The Anti Brand Sneaker

The Consumed Column in the NY Times looks at the possibly contradictory concept of launching a sneaker brand that is an anti-sneaker brand. By checking off all the right boxes in its production process, the Blackspot is decorated with a rough circle meant to suggest the obliteration of branding. What’s interesting is a supposed rise in cynical consumers:

The makers of the Blackspot explain their mission as being “to establish a worldwide consumer cooperative and to reassert consumer sovereignty over capitalism.” The first Blackspot shoe, a low-top sneaker, was released in August 2004 and has sold more than 13,700 pairs; the bootlike Unswoosher appeared in March 2005 and is selling at a faster pace (6,000 so far) than the original sneaker, according to the company. This is a pretty good showing, considering the underlying challenge: that those most sympathetic to the mission might also be those most hostile to the idea of a brand as an antidote to the ills of consumer culture. In a sense, the Blackspot is designed for those most cynical about consumerism.

Consumer cynicism is a topic of great interest to Amanda Helm, an instructor of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. In connection with her research, she has conducted in-depth interviews with about two dozen consumers on the subject and has looked specifically at fans of Adbusters. Some of her preliminary findings were summarized in a 2004 article in the journal Advances in Consumer Research.

One thing she has encountered is a desire among cynical consumers not simply to avoid companies and brands they dislike but also to punish them. At the far end of the cynical-consumer continuum, this might mean defacing advertisements, but for most it plays out differently. For example, shopping at Target because you can’t stand Wal-Mart — Wal-Mart came up a lot, Helm says — thus denying dollars to the disfavored company. The marketplace itself is not the enemy in this situation; it’s a tool for expressing discontent. Thus one of Helm’s most interesting findings: that the cynical consumers who are her main focus “demonstrated very strong brand loyalty to the few companies they could trust.”

Faux Logo – New York Times