Category Archives: Advertising

BK has it its way

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Stacey Peralta… Why? Why? You were the definitive skateboard documentary dude, and I loved you for it. But this? Why, Why? would you sell your sole to Burger King to play out their silly Whopper Virgin scheme?!

Considering the global problem with food, particularly the ecological consequences of fastfood beef, campaigns like this make the economic meltdown sweat revenge against the idiocy of the American capitalist mind. The illusion that a hamburger can be made, transported and materialized anywhere in the world under any environmental conditions is anathma to ecological perspective. Unfortunately, my outrage plays right into Crispen’s (the ad maker) hand, whose sole intention is to piss off people like me for free publicity. And it works (damn it!). I am sucker for wanting to point this out. What a shithouse of mirrors this ad environment has become.

Anyhow, it should be fairly obvious why such marketing is unethical (my definition of ethics is whether or not something is credible). The intentionally racist and colonial design of this campaign winks at the dominant American Exceptionalist attitude that anyone not brought into our realm of consumerism is a stupid, ignorant fool. Such specimens of backward weirdoes (who wear funny handmade clothes not stitched by Chinese prison labor with Made in American labels), should be examined in a sterile lab with burgers served on plastic prison trays. Oh the drooling idiots of the world, they can’t even hold a burger properly!

In this video there is one tidbit of truth, though. Compare the local dish (at minute 7:40) and how diverse and multicolored it is. Can you imagine such a sumptuous meal could ever be surpassed by a crappy cardboard American burger? Only if Burger King has it its way.

Thingifying men

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AskMen.com – Worst Male-Bashing Ads:

You’ve seen him plenty of times on sitcoms; he’s the dumb, bumbling, idiot dad, husband and boyfriend who appears useless at everything but bringing home a paycheck. The message: Guys are dumb and women have to lead them around. This, of course, cues the laugh track. Yet a survey from an organization called Children Now found that two-thirds of kid respondents described men on TV as angry, while respondents from another group’s survey said men were portrayed as corrupt on TV by a 17 to 1 margin. Clearly, this is no laughing matter.

Feminists have lots to complain about when it comes to ads. No doubt, some of the rankest gender identity construction can be found in beer ads. But how many think about the impact of advertising on males as well? In my media literacy workshops I find myself particularly saddened by the repeated trope that men are stupidly driven by biology– contrary to some of the classical stereotypes that men are the intellectual masters of the universe. Obviously, both images are wrong. Marc Voyer (quoted above) does a nice job of surveying a number of the worse offenders, although I’m surprised that his list doesn’t contain any alcohol ads, though I suppose that would be too obvious. I have been recently re-reading Susan Sontag, and one comment really stuck out. Violence, she says, turns a person into a thing. It made me wonder, is turning a thing into a person also a kind of violence?

Cut and paste your mind

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Samsung is trying to get on the iPhone bandwagon with its F480 or “Tocco”(“touch” in Italian). Hey, why not just call it the “Taco”? It’s something you eat with your hands… Anyhow, as I argue in my book, one of the greatest distresses of media users is a lack of a sense of place. Samsung is well aware of this problem, so it offers us this alternate reality presented in its “Drag and Drop World” ad.

As an old zine publisher I often feel a tension between manipulating pixels and actually working with my hands. I prefer scissors and glue, but I’m old school. The use of traditional stop motion animation and collage to create this ad is an excellent example of “media composting,” which is to repurpose/recycle/remediate dead media into new media as a way of enriching and tapping into authenticity. The struggle of all marketing right now is to appear authentic, and of course to grab our “inattention.” Riffing on the successful HP “Personal Again” ad campaign, which has famous creative types changing the world with the wave of the hand, here Samsung shows not only how this is possible, but maybe it leads to too much information, overcrowding, and complexity.

As mentioned elsewhere, these new touch devises are remediating the body– trying to bring it back into the fold. So rather than the mouse or button pad being finger surrogates, we can manipulate the machines more directly. This also may be a step closer to direct manipulation with our minds. But as I have noticed with my infant daughter, she maps space through touch before the mind patterns it for her to design expectations of how reality should present itself. Without touch, there is nothing there.

Unfortunately the ad depicts the aspirations of a wannabe– a young male who desires the luxuries of the old industrial world: space, the mastery of nature, compliant women and material wealth with no one to intrude upon that realm. Notice how the forest scene has a bulldozer clearing forest for the new house and truck. But in typical hypocritical fashion, it’s OK for the individual to do that, but not everyone else! Which is what the ad is showing our young protagonist. He wants the wealth of the world, but only for himself. Dream on, the ad tells us, so instead construct your own virtual world in your isolated electronic reality. Your home is the hybrid world of Samsung electronics and Ikea furniture. Let your browser master the world, while you sit back and enjoy a microwave dinner with your virtual wife.

PS

You can view this user demo of the Samsung F480 on YouTube– note the difference between the speed the ad shows and its actual use, kinda like the difference between a McDonald’s Big Mac ad and the real thing.

This unboxing video demonstrates how the refined hunter gatherer can experience Christmas everyday!

On the money

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Dollar-Ad

You must absolutely click on the image to see its amazing detail, and the link below to see the other ads (they are for a financial paper). Thanks Scud!

Print “Gazeta Mercantil: Dollar” / 2008 / Ad Archive / Prints / Coloribus.com – Advertising Archive and mysterious coincidences in commercials:

In this print campaign, JWT Sao Paulo shows that the newspaper makes deeper analyses of the financial market and informs readers on political and social events exercising influence on the world economy. On Dollar, Euro and Yen notes, some of the most important events of the last century.

The Hummer spaceship

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I’m trying to change my thinking about advertising to become more open to the possibility that there may be something redeeming about marketing. But then I come across another Hummer ad which convinces me that advertising can also be so utterly evil. This is typical of Hummer, and I think a good example of the ideological environment that cars operate in. Hummer (and most car ads for that matter) consistantly portray themselves in relationship to nature. There are two reasons for this. First, because we live in an auto world, cars have become the environment, so it is impossoble for them to offest themselves. Secondly, cars are our spaceships. To paraphrase JG Ballard, humans are the real aliens.

More from Ballard:

I think the key image of the 20th century is the man in the motor car. It sums up everything: the elements of speed, drama, aggression, the junction of advertising and consumer goods with the technological landscape. The sense of violence and desire, power and energy; the shared experience of moving together through an elaborately signalled landscape. We spend a substantial part of our lives in the motor car, and the experience of driving condenses many of the experiences of being a human being in the 1970s, the marriage of the physical aspects of ourselves with the imaginative and technological aspects of our lives. I think the 20th century reaches its highest expression on the highway. Everything is there: the speed and violence of our age; the strange love affair with the machine, with its own death.

A systems approach to self-referentiality

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This ad takes a systems approach to anxiety by showing the psychological impact of buying the wrong shoes. Though tongue and cheek, the ad makes visible its own persuasion technique. This should be considered a small victory for us viewers because we have become so cynical about advertising they need to show us that we’re right. But still buy their shoes anyway!

Ethical blind spots

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Disney China
Why is it that whenever companies get into the China market their ethics seem to disappear quicker than Tibetan monks in a Chinese gulag? To be fair, Disney apparently had a take-down on the offending ad once word got out.

Curious how the the girl looks quasi-American apple pie, with a tinge of Chinese. In a way she is an avatar of the new capitalism, a hybrid of market economy and internationalized monoculture.

File this one under, duh!

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Enlightenment-Card-Visa
Not even the Enlightenment Card can make credit more authentic

AdAge stares at the marketing bellybutton asks the pertinent and obvious question of our time, Is marketing relevant anymore? Can it solve the paradox of trying to be authentic when its job is to be inauthentic? Rather than a zen paradox, this is more like fodder for Daily Show one-liners. Still, the fact they are asking the question at all marks an identity crisis that confirms my growing suspicion that advertising is becoming less and less the center of gravity of our universe.
Authenticity — Whatever That Means — Is Our Only Hope – Advertising Age – Small Agency Diary (you may have to register to read this article):

My point is that there are millions of consumers steadily gravitating towards these kinds of experiences and they are defining trends for many others. And there is no way the medium or the message can possibly make any kind of connection on its own without a deep understanding of what these people deem authentic. Of course the big fear of the ad industry is that maybe the medium and the message can’t even do it together. Maybe, as people crave ever-more authentic experiences advertising itself is simply not capable of being authentic. I don’t think so. People will always need help making choices. And they’ll always gravitate towards compelling ideas. But I do know one thing. This drive towards authenticity is just getting started. If advertising is going to have a future in it, then both the medium AND the message are going to have to pass one helluva a sniff test. And that’s a tall order. Because as 81% of Americans agree, there’s a lot going on out there that stinks.

Link to my related article:

The Authenticity Paradox and the Perils of Youth Marketing

A Community is Not a Demographic

Absolute delerium: Mexico reconquers California

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Abslolute-Mexico

La Plaza : Los Angeles Times : Mexico reconquers California? Absolut drinks to that!
It’s rare that ads and maps actually converge so blatantly, but such is the case of a recent Absolute Vodka campaign running in Mexico. In an “absolute world” Mexico would still have the land that was ceded in the Mexican-American war. Though the political borders of today are obviously different, the demographic one is pretty on the mark. Ultimately I hate the idea of an alcohol company exploiting the deep feelings people have regarding nationalism and colonialism– an alcohol company being its own kind of mental colonialism– but I still find this ad rather funny. I don’t mind that they stir the pot a little.

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Che rolls in his grave

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che-magazine

As evidence that cognitive dissonance permeate our culture, look no further than this specimin of the pop culture complex.
It’s not clear why Belgian’s Che Magazine took on as it’s namesake the Argentine revolutionary, but perhaps the transformation of the South American rebel into a pop icon made him game to become a cigar smoking, beard sporting poster man for the postironic set. Che Magazine, in its ever ending quest to rid the world of feminism and all its gains, has no problem invoking the cad personality, but updates it with high tech glee. It’s a man’s world after all, when more than a one syllable name is too complicated.

This is your brain on Super Bowl ads

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Superbowlbrain2
This year’s most stimulating Super Bowl ads competed for mirror neurons. And the winners are (all the ads are viewable here):

WHO REALLY WON THE SUPER BOWL? By Marco Iacoboni:

If a good indicator of a successful ad is activity in brain areas concerned with reward and empathy, two winners seem to be the ‘I am going to Disney’ ad and the Bud ‘office’ ad. In contrast, two big floppers seem to be the Bud ‘secret fridge’ ad and the Aleve ad. What is quite surprising, is the strong disconnect that can be seen between what people say and what their brain activity seem to suggest. In some cases, people singled out ads that elicited very little brain responses in emotional, reward-related, and empathy-related areas.

Among the ads that seem relatively successful, I want to single out the Michelob ad. Above is a picture showing the brain activation associated with the ad. What is interesting is the strong response — indicated by the arrow — in ‘mirror neuron’ areas, premotor areas active when you make an action and when you see somebody else making the same action. The activity in these areas may represent some form of empathic response. Or, given that these areas are also premotor areas for mouth movements, it may represent the simulated action of drinking a beer elicited in viewers by the ad. Whatever it is, it seems a good brain response to the ad.

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Citizen deconstruction? Not!

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OK, so this is really not a spontaneous deconstruction of Super Bowl ads, but really a clever Miller Lite ad made to look like something fo’ real. I spotted the ad technique right away from the gratuitous lingering shots on the Miller Lite logo, and I thought the cuts were a little too fast for an amateur. But, I’m sure it will do its viral trick as it was intended to.

PS Unfortunately this year I cannot do a Super Bowl ad round up because here in Italy it was running far to late for me to watch. I will monitor the net closely, though, for some good montages.

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How to Get Ahead in Advertising

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I posted this in the comments section but I thought it would be of interest to the general public. This anti-ad rant from How to Get Ahead in Advertising is one of the most inspired media monologs that ranks up there with Howard Beale’s Network screed. Delivered by the mad genius, Richard E. Grant, this opening sequence enters us into a world of marketing madness.

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The flaneur’s coda

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Vcast
Charles Baudelairer‘s character of the flaneur has been celebrated and vastly discussed as the archetype of Modern Media Man: he grazes the sights and sounds of the new urbanity, a casual consumer of the senses. He is somewhat disengaged, his focus meanders and samples. As a “Bourgeois dilettante,” he’s a no where man. While the flaneur has come to symbolize the rise of media in the 19th century, I also see him reasserting himself in today’s ads, mostly in the guise of the 20-something tech economy knowledge worker. Usually he drives a (new) car, letting his electronics extend his senses for him while he consumes the landscape like any other media experience. So rather than a pedestrian wandering the city, the new flaneur is guided by GPS and a smart phone that makes his appointments (he may even have an outsourced personal assistant in India handling ticket reservations and other mundane activities for him). So rather than roam the sensations, his technological devices browse for him.

The Verizon VCast ad featuring Led Zeppelin (screen grab above, link below) brings the flaneur back to the street, but this time he wanders a hybrid reality of magical dimensions. The music is not only a soundtrack but describes every scene change he encounters. Meanwhile Led Zep memorabilia and clues are planted through out his sojourn connecting the physicality with his media space, giving “Physical Graffiti” a literal existence. He no longer meanders the city but a videogame. The outside is in, the inside is out.

I have to admit that this character makes me really mad. He’s young, good looking, self-assured, disengaged, clueless and apparently rich enough to live in Manhattan. He doesn’t really give a crap about Led Zeppelin because if he did he’d be banging his head to John Bonham‘s beats. He’s so self-absosorbed he’s probably thinking about how his $60 American Apparel T-shirt will get him laid. Led Zep belongs to the throngs of insecure, sexually dysfunctional, pimple-faced youth. This is spin the bottle make-out music, not Bourgeois dilettante, phone status, ring-tone accessory bullshit. Sheesh. This cheap commercialization is far too casual for me to bear.

Video link.

(Article link (you may have to register to view it).

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