Disinformation » Advertising

Chrysler Super Bowl Ad Photoshops Out Pro-Union Wisconsin Rally Signs

JacobSloan — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 15:42:18 +0000

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 capitol building, holding signs made by Madison Teachers Inc. union.

As first pointed out by The Nation, the footage in the Chrysler ad (found at :50) has been scrubbed of the pro-union messages on the signs. On one, “Care About Educators Like They Care for Your Child” has been replaced by a picture of an alarm clock.

Clint Eastwood’s ‘Half Time America’ Commercial

majestic — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:16:41 +0000

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, where Twinkies also made an appearance, presumably because they are indestructible as well as indigestible:

Santa Claus Loves Smoking

JacobSloan — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:00:45 +0000

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…

Why Should ‘Catholics Come Home’?

bluemana — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 06:23:01 +0000

New ad campaign:

MSNBC Finally Has A Good Ad, About the GI Bill (Video)

ralph — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:26:32 +0000

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

JacobSloan — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 14:06:34 +0000

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

JacobSloan — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:12:26 +0000

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’

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:26:27 +0000

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 …

bluemana — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 07:48:20 +0000

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

JacobSloan — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 17:47:48 +0000

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

phunkychic666 — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:59:45 +0000

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 these foods,” said Gary Hirshberg, chief executive officer of Londonderry, New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, in an interview. “Polls show a vast majority of Americans say they don’t want to eat genetically engineered foods.”

IKEA: The Architecture Of Consumer Confusion

JacobSloan — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 21:31:43 +0000

Via Information Aesthetics:

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)

god — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:34:15 +0000

Good question for the Disinfo crowd: is this ad accurate or appropriating?

Product Placement Reaches New Heights

JacobSloan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:38:03 +0000

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

TunaGhost — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:53:23 +0000

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 ugly affair. Hundreds of women dying to be the next Kathy Ireland (remember her?) line up while bored and disinterested judges pour over their features and pick out whatever minute flaws they can find. Out of hundreds, fewer than ten will get a callback. Sometimes no one does. Dreams are shattered, hearts are broken and sexual favors are offered.

Not surprisingly, the feminist website Jezebel has taken issue with the plus sized model contest. It’s not difficult to see why; while claiming that women of all shapes and sizes are beautiful, the contest literature nevertheless takes every opportunity to remind everyone that the contestants are, in a word, fat. Cutesy puns abound. One reader, though, has decided to play along so that she may subtly (or not so subtly) mock the whole contest. Nancy Upton explains in an email to Jezebel:

I immediately thought, based on the way it was written, “Wow, they really have zero respect for plus-sized women. They’re going to line them up like cattle and make puns about them until they’re blue in the face.” And then, as corny as it sounds, it just occurred to me that based on their “Hey, come on, fatties, we want you to play, too” tone, wouldn’t it be kind of brilliant to respond in a, “Thanks for letting me play, just let me try put down the pizza, first” similar mocking tone. From there, I realized I knew a great photographer, I had a free couple of hours on Sunday and a little extra money in my pocket to drop on some ranch dressing and a chicken

With this in mind, Upton “had her friend, Shannon Skloss, take pictures of her — bathing in ranch dressing, pouring chocolate sauce directly into her mouth, gorging on chicken.”

As the article points out, Nancy Upton doesn’t really look “fat”. She looks fairly average for an American woman. I realize that compared with the rest of the world that’s actually quite a bit heavier than average, but nevertheless let’s hope her pictures, some of which can be found on the Jezebel article, take her to the top.

Advertising And Our World

JacobSloan — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 15:11:45 +0000

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 exposed to 48 TV commercials a day. Recent studies showed that around 40% of US TV time is now taken up by commercials.

Governments, regulators and media companies tend to regard advertising purely as a form of revenue. They have – under pressure from an industry looking to maximise its income – allowed it to proliferate. There are a few exceptions to this: governments are prepared to limit the promotion of harmful substances such as tobacco, and they police the boundaries of taste and decency.

But the prevailing orthodoxy is to treat each advertisement on its individual merits. The larger question – the cumulative impact of this deluge of commercials – is rarely asked. Regulatory bodies assume that most advertising is entirely apolitical, reserving their scrutiny for campaign groups. In an age where economists, social scientists, climate scientists and environmentalists are seriously questioning the value of consumerism, this idea is no longer tenable.

For all their diversity, advertisements share one basic value system. Advertisements may be individually innocent, collectively they are the propaganda wing of a consumerist ideology. The moral of the thousands of different stories they tell is that the only way to secure pleasure, popularity, security, happiness or fulfilment is through buying more; more consumption – regardless of how much we already have.

There are three problems with this set of values – and they are all profound. First, the promise of advertising is entirely empty. We now have a voluminous body of work showing that past a certain point, there is no connection between the volume of consumer goods a society accumulates and the well-being of its people. The research shows that a walk in the park, social interaction or volunteering – which cost nothing – will do more for our well-being than any amount of ‘retail therapy’.

Reviewing the evidence on consumerism and quality of life, Richard Layard argues that legislation banning advertising is a far more plausible policy for increasing quality of life than extending consumer choice. This may be unimaginable in policy terms, but we might begin to ask why we always seem to move in the opposite direction, forever increasing – rather than limiting – the volume of advertising.

The second problem with advertising’s value system is environmental. In a finite world, where the scale of human activity now matches the scale of the planet, our current growth in consumption is unsustainable. The global economy has expanded five-fold in the last fifty years. By the end of the century, if we continue consuming at the current rate, it will be eighty times larger.

The third problem follows from this. If we are to prosper and develop as a species, we must begin to imagine economic models that appreciate the finite, and that do not rely on endless economic growth. We must pursue a way of working that values longevity over built-in obsolescence, on repairing and reusing rather than dumping and replacing. If we want to avoid high unemployment, we need to pass on productivity gains by giving people more free time rather than more money.

Advertising runs counter to all these ideas and thereby stifles our imagination. It keeps us hooked on a cycle of borrow and spend, with fiscal policies dependent on mountains of debt. And it sustains the idea that human progress is measured purely by our ability to acquire as many consumer goods as possible.

Occasionally, advertising can provide us with useful –albeit very partial – information. But in the world of branding, imparting useful information has become increasingly old-fashioned. What we have instead is a vast global industry that elevates one activity above all others, and, in so doing, promotes a very particular set of economic and cultural values.

In an age where these values are coming under increasing challenge, this makes advertising, en mass, intensely political. It is time we recognised it as such.

1915 Anti-Women’s-Suffrage Newspaper Ad

JacobSloan — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:06:51 +0000

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

TunaGhost — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 04:03:14 +0000

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 was confirmed as “real” at a party by a group of counter-culture kids. There were several reasons given. First, I was living in a “real” neighborhood. At that time my rundown flop of a house was located in a neighborhood of Detroit, a mostly working-class ethnic neighborhood that was deemed hip by the minority of caucasian youths living there. It was popular for a number of reasons: it was much safer than the surrounding areas, close to a University and had been, even back when it was predominantly white, an ethnic neighborhood (Polish). Second, I was working two jobs to pay my way through school. I was living month-to-month, sometimes bills didn’t get paid and I lived for months on brown rice and Siracha stolen from the Chinese restaurant at which I was employed. Third, I had a pretty good drug habit going, the likes of which would eventually take the life of a couple friends later on down the road.

I contemplated this. Apparently, making several terrible choices in the suburbs that resulted in losing my funding for school and having to move to the significantly cheaper housing in the city had made me “real”. And to think I didn’t even know I was “fake” when I was out in the suburbs! Apparently, my gritty, dirty, dangerous life meant I was “real” and not some automaton or something.

This notion of realness, of authenticity, is very popular today. Grit and dirt = real. Danger = real. This is despite the fact that all of the above can be acquired without much effort: you can move to a shitty-but-hip neighborhood, you can give up your scholarship and work all the time, and believe you me you can pick up a substance-abuse problem with startling ease.

The absurdity soon makes itself apparent. If it can be faked with ease, where is the value of its authenticity? Someone doing the three steps listed above can have just as “real” a life as I was leading. It would be indistinguishable from the life of someone who ended up there by accident or, like in my case, as the result of poor decision-making skills. The real life can be acquired, and when it is, does that person miraculously go from “fake” to “real”? How does that work? If all the ways one uses to define oneself as authentic are, in a way, “for sale”, how authentic can one’s identity really be?

The primary problem with the counterculture is its rebellion against perceived inauthenticity, against the manufactured lifestyle represented by prime-time television and pop culture. The problem lies in where we are running to, in what we are clinging to instead of the manufactured lifestyle. We think we are leaving image-without-substance behind and embracing realness, embracing something with meaning and substance. We are doing no such thing. We’re just falling for a different kind of deception.

They say that if you’re going to steal, then steal from the best. With that in mind, I offer you an excerpt by Warren Ellis from his discontinued series Doktor Sleepless:

Now, after seeing hordes of people rebelling against Pop and seeking refuge in authenticity, I see his point. Punk, now, is as baldly selling an image, a brand, as any bit of pop culture. It’s about as authentic as Bob Dylan, and the same goes for pretty much every counter-culture.

How do you rebel, then, when all the culture rebels are buying into bullshit notions of authenticity? What do you do when the people rebelling against the image and the spectacle of pop culture are indulging in an image and a spectacle of their own? The answer is obvious: go the other direction. Embrace the shallowness, embrace the trends that have a half-life of half a season, embrace the superficial fashion and culture that Hipsterism provides. If its authenticity you’re after, be like me. Be a Real Fake. Be sincere in your devotion to affectations, in the shallow trends…

Mythology of Business Part 1: The Veil of Ignorance

James Curcio — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 05:48:04 +0000

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 proliferation of instantaneous and virtually limitless communication mediums. Whether it is beneficial or dangerous is another matter entirely.

Despite this, myth is so entrenched in the nature of business that it is often overlooked within the advertising rhetoric of capitalism, even if the building of a mythology is the centerpiece of all effective branding. Though the commercialization of desire and fear, and creation of “false needs” is essentially coercive, it is the long-term cultural effects that must be considered once we understand the extent to which marketing and advertising are myth.

Demonstration of this fact clearly requires an understanding both of the function of myth and the function of a brand. Prevalent misconceptions in both of these cases has clouded what should otherwise be a self-evident thesis, so the purpose of this brief article is to identify these misconceptions and clarify our position.

(Read article on Reality Sandwich)

Television Networks Rewrite History Through Product Placement

JacobSloan — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:45:24 +0000

There sure is a lot of time traveling on television these days. The Consumerist provides an example of the subtly unsettling practice of messing with cinematic/cultural/TV continuity by digitally inserting advertisements from the present into old shows and movies. Just wait until they start slipping “Zookeeper” billboards into footage of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech or Nazi stadium rallies:

For the past few years, networks have been digitally inserting ads and product placements for new products into old reruns. Shannon just noticed one in a rerun of a 2007 episode of “How I Met Your Mother.” In the background on the shelf is a magazine with an ad on the back for the new “Zookeeper” starring Kevin James.

Why Corporate Organic Food Brands Do Not Want to Label Genetically Modified Food (Video)

Good German — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 20:31:25 +0000

This video provides financial evidence that the president of the board of directors at the Organic Trade Association, Julia Sabin, individually profits off of genetically-modified foods as a VP and General Manager at Smuckers:

First Advertising Campaign Targeted At Monkeys

Pelliciari — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:28:08 +0000

The advertising belief that sex sells may not just work on humans, but on monkeys too. That is what the first non-human aimed advertising campaign is basing its marketing strategy on. Via Wired:

A primatologist has created the first advertising campaign aimed at non-human primates and believes that it will be sex that sells.

Laurie Santos from Yale University’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory has teamed up with advertising agency Proton Studio to “determine where advertising has innate primate responses”.

Santos and team will create two foods specifically aimed at Capuchin monkeys — possibly two different colours of jelly. One will be featured on a billboard outside of the monkeys’ enclosure and the other will not. After a set period, the monkeys will be offered both foods. “If they tend toward one and not the other we’ll be witnessing preference shifting due to our advertising,” Keith Olwell of Proton told New Scientist.

[Continues at Wired]

…

Does Watching TV Lead To Obesity?

majestic — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 01:17:55 +0000

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests there’s a causal link between watching junk food commercials on television and obesity. Alice Park reports for Time:

How much TV do your kids watch? If you don’t know, you might want to find out, say experts, since the time children spend in front of a TV or computer screen can have a profound effect on their physical and developmental health.

In a new policy statement on the role of media on obesity, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) Council on Communications and Media warns parents that TV watching doesn’t just make children more sedentary, but also influences their eating habits, which in turn has consequences for their health. In other words, it’s not just that TV watching encourages youngsters to be less physically active, but it also exposes them to food advertisements that contribute to develop poor eating habits that can set kids up for health problems as adults.

“We created a perfect storm between media use, junk and fast food advertising, and physical inactivity,” says Dr. Victor Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and member of the AAP’s Council. “We created a situation where we now have more overweight and obese adults in the U.S, than underweight and normal weight adults; it’s become an urgent public health problem.”

The policy statement highlights the fact that the harms of TV viewing go beyond promoting inactivity. More studies have shown that children who spend more time in front of the tube are more likely to eat higher-calorie foods, drink sugared sodas and grow up to be overweight adults. In a U.K. study that followed children over 30 years into adulthood, for every additional hour of TV youngsters watched on weekends at age five, their risk of being obese as adults rose by 7%. And in some cases, it doesn’t even take that long for the extra pounds to accumulate: a Japanese study found that children who watched more TV at age three were more likely to be overweight at age six…

Maddow Describes Palin’s Media Strategy As Putin-esque

Pelliciari — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 21:11:31 +0000

Rachel Maddow compares Sarah Palin’s media portrayal to a similar strategy that Putin is known to use. From images of her running in pristine Alaska to her successful hunting kills, Palin’s media image isn’t too far off from Putin horseback riding shirtless. Maddow continues to question whether these tactics facilitate the same reactions from Americans as Putin receives from Russians. FromThe Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC:

Study: Advertising Plants Memories Of Experiences We Never Had

JacobSloan — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:00:04 +0000

On the bright side, is it really such a bad thing to be implanted with false memories of, say, dancing with smiling, multicultural nu-ravers while drinking a refreshing Pepsi? Partial Objects explains:

A newly published study by two marketing professors suggests that advertising can create memories of experiences that never happened, simply by including sufficiently evocative imagery and descriptions in the ad:

Exposure to an imagery-evoking ad can increase the likelihood that consumer mistakenly believes that s/he has experience with the advertised product when in fact s/he does not. Moreover such a false belief produces attitudes that are as strong as attitudes based on true beliefs based on previous product experience, an effect that we label the false experience effect.

Advertising has always been an appeal to a fantasy, and this study seems to suggest that if the ad is created just right, that fantasy can be in the form of a desire to return to a previous wonderful experience (even if the previous experience never actually happened.) But this finding suggests something a bit more insidious. If you can fool people into thinking they once experienced something that they never did with just an elaborate text description, imagine what you can do with a whole newspaper and 24-7 cable news.

Let’s face it, if Baudrillard was right and our postmodern existence is little more than a simulation, it should not surprise us that our memories have become re-writable and random access.

New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday

BananaFamine — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:24:54 +0000

[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]

A video report from CNN, and below a write up from Fox News:

A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.

Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars.

They say, “Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever! Judgment Day May 21, 2011.”

In a self-published book, “The Doomsday Code,” Fitzpatrick said the Bible offers “proof that cannot be dismissed.”

“Judgment Day will surprise people. We will not be ready for it,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview with the newspaper. “A giant earthquake will render the earth uninhabitable.”

If you want to set an alarm clock, the quake will happen just before 6:00pm local time, he said.

“God’s people will be resurrected. It is also the day that God stops saving anyone,” he said.

Fitzpatrick hopes that he is one of the chosen ones, but he could not be really certain…

For more information, see original article.

Osama Bin Laden: Death Of An Advertising Icon

JacobSloan — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:44:33 +0000

It may come as a surprise to some Americans, but since 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s name and visage have been prime fodder for use in corporate ad campaigns (elsewhere) around the world, symbolizing a range of meanings. Buzzfeed has an overview of some of the best examples of Osama advertising, demonstrating that terrorism, like sex, sells. Just imagine the unbelievable bankability he would have commanded had he not been in hiding.

Life Inside Store Displays

JacobSloan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 16:53:51 +0000

In advertising and window displays, companies invite us to step into a lifestyle which we may access by purchasing their products. Suppose someone took the message too literally? While visiting IKEA with friends, photographer Christian Gideon created a series of pictures in which all facets of daily home life were simulated within the store’s famed mock interiors. The results are hilarious and poignant (with lots of bro bonding). Via My Modern Metropolis:

Atomic And Radioactive Products

JacobSloan — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 17:20:26 +0000

“In the early 1900s, radium was more valuable than gold and platinum. As such, the term “Radium” was incorporated into the brand names of any number of products even when these products didn’t actually contain radium. The same was true for the term ‘X-Ray.’”

How To Be A Retronaut has a nice collection of early to mid-twentieth century consumer brands that tapped into a general public enthusiasm for anything related to atomic bombs and radiation. Those were simpler times, when happiness meant an “atomic meal” on every kitchen table and (usually faux-) radioactive products in every medicine cabinet.

China Outlaws Advertisements Promoting Luxury Goods And Lifestyles

JacobSloan — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:40:46 +0000

In an effort to contain class resentment stemming from a growing wealth gap, China has outlawed public ads that extol luxurious or ‘high end’ things. Are they onto something? Partial Objects takes note:

The clean up means commercials posted or aired in public can no longer include words like “supreme”, “royal”, “luxury” or “high class”, all of which frequently appear in Chinese promotions for real estate developments, vehicles and wines.

This move is designed to deal with the growing resentment about the wealth gap that exists between (some) urban and rural Chinese.

But note that they aren’t banning the wealth itself, or taxing it to oblivion; but managing the appearance of wealth, the description of wealth. It’s still okay to sell high end real estate, just don’t describe it as “elite” or “luxury.”

The Chinese government is fighting a linguistic battle, not an economic one. Anyone who sees a nice car may want one, but it is the description of that car and not the car itself that makes it an aspirational good. As long as the people who cannot afford the car do not feel it necessary to obtain one– as long as it doesn’t become a symbol of their poverty or wealth, they can hold off the revolution for a decade or so.

Peking University sociologist Xia Xueluan said many advertisements promote the belief that “wealth is dignity” — which is a message Americans have heard loud and clear, and the Chinese are hearing.