Activists Target Black Friday with Environmental Subvertising

In the lead-up to Black Friday, we’re bombarded with endless adverts promoting big discounts on things we often don’t need. But the Zap Games, an anti-advertising festival from November 11 to 24, offered a creative protest against this rampant consumerism. Originating in Belgium in 2021 and now a global competition organized by Subvertisers International, the Zap Games encourages participants to creatively alter public advertising spaces.

A striking example was in Birmingham, UK, where an ad in a bus stop panel simply stated, “Don’t buy stuff. Enjoy your friends.” Another, mimicking the style of a John Lewis advert, read, “100% saving if you don’t buy anything.” These messages aim to open up dialogues about social and Environmental justice, topics increasingly garnering attention in advertising.

Subvertisers International, a collective of activists, artists, and eco-activists, seeks to challenge mass consumerism and its environmental impacts. Their approach combines art with activism, aiming to provoke thought and action on critical issues like environmentalism, gender, and race.

For example, during the COP21 climate talks in Paris 2015, Brandalism replaced outdoor advertising panels with artworks critiquing corporate greed and political inadequacy in addressing environmental issues. These subvertisers blend environmental narratives with poetic expressions of Earth’s mourning and call for deeper human connections over materialism.

In France, groups like Résistance à l’Agression Publicitaire have been advocating for less advertising in public spaces since the early 1990s. In Australia, Democratic Media Please focuses on disrupting outdoor advertising, highlighting the challenges in finding independent journalism not influenced by commercial interests.

The subvertising movement is not just about environmental activism; it intertwines issues of race and gender, challenging the whiteness of popular culture and promoting interconnectedness. It’s a call to think and act critically toward advertising industries and their messages, envisioning a future that is inclusive, sustainable, and just.

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