It always helps to hate your stuff

One of the oldest tricks in the anti-marketeer's bag of wonders is the straight-forward 'reverse-psychology' thing. It's probably the most recognisable trait of anti-marketing because it's the easiest to explain. Just hate yourself and tell everyone that your stuff is rubbish. After all, it works for Marmite!

The oat drink above is a clever take on the 'hate' thing. A picture of the actual product takes up only a very small proportion of the poster ad. - the rest is massive, almost unreadable block capitals. You have to stand back and process the disjointed lines for a few seconds just to understand what is going on. The marketing team here produced a series of ads like this which sympathises with the customer on a cold, windy street and faced with yet another attempt to get him or her to get the wallet or purse out.

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Marketing people can be very clever especially when trying to get under the skin of the customer. OASIS drinks have long had a campaign where they tell the customer that the only reason that they are producing drinks is because they want their marketing and sales team to get better bonuses. 'YOU need a drink; WE need to sell!' There's no messing here either. And just like the oat drink, OASIS don't even bother to try to tell us why their stuff is good. The posters are almost apologies!

Of course, you can go the whole hog and actually give your brand the ultimate anti-marketing accolade. Not content with providing the customer with reasons to hate him and his products, the owner of this shop in Suzhou in deepest China, decided to grasp the nettle and tell it it exactly how it is actually in the brand name itself! I have to admit that I visited the shop and can report that he was right - the stuff in there was dreadful!