Don’t Buy This Jacket: How Demarketing Secretly Sells More (Ethically)

What if the smartest marketing strategy was telling people not to buy your product?

In this episode, Dani and Si explore the fascinating world of demarketing, the counterintuitive strategy where brands deliberately encourage customers to buy less, consume less, or even walk away altogether.

From Patagonia's iconic "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign to IKEA's repair initiatives, Lush stepping away from social media, and Oatly's brilliantly awkward advertising, they unpack why some of the world's most recognisable brands have discovered that saying "no" can be far more powerful than shouting "buy now."

Along the way, they explore where demarketing began, how it evolved from a tool for managing shortages into a modern branding strategy, and why today's consumers are increasingly drawn to honesty, transparency, and businesses that genuinely practise what they preach.

Of course, not every "buy less" message is created equal. Dani and Si also dig into the difference between authentic values-led marketing and greenwashing, asking how consumers can spot when a campaign is driven by purpose rather than clever PR.

Whether you're a business owner, marketer, or simply curious about why some brands seem to grow by selling less, this episode will change the way you look at modern marketing.

Grab a brew and join the conversation.

About Simon and Danielle:

Simon and Danielle are both business owners, based in the East Midlands, who met through mutual business contacts and who share a love of all things business. 

Simon runs Skylight Media – Award-winning experts in Website Design, E-commerce & Marketing running since 2003.

Danielle runs Goldspun Support – a multi-faceted support service for fractional directors and small business owners across the globe, running since 2009.

Since they first met Simon and Danielle have spent a ridiculous amount of time talking about the subjects that interest them – usually over a drink in the pub – and they decided that now was the time to bring these conversations to a wider audience and invite them to join the chat. 

Both Simon and Danielle are successful business owners in their own rights with big plans for the future but will never lose their love of talking all things business… and the pub.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dani
and I'm Si. Welcome to Business in the Broom, a podcast dedicated to Winfrey's business with the occasional cover.
We take a business story, theory, or something we just want to chat about, and debate a dusting of our own special personality and sense of humor, combined with our experience and knowledge. We're both business graduates and have run our own businesses for many years. We can't wait to listen, we
Hello, Cam's on.
Do you know what marketing is? Don't define it.
Just about to take a deep breath in one breath.
Do you know what marketing? Yeah, I
do.
Do you know what de marketing is?
No, I don't
see.
Can I have a guess?
Yes, I'd love that. Go ahead. Doing the
reverse of marketing.
In what way do you mean the reverse of marketing?
Telling people not to buy something,
essentially. Yeah,
right.
Yeah, so
that's a short podcast. Oh
yeah, here we are. De marketing explained. It's. it shouldn't work on paper, the thought, the concept of demarketing doesn't make any sense, but in reality it's actually been incredibly successful. So Patagonia, which is a brand we've discussed before, isn't
it? It is, yeah, supposed responsible brand,
correct?
What do they call it, a B call,
yes, be cool, and they have annual revenues approaching $2 billion and they ran a Black Friday advert with the headline "Don't buy this jacket.
Great, it
was one of their best ever pieces of marketing. Similarly, literally, IKEA ran a campaign encouraging customers to repair old furniture rather than buy new pieces. Oatly, the oat milk brand produced an advert so deliberately terrible with their own CEO singing tunelessly about oat milk that people shared it as a joke. And all three of these are examples of de marketing, the deliberate strategic effort to reduce, redirect, or discourage dismal demand, discourage demand, not because of the companies are struggling, but because it works,
so it is
relatively new people doing it intentionally.
Yeah,
however, the term demarketing was coined by Kotler and Levy, Kotler and Levy, Levy,
okay,
Philip Kotler and Sydney Levy in 1971
Yes,
see, you do know it. I do know who Cutler is. I know in 1971 Harvard Business Review article, De-Getting, they were writing originally, though, about a different problem.
Yeah,
so they were talking about how you cope when demand exceeds supply, so intentionally suppressing demand when supply can't keep up. So, while the term existed, it existed in a very different way. So, the example Kotler had used at the time was petrol during the 1970s oil crisis.
Stop buying petrol,
pretty much. Governments and fuel companies needed people to use less, not more. Tobacco companies, perversely, were among the early demarketing practitioners, because they produced the responsible drinking messaging as a PR strategy to reduce regulatory pressure. Water companies in drought conditions are classic examples of de-marketing practitioners, spend money telling customers to use less of the thing they sell. But what's changed in the 2020s is that de-marketing has evolved from crisis management into a deliberate brand strategy, so it's no longer that reactive. Yeah,
it's a deliberate brand strategy used by really quite big brands to do something disruptive and different,
right?
And it often ends up building some trust and loyalty and some almost cult status.
So, disrupting, doing something disruptive and different means that there is the deliberateness about it to do something different, not because they really want people to use less, let's say electricity saying turn your heating down, for example,
except for the water company telling you to use less water when there's a drought. I can't imagine any of these companies put those ads out and went, I'm genuinely confident this won't sell a bean, will be fine, because that would be ridiculous, so even though the logic is counterintuitive, the data itself is robust. If a brand tells you not to buy something, you believe what it says far more than a brand that tells you to buy everything.
Yeah,
so the I'll go back a bit more example or detail of those examples. So the Patagonia don't buy the jacket campaign in November 2011 Patagonia ran a full-paid ad in the ad in the New York Times on Black Friday. It's the biggest, the biggest shopping event in the American calendar. The ad showed one of their popular fleece jackets, and the headline "Don't Buy This Jacket. The copy explained the environmental cost of producing the jacket: 135 liters of water, significant co emissions, damage to the natural sea. Systems and encourage consumers to think twice before buying anything new. The result was that the app was covered by every major news outlet in America. It drove enormous traffic to their website. Sales increased by 30% in the following year. The thing was, it wasn't actually a sales trick, it wasn't a nefarious trick, because in the at the same time, so simultaneously they launched their worn wear program, so they offered free repairs on any Patagonia product, creating a secondary market and used Patagonia gear. So the point is they weren't, they weren't using reverse psychology, they weren't trying to be clever, they genuinely meant it, and it still had this impact, which I think is amazing. Ikea repair, don't replace, so Ikea launched the buy back and resell and repair cafes in multiple markets, encouraging customers to bring in old Ikea furniture for credit against new purchases, or to have it repaired, which is remarkable behavior for a company that essentially sells stack it high, sell it cheap, affordable, accessible, replaceable furniture. The strategic logic is subtle. Ikea's problem is that as sustainability becomes a dominant consumer value, its fast furniture model risks becoming a liability rather than an asset. So, de-marketing around new purchases, encouraging repair, encouraging resale, simultaneously positions I care as a responsible brand and addresses a reputational risk, so that one's more that was done very intentionally to, sorry, strategically, exactly. Yeah, which makes it a bit more nefarious. Oatly, his advert was called 'Wow, no care. 2020 featured their CEO, Tony Peterson, standing in a field singing an atonally cheerful jingle about oat milk. The advert was by any conventional measure terrible, like it was terrible. People watched it specifically to laugh, but it was shared by really as an example of a hilariously bad advertising. They won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lines Advertising Festival.
Brilliant
strategy was actually incredibly sophisticated. They knew that oat milk was a product that category that was increasingly cluttered with competitors, and in a world where everyone is shouting about how great their product is, being the brand that appears not to take a tell seriously, you know, it's marketing
self-deprecating. Yeah, humility. Absolutely,
they were discouraging the cynical, performative consumption of ethical products, while simultaneously being an ethical product. The packaging is covered in self-aware, slightly odd copy that breaks the fourth wall. It reads like it was written by someone who knows exactly how strange it is to care deeply about oat milk, and that voice is their identity.
That's the tack that that innocent
alcohol de marketing that comes in many different forms. So, responsible drinking messaging, enjoy moderation, know your limits. All of that is de marketing,
but isn't that more legislative?
No, it's to combat backlash from legislation, so they don't have to put that on, they put it on, so that they don't get accused of trying to force people to drink, which
is
different to smoking,
yes,
which is legislative,
yes,
yeah,
so a lot of people do like you exactly just dismissed it as regular compliance rather than genuine strategy, but then there are other examples within the alcohol market that is de-marketing, so premium craft breweries that deliberately limit production to protect quality, create artificial scarcity, brewery tap rooms that are only open three days a week, building waiting lists in the sense of occasion, the growth of low and now alcohol ranges from brands like Guinness Heineken, and even Brew Dog and The Holy State Beer. We've talked about before, it's all a form of demarketing applied to a specific segment, acknowledging that some customers, some of the time, don't want the core product.
So it is
used across so many different things. There is the demarketing strategy can sometimes be sort of not confused with wrapped up with green washing,
whether
it's intentional or not. So, the de marketing strategy collapses instantly if it's insincere, which we know.
Yeah, and I'm just wondering, I'm just wondering. So, your de marketing strategy, surely you're going to put it into focus groups first to determine whether it's going to work. It's a good not just go and do it.
Any sensible marketer looking to invest money in a marketing campaign would do that, whether they do or not is another matter.
Yeah, the most
damaging thing a brand can do, and we've talked about this so many times, is publicly encourage customers to be ethical while privately doing the opposite. So, if you knew Patagonia was saying that publicly, but actually they were a bunch of piratical tyrants.
Okay,
that was really strong, wasn't it? It was really nice to say, too. They're not, they're lovely people. We like them. We've talked about them before.
Love the idea of a piratical tyrant.
Thank you. I'd love to be a pirate. I always wanted to be a pirate. And really like the hats that is and the peg leg anyway, that is green washing, that pretending to say one thing and do another is green washing, and the reputational damage is horrendous when it is exposed, so you have got, does anyone
really care, though?
I don't know, do they? Do they
probably not,
probably not. No, it
there. You go
solve the problem at its purest form. De marketing is an expression of values, not a substitute for them. And it's, it is clever, it is powerful, right now, because there are sort of three.
It's just, it's going against convention, isn't it? Conventionally received wisdom,
and there are three factors that are playing at the moment where we are now in history and time in the economic environment, because you've got consumer skepticism of advertising generally is at an all-time high. We are generally very skeptical people, trust is at a frickin' all-time low in traditional marketing language, like the best, premium quality, unbeatable value. It's so overused, they're just noise now, they're wallpaper, we don't hear them.
Yeah,
a brand that tells you not to buy something is, by definition, speaking a different language and therefore getting heard.
Yeah,
but then you've also got your younger consumer cohort, so Gen Z, particularly, and then it'll go into Gen Alpha, who have grown up with social media, where they've developed exceptional sensitivity to performance and inauthenticity. So, again, it plays right into their hands. It's
there, it's right on their radar. Increase them, and you and I, we kind of see through a lot of that stuff, but there's a huge number of people. Yes,
yes,
as a huge number of people who do not,
and as you said, do we care? In reality, that's a different question. But the third is also the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis have made considered consumption a mainstream value rather than a niche
one.
Telling people to buy less, buy better, or repair rather than replace, now culturally resonate in a way it simply wasn't in 2005 you know, like the men and make do you got from the war and stuff,
make do a mend
that one that way round. Thank you. I wasn't around in the war. Yes,
I clearly was, even though I don't remember it.
I'm so horrible to you.
Do you know they used to have a thing on board ship when we're away at sea, where they would do what's called a pipe, which is where they go like that, and then the captain or the first officer would say hands to bathe or hands to make amends, as it was called. So, basically, it was a time, instead of going and just sitting in your rack and going to sleep for the afternoon, it was your opportunity to take some time off, and then go and sew on a shirt button, or
bathe.
No, we already did that.
Oh, they have that in my children's school. It's called Dear Drop Everything and Read, so it's similar, but without buttons made my daughter hate reading, actually respond.
Excuse me. So,
I found, while I was investigating, there's some kind of vaguely comparable things. Lush Cosmetics quit social media in 2021 They just deleted all their accounts,
did they?
Yeah, because they believed that. So, they deleted Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, citing concerns about the harm those platforms come to you, calm to user. So, how
long before they came crawling back to
it?
Okay, right. Then they'll come back to it. Dove, you know, kind of withdrawal symptoms or something.
I mean, I would get withdrawals on Instagram for two hours. I really struggle with record these Doves Real Beauty campaign that was essentially de-marketing, because it was so different from all the perfect airbrush beautiful people that everyone saw out there. That was used to like that. The there was a company I'd never heard of it called REI or Ray, I'm gonna say REI because it's all in capitals, they had an opt-out side campaign on Black Friday. It closed all 143 of its stores and gave 12,000 employees a paid day off to go outside, encouraging customers to do the do the same. It was, but like, don't give in to the consumerism of Black Friday, go and have a, go have a wonder in nature. I quite like that.
That's a little bit of responsibility there. See,
I like that. It was like, no, I don't care about the money. This may be our biggest, biggest earning day of the year, but you know what, it's more
consuming just for a day. Yeah,
I like that. I want to shop at REI. Don't know what they sell, outdoor clothing, don't know what that means. And then the only other one I found was craft beer, and I like to finish on a craft beer, because I feel like I couldn't say craft beer anymore to you in one afternoon.
You've done it, yes, a lot today. First,
I know. If you do, have you ever heard Cloud Water?
Yeah, I have.
So, they became one of the UK's most talked about craft breweries, partly through deliberate scarcity, scarcity. They produce. Seasonal ranges, spring, summer, autumn, winter, that were genuinely limited and not repeated. When a beer was gone, it was gone. Their tap room releases sold out within minutes online. They didn't maximize production to meet demand. They maintained quality by constrained volume. They also wrote extensively and publicly about the economics of craft brewing, including honest discussions about whether their prices were high enough to sustain the business. The transparency, including the opening openly discussing that financial pressure, the strain, and the economic environment built a level of customer-loved advocacy. The conventional marketing, you just kind of, you cannot buy that.
No, no, you can't.
But that is more like one person who genuinely feels incredibly passionate about this subject, and just, just did
it.
So, I think some of these are great examples of people they're not even trying to de-market, they're being honest about their values and what they stand for. And then some of these are people who are going, we do this, that'll be better with
it. So, you've
got nefarious versus non-nefarious de marketing, so there's a difference. So today you've learned about de marketing,
yeah,
you have seen some examples of good de marketing, and you've seen some examples, nefarious de marketing. So now you will recognize it when you see it.
Yeah,
it's a bit like I don't know when you can see one of those. What were those eye pictures you could see in the old days? Wait to like relax your eyes, and you could see the magic eye pictures off of the 90s. That's a relax your eyes, and there was a second picture in it.
Yeah,
it's a bit like that. Once you've.. I've told you about de-marking, now that's all you're going to see. It
could end up becoming mainstream, though.
Yes, it could.
God, can you imagine that?
It's like when modernity came in.
Let's just jump on that bank. When everything was
modern, everything was new, everything was buying new clothes. Everyone went back to the yen for nostalgia and reused and reloved. So, it's trends come and go, cycles come and go. So, yes, this will probably become bigger, at which point everyone will get fed up with this and not believe it. So, I'll have to go again, but that will cycle back, that's the way the world works. We repeat history over and over again. I'm not going to get into that.
Repeat the good stuff, not the bad stuff.
De marketing works. Ethical brands support your values, live what you're saying.
Yeah, brilliant.
Thank you.
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