Not to go all Adbusters on you or anything, but I like to see people actively resisting advertising. I think it's a healthy reaction to the onslaught of commercial messages. Debranded Home is doing its part by offering a set of generic labels printed on high-quality waterproof vinyl. Our objective is to provide you with the tools and information you need to debrand your home. We want to change the way people think …
It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Ba-Da Bling
[via Daily Biz, who says he would never stoop to working on a lottery account] …
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Unilever Moves To Preserve Dove’s Image
According to The Wall Street Journal, both activists and the corporations they rail against are moving at internet speed. Just last week we took note of the Greenpeace campaign against Unilever, a company they accused of Indonesian deforestation. Speaking at a climate change conference in London Thursday, Unilever Chief Executive Patrick Cescau said his firm will buy palm oil (an ingredient in Dove soap) only from …
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Beijing Olympics Not A Good Ad Buy Domestically
China's recent crackdown on violent clashes in Tibet and its imprisonment of human-rights activists has spurred world-wide demonstrations and has turned its elaborate plans for a globe-girdling Olympic torch relay into a show of dissent. According to The Wall Street Journal, despite the criticism, it appears that most sponsors have made the decision to refrain from criticizing Beijing rather than risk angering the …
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Warhol’s “32 Campbell Soup Cans” Not Ads. These Aren’t Either.
Chicago artist Pamela Michelle Johnson likes to paint still lifes of food items on large canvases. From her artist statement: In the American Still-Life series, Johnson takes on another fixture of contemporary American life, and does so with no apologies. When confronted with a six-foot tall canvas of enormous and precariously balanced hamburgers, waffles, doughnuts, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the viewer …
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Finding Art In A Common Retail Practice
There are a multitude of ways to resist modern corporate culture. One can turn the TV off, walk to work or live off the grid. If one is an artist, there are even more options. Chris Held is an artist. Today’s highly refined marketing machine appeals to our personal hopes, wants, needs, and dreams to effectively entice us to the point of purchase. Advertisers have found such success by making many of the same promises …
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Universal Ad Truth #4120: Bad Is Bad, No Matter Where It Runs
According to The Wall Street Journal, Heng Yuan Xiang Group, a top Chinese wool producer, wanted to celebrate its sponsorship of this summer's Beijing Olympics. So the wool company began running a 60-second ad in February, during the celebration of Lunar New Year, China's biggest holiday. When the Chinese public first saw the ad, some people thought their TV sets were broken. Viewers savaged the commercial in print …
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Devotion To Sugar
According to the BBC, Orthodox Christians in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia are upset with Coca-Cola over the misuse of sacred images. "Coca-Cola uses all these Orthodox symbols in a blasphemous way," the complaint, lodged on 11 December, said. "Some images are deliberately turned upside down, including the crosses," it said. An inverted cross is considered to be one of the symbols of satanism. Coca-Cola officials have …
