires acute self-awareness and a deep understanding of your audience to resonate with them.

In creative business, trust is critical. Done well, anti-marketing builds rapport between brand and customer through honesty, and more transparency equals more trustworthiness. Its bold messaging piques interest and prompts customers to stop their scroll and do a double take, rather than tuning out. When it hits the mark, it’s like the leather jacket of the marketing world—edgy, intriguing, and cool as hell.

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