“Fly The Friendly Ad Sluts” by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle
Rant about advertising on airplane tray tables.
Selling Advertising
The Ad Industry’s Battle Against the Consumer Movement of the 1930s: An Interview with Inger Stole from Stay Free Magazine
Glory and BBQ Sauce in Athens
by Matt Tiabbi of Alternet - discusses current desperation of advertising and it’s resort to the co-opting of concepts and emotions.
Designer Ji Lee’s Bubble Project is a set of stickers in the form of cartoon talk bubbles designed to “transform the corporate monologue into an open dialogue. The stickers encourage anyone to fill them in with any form of self-expression, free from censorship.” There is a manifesto and downloadable PDFs available on his site, www.thebubbleproject.com.
Seeking to market its handheld game device to hip city dwellers, Sony has hired graffiti artists in major urban areas to spray-paint buildings with simple, totemic images of kids playing with the gadget. But the guerrilla marketing gambit appears to be drawing scorn from some of the street-savvy hipsters it’s striving to win over.
Coming on the heels of widely publicized news that Sony music CDs infected customers’ computers with security-hole-inducing spyware, the campaign for the PlayStation Portable is being derided on the internet as an attempt to buy the credibility of street art.
“I take five A.P. classes, and by far I do the most work for these newspaper stories,” said Allie O’Hora, another reporter. And what stories! Allie tracked down a sophomore boy who covered the bathrooms with graffiti, and turned her exclusive interview into another front-pager. (”It’s our community too,” the boy told her, “and we should have just as much say as to what goes on the walls as Pepsi and Gatorade do.”) link
Neterotopia is an event that takes place from 16th to 31st March 2006 in various spaces on the Net. Eleven artists from different countries have been invited to choose an Internet site and use the spaces usually reserved for advertising. These spaces are thus transformed into exhibition surfaces and points of access to a pathway branching through the public and virtual space of the Internet, the major node of which is the neterotopia.net website.
The Columbus Dispatch has a story on how ads are making their way into more and more public spaces in Ohio. The revitalization of the downtown has brought larger and more invasive displays of advertising - for example ads printed on parking lot stripes. The last paragraphs of the story include some comments from the AAA’s Steve Lambert.
The Sacramento Bee has written a relatively fluffy piece on what are becoming known as “Human Billboards” or “Living Arrows”. These are the people at intersections paid to frantically wave signs around attracting attention to a mattress sale or condo development. As the Bee itself says:
“It’s a way for developers and business owners to get around regulations governing permanent and temporary signs — and it simply works.”
The Sacremento Bee requires a login to view the article. We recommend getting one from Bug Me Not instead.
Here at the Agency one of the things we keep tabs on is ad creep. Each year, ads creep further into our daily lives through public space, classrooms, bathrooms, and so on. Over time advertisers become more and more desperate to get our attention because their traditional methods don’t work, or don’t work well enough - for a variety of reasons - and the line of what is deemed acceptable space for advertising slowly moves.
In 2003, advertising on airplane tray tables was an outrageous news item. In 2006, the ads are creeping further. Recently US Airways announced it will be selling advertising space on it’s barf bags. (See the story below.)
From last month’s New York Times and posted here in case it becomes difficult to access in the future. And a special note of hope to residents of the United States: as fantastic as a the Sáo Paulo ban sounds, remember that Vermont, Alaska, Hawaii, and Maine have all banned billboards in their state. There are various other advertising regulations in effect nationwide banning such things as alcohol advertising near schools. Regulating advertising (at any point along the spectrum) doesn’t just happen in exotic foreign countries.
Sáo Paulo Journal
Streets Are Paved With Neon’s Glare, and City Calls a Halt
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: December 12, 2006
SÁO PAULO, Brazil – Imagine a modern metropolis with no outdoor advertising: no billboards, no flashing neon signs, no electronic panels with messages crawling along the bottom. Come the new year, this city of 11 million, overwhelmed by what the authorities call visual pollution, plans to press the “delete all” button and offer its residents an unimpeded view of their surroundings.
Buildings in the historic center of downtown Sáo Paulo are covered with billboards. They will be banned as of Jan. 1, when a city law takes effect. Continue reading →
The New York Times has done a good overview on the desperate attempts of advertisers to “get over the clutter” resulting in a proliferation of advertising on every possible blank space in U.S. cities.
A great video version of an even better piece from Good Magazine. The video shows how much various advertising spaces cost. (And don’t forget, it’s all tax deductable as a business expense.) I picked up Good in a grocery store around New Years and was very impressed. The issue I have (#2) also has a respectable overview of “culture jamming” including a history and an introduction to some of the dominant forms.
Also note that subscriptions are only $20 and 100% goes to a charity organization you choose from a selection of 12.
I just came across this video. When we posted our Light Criticism video last month, a lot of people wondered how it was possible that city dwellers see over 5,000 advertisements each day (source). This video may help.
“Kapitaal is a typographical stroll throug a Dutch city revealing the influence of graphic design.” Kapitaal is a a project based animation made by Ton Meijdam, Thom Snels, and Bla Zsigmond for Museum De Beyerd, Dutch Museum for Graphic Design. It was also shown at Version>06 in Chicago.
This unlikely coupling was courtesy of Senator Harry Reid, who, admidst the thoughts of blood, debt and destruction abroad, folded in a big wet kiss to our advertising boys here at home.
Stay Free! has a nice interview with George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation. His book is on my “to read soon” list, but I’ve heard a few interviews with him and have been impressed with his thoughts on advertising and culture.
Here’s some excerpts from the Stay Free piece:
STAY FREE!: When you look at American culture today; commercialism, reality TV, the war, all the things that are in your stories - what do you see? What is your diagnosis?
SAUNDERS: I’ll give you a couple answers. One, there’s a cultural divide between the people at the top and the people underneath. So, in commercials: who’s making them? A handful of people. Why are they making them? To persuade us to buy things. There’s a group of people who have the power to broadcast and to put this huge machine at their disposal - this very beautiful machine that can make incredible images and sounds - and then there’s the rest of the population, which is “done to.” I would say that the gap between the doers and the done to is wider than it’s ever been.
and another:
SAUNDERS: On the other hand, I think it’s kind of funny, kind of joyful, kind of crazy - so I can look at it both ways. The point of the book really wasn’t, “Let’s ban advertising,” but just to sort of wallow in it a bit and come out a little more aware that these things aren’t really neutral.
Maybe another advantage of living a long time is you see the way the tonality of commercials has changed, even in my lifetime. And it’s not neutral and it’s not random. It’s very deliberate in the sense that somebody’s deciding to make these commercials and shows more aggressive, more hateful, more agitating. I don’t know why. I’m sure it’s very complicated.
The Sacramento Bee has written a 
