Buy Nothing Day Pitch

Our entire society is based primarily on rampant over-consumption (known to the media as consumerism).This continues to proceed at a completely non-sustainable level.

Everything that is bought has an impact on the environment. Highlighting the environmental and ethical consequences of consumerism, within developed countries only 20% of the world population are consuming over 80% of the earth's natural resources, and this is causing a disproportionate level of environmental damage, and an unfair distribution of wealth.

Buy Nothing Day highlights the environmental and ethical consequences of consumerism. This takes place internationally on the 26^th November, and is a day is aimed to challenge consumers to switch off from shopping and tune into life, do something different, and not buy a thing for 24 hours. It is aimed to be a complete detox from shopping.

100% of consumers that were asked on the high street if they had heard of Buy Nothing Day answered no. Further, when asked if they had any idea what this day was about, all were curious to know, but guessed this was a day where you could not buy anything, but had no specific understanding of why.

“Is this something religious?”

“I can guess it is something related to saving the environment?” 

My approach to advertise Buy Nothing Day, and so that more consumers understand the purpose of this day, is to simply educate those about Buy Nothing Day, and to focus on the main reasons for this day. 

Everything we buy has an effective impact on the environment. My concepts  highlight the environmental consequences of consumerism. It is important to highlight such changes and that they are a continuous problem. It is important to get consumers to understand about these crucial changes and its impact on the environment. It is also important that these changes need to be put into effect for more than one day. 
I want to create something that will educate and get consumers to act.  

Concept 1- Buy Nothing Day Guide

The idea of the ‘Buy Nothing Use Something’ is a newspaper full of ideas and tips on how to make things out of ‘nothing’. My target audience for this is 30- 60 year olds.

The idea of this is, anything can be made out of recycled products or old pieces of material, and this guide will allow them to explore with the use of their old ‘junk’ and create something new and worth using, rather than going out and buying something new. This guide is sure to keep my target audience occupied with a monthly subscription full of new tasks and tips, and the reader will also have the opportunity to send in a piece of work created using old pieces of material and the winner will be the cover star.  Readers will also be given the opportunity to send in their own tips to share with other readers.

Concept 2- Guerilla Advertising

Through the use of guerilla advertising, I will grab the attention of women shoppers. A recent study by researchers from Newcastle University's found that three-quarters of women are responsible for the shopping of food in their households. “The study of nearly 200 British men and women in their early 30s found that, although half of the women worked full time, they were still responsible for this aspect of family life.” The pink feminine bag through the use of the linguistic message will imply that the woman holding the bag in the advert is destroying the environment. The viewer will want to read more deeply into this, and question why this woman is destroying the environment. This is where within the magazine spread, an explanation will be offered. This campaign will also include clothes labels which will ask the consumer if they ‘really need to buy the product’ as a way of communicating with them and to get the consumer to think whether or not they really need the product. The use of guerilla advertising will grab the attention in a memorable way and will draw immediate attention. 

Concept 3  - Public Awareness Campaign

An earlier experiment with typography in the environment and only using free and natural resources to create this typography was proven to show that it attracted the public’s attention. Passers-by would stop to talk and ask about the typographic pieces, and genuinely shown an interest to the work. The key thing I learnt from this was, if I was able to grab an audience’s attention, using this technique for experimental purposes, no doubt would I be able to grab their attention to create a public awareness campaign for Buy Nothing Day. A campaign that could grab the public’s attention but mainly, one that would also communicate a message and make that connection for the consumer to want to know more about cutting down on buying excessively, but to also teach them why.

This received a positive reaction off the public, they were curious to know more about what I was doing. Most people stopped to look, took photographs and asked questions and this gave me the opportunity to talk to the public and answer questions about Buy Nothing Day and allow them to understand the meaning and reason behind this.