Chrysler Super Bowl Ad Photoshops Out Pro-Union Wisconsin Rally Signs
Chrysler’s America’s second half clip was the centerpiece of Super Bowl advertising on Sunday. Clint Eastwood praises the resilience of the Detroit auto companies and tells us that Americans are hanging tough, not backing down, and hitting the streets to stand up and shape the future. The ad features footage of this past year’s actual events in Wisconsin, but look closely, and you’ll see that the meaning has been altered — signs have been scrubbed, the real messages replaced with alarm clock graphics and the generic phrase “Think of Our Children”. Via Huffington Post:
The highly-praised spot, which features Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood narrating over a collage of images that includes broken towns and factory workers, includes a short clip from videographer Matthew Wisniewski’s montage of the protests over a budget repair bill in Madison, Wisconsin last February. The original clip that Chrysler used from Wisniewski’s video features protestors marching in front of the…
Clint Eastwood’s ‘Half Time America’ Commercial
The most entertaining part of watching the annual American Football Superbowl was, as usual, the expensively produced commercials, showing off the most creative minds of Madison Avenue. For my money the funniest was not Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno pitching Acura (Honda), but Clint Eastwood in toughest Dirty Harry / Gran Torino mode proclaiming that America is going to mount a comeback in the “second half.”
An honorable mention however to Chevrolet, who capitalized on the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse meme in this spot…
Santa Claus Loves Smoking
Did you know that for decades, jolly old St. Nick was a heavy, couple-packs-a-day smoker? According to prominent advertising of the twentieth century, at least. How to be a Retronaut has an extensive collection of popular culture portrayals of a nicotine-loving Santa, puffing away as he festoons trees with cartons of smokes, and more…
MSNBC Finally Has A Good Ad, About the GI Bill (Video)
EIther hell has frozen over or I have shit my pants. Comments welcome …
UPDATE: NBC has removed this ad off the internet because Disinformation is talking about it …
Occupy-Themed Best Buy Marketing Campaign
Have you been curious how the Occupy movement would be co-opted? Occupy Best Buy combines the red-hot protest movement with Black Power fist iconography in an effort to get people pumped up about buying plasma screen TVs or whatever it is they sell at Best Buy. Definitely the worst of the occupations to spring up so far. Best Buy claims that no affiliation with the web site, though one would suspect that it’s a viral marketing effort:
Vladimir Putin Ad Shows Couple Having Sex In Voting Booth
Putin pushes the envelope, and points the way towards the future of political campaigning, by making pulling the voting lever seem to be some sort of sex act. Via Politico:
In a new ad for Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party, the weirdness of that country’s fake democracy is on full display.
The ad conflates voting and sex in a way that makes no sense but has great production values and a compelling beat. The slogan: “Let’s do it together.”
Sharpie Advertisement’s Subliminal Message: ‘Stop Protesting’
In this youth-targeted television spot celebrating “self expression” and “putting it out there”, teens make their voices heard by creating art, decorating and personalizing their skateboards and guitars. But the most intriguing moment is the quick cut midway through showing kids demonstrating and waving a colorful banner (created with their new Sharpie markers) which reads, “Stop Protesting!”
Is it just a throwaway gag from an irreverent commercial? Or a perfect example of how corporations attempt to de-claw youthful unrest by channeling it into consumerism?
And Now For Something Completely Different …
This is the latest political ad for the leading Republican candidate (according to polls) for the presidency of the United States of America:
General Motors’ Anti-Bicycling Advertising Campaign
The League of American Bicyclists highlights a fascinatingly awful, recent (now aborted) ad campaign from General Motors, commanding college students, “Reality sucks. Stop pedaling…start driving”. Yes — tune out the world, stop exercising, go into debt buying a $20,000 pickup truck:
If you are a student looking to add tens of thousands of dollars of long term debt, care little about the environment, and want pay through the nose for insurance, gas, and parking…GM has got a perfect deal for you. Bonus: it’ll make you fat and unhealthy! All you have to do is give up that dorky bicycle that’s easy to use, practically free, gets you some exercise and is actually fun to ride.
In case you were wondering, GM has a fine-sounding corporate responsibility statement: “As a responsible corporate citizen, General Motors is dedicated to protecting human health, natural resources and the global environment.”
GM Food Needs Mandatory Labels, Food Producers Tell FDA
Molly Peterson writes in Business Week:
Genetically engineered corn, soy and plant oil should be disclosed on mandatory food labels, a coalition of more than 350 producers, trade groups and consumers said in a petition to U.S. regulators.
The U.S. should require added disclosure even when a product containing a gene-altered organism is similar to foods that aren’t bioengineered, the groups said today in the petition to the Food and Drug Administration. Stonyfield Farm, the organic-yogurt maker owned by Danone SA, and Dean Foods Co.’s Horizon Organic are among the coalition members.
Petitioners, led by the Washington-based Center for Food Safety, want to reverse a 1992 Food and Drug Administration policy that doesn’t require different labeling. Gene-altered seeds are used for almost 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn, 94 percent of soy and 90 percent of cottonseed, an oil-producing plant, the coalition said.
“Consumers ought to have the right to choose whether to be buying…
IKEA: The Architecture Of Consumer Confusion
Normally architects organize space to make the experience as efficient as possible. At IKEA though, however, the (almost ‘urban’) designers deliberately set out to confuse people. See this phenomenon analyzed [with] various (heat)maps, 3D reconstructions and other illustrations, in a talk (the IKEA case in starts at the 24:30 mark), by Alan Penn (University College London).
The presentation focuses on how architects use space to sell things, by demonstrating how space creates patterns of movement, bringing people into contact with goods. It starts off with how spatial quality influences spatial behavior, which is then applied on urban environments, retail and shopping spaces in general.
Apple’s Famous ‘Think Different’ Ad (Video)
Good question for the Disinfo crowd: accurate or appropriating?
Product Placement Reaches New Heights
Wondering how out of control product placement in film has gotten? Check out this reel of highlights from The Marine, a crappy Twentieth Century Fox action flick from a couple years ago which apparently stars Miller Genuine Draft. It points to an emerging form of cinema — the low-quality, low-budget Hollywood movie that serves as an extended two-hour commercial.
Plus-Sized Model Calls BS On American Apparel: Creates Portfolio To Mock Them
Photo courtesy of American Apparel
It’s taken over twenty years, but American Apparel has finally finally begun offering clothes in size XL. Up until just recently, anything over a “Large” was just plain “not our demographic,” according to American Apparel reps. It may seem strange that the popular clothing outlet has never provided anything over a size 11, but who here is truly surprised to hear that Don “I’m A Sleazeball And I’m Okay With That” Charney’s company caters exclusively to slender women?
New sizes apparently mean new models to display them, so American Apparel has started a plus-sized model search/contest looking for “booty-ful” women to fill out the new XLs. Women submit photos to American Apparel’s website, where they are then numerically ranked by readers based on their perceived attractiveness.
Anyone who has ever been to a model search can tell you that, despite the abundance of beautiful people, it’s a horribly…
Advertising And Our World
Advertising has became our dominant creative industry – what Stuart Ewen calls ‘the prevailing vernacular of public address’. It sucks up our talent for art, design, creativity and storytelling.
Via Our Kingdom, a look at the cumulative effects of advertising on our society and why it must be controlled:
Advertising is everywhere. Media that were once largely commercial free – from movies to the internet – now come replete with commercial messages. Not so long ago, most musicians were reluctant to see their work used to endorse shampoo or sneakers. Today, the music and advertising industries are locked in a lucrative embrace.
We now have commercials in our schools and on our clothes. They clog up – with increasing speed – nearly every form of communication we devise. Our dominant TV genre – in terms of sheer volume – is not comedy, drama or sport, but advertising. The average British viewer is now…
1915 Anti-Women’s-Suffrage Newspaper Ad
Courtesy of Sociological Images, a 1915 Massachusetts newspaper ad in opposition of giving women the right to vote — it’s fascinating how closely some of the political framing recalls that of today, including playing up fears of divorce, socialists, and Mormons.
(One would presume that the ad was effective, as Massachusetts’ male voters rejected women’s suffrage. Women were given the ability to vote five year later by the federal government in the form of the 19th Amendment.)
In Defense of the Hipster: Part 2
PART 2: AUTHENTICITY IS BULLSHIT, or: POP IS THE NEW PUNK
(Part 1, titled “What Is A Hipster, And Why Does Everyone Hate Them? or: You’re So Fake (And So Am I)“, can be found here.)
As noted in Part 1, the main thrust of the criticisms against hipsters have roots in a notion of authenticity. Lorentz mentions the words “authentic” and “inauthentic” a dozen times in his article, and the Adbusters piece is just as bad. It’s a fair charge to say that hipsters fetishize the authentic, as Lorentz does. This is hardly unique to hipsters, though; one can find it in practically any sub-culture. It’s so common that I find it disingenuous to use it as a criticism of hipsters and Hipsterism. The problem, as I see it, is that notion of authenticity being used is utter bullshit.
Some years ago, before I became a hipster or had even heard of hipsters, I…
Mythology of Business Part 1: The Veil of Ignorance
This is part 1 of an excerpted series for Reality Sandwich from the anthology The Immanence of Myth published by Weaponized.
Myth’s central importance does not end with our art or religions. It is not solely a dusty world of broken clay pots and tablets written in dead languages. Our myths determine how we engage with the world, how we enter into it. How we treat ourselves and one another. Far from being archaic relics of the past, myths will determine our future. Even if we are unaware of them, they will continue to affect us.
The advertising used to disseminate films, books and music shows the profound value that mythology has within modern markets. You just need to know what you’re looking for. However, it does not end with the entertainment industry. A brand, any brand in an increasingly interactive media environment, is myth.
This role is made all the more pervasive thanks to the…
