Doing it all the wrong way

I'm halfway through my latest project - a hefty book on anti-marketing, which I have been threatening to write for a few years now. Great fun doing and probably aiming at a readership of one!

I got inspired again in Manchester on Wednesday, when I saw the cafe in the picture above. Great example of what I'm talking about. Brave, silly, brutally truthful and tells it how it is. I always admire people who do this kind of thing. I can imagine the queue of people telling the owner not to do it when he/she first came up with the idea.

The initial idea of actually writing a book about the whole insane subject came a few years ago in Prague when I saw a poster advertising the 2nd ugliest building in the world. I stood and marvelled at the poster. It sort of said everything. The building was indeed supremely ugly, but to say it was the second ugliest. Genius. It did not even win that competition. Left me wanting to see the place and wondering what the ugliest was.

Since that time I've been collecting examples of what I like to call anti-marketing. Posters, adverts, brochures... even novels.

So what is anti-marketing? Well, the easy answer is to say that it is something that most sane marketeers would never dream of doing. Along the lines of professional suicide! However... for the brave, it can be dramatically successful. Like the Marmite ads. where they actually admit people hate their product; or the old Yorkie chocolate bars, which were initially promoted as being 'not for girls'. It covers pretty much anything that traditional marketing frowns or laughs at. Like scrupulously telling the truth, or using old advertisements in new campaigns (Coca Cola do this all the time) and in parodying other products. The recent Kevin the Carrot (Aldi) campaign had Kevin aboard a Coca-Cola truck lookalike and spinning out of control on a mountain road to hang over the age as in 'The Italian Job'. Perfect anti-marketing.

This is great stuff to write about. You can't help smiling as you do it, so it's very therapeutic, too. Take the last chapter, entitled 'Teddy Bear Wars'. Marketeers in my industry will know exactly what I'm on about here. It was the darkest days of the business, the days that old lags like me don't like to talk about, except in hushed tones. And it was the turning point when traditional marketing drifted into serious anti-marketing in the English language industry. A chaotic and exciting time. For more on this... you'll have to wait till the book comes out. Incidentally, that's another trait of anti-marketing. Give the reader a 'teaser' and leave him or her in the air, slightly frustrated and wondering what the promoter is on about.

Oh... and making him or her wait as well. JK Rowling is a master (mistress) of this, as is Apple, Samsung and any hugely sought-after products. Just like my forthcoming book. I hope. So grab a sleeping bag and reserve your place in the queue at your nearest Waterstones for: 'The Anti-Marketeer's Handbook - Selling English by the Pound)'.

OK, if I were truly adhering to anti-marketing tactics, I would say now it will be dreadful book, aimed only at overweight men, retailing at over £20 a copy and on stuff you've heard many times before.

The problem is that I fear people may actually believe me!