The Advert That Told You Not to Buy
On the busiest shopping day of the American year, Patagonia took a full page in the New York Times, printed a picture of its best-selling fleece, and told readers not to buy it.
Black Friday, 2011. A full page in the New York Times carrying a photograph of the R2 jacket, one of the company's best sellers, under the headline "Don't Buy This Jacket". The copy below it set out what making the thing had cost the world in water and carbon, and asked the reader to consider repairing what they already owned instead.
It reads today like an extremely clever piece of positioning, and it was. What separates it from the hundreds of imitations that followed is that Patagonia then spent the next decade making it expensive to have meant it.
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