What realistic future do you see for billboards?
“Most people are now walking billboards, what with all the clothing logos on their togs. I suppose the next frontiers will be inner and outer space. Designer DNA encoded directly onto our protein molecules is a possibility. Of course, any one who doubts that we’ll eventually be seeing a Nike swoop etched onto the surface of the moon simply doesn’t understand human potential.”
"I remember some years back kids in the ghetto were supposedly killing one another for their Nike and Adidas shoes. If those kids, many of them just as smart & motivated as I was at their age, really understood the products and more importantly the marketing schemes behind them, they wouldn’t be scragging one another for a pair of dumb shoes—they might try and find out where Phil Knight lives and beat him to death with swiping his wing tips though."
I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all. ( Ogden Nash)
“In the beginning was the Ad. The Ad was brought to the consumer by the Advertiser. Desire, self worth, self image, ambition, hope; all find their genesis in the Ad. Through the Ad and the intent of the Advertiser we form our ideas and learn the myths that make us into what we are as a people. That this method of self definition displaced the earlier methods is beyond debate. It is now clear that the Ad holds the most esteemed position in our cosmology.” ( Jack Napier, BLF )
Advertising suffuses all corners of our waking lives; it so permeates our consciousness that even our dreams are often indistinguishable from a rapid succession of TV commercials. Different forms of media serve the Ad as primary conduits to the people. Entirely new media have been invented solely to streamline the process of bringing the Ad to the people. -Jack Napier
With the advent of the internet and high tech multimedia the old billboard advertisement could have gone out of favour.
Far from it, with commercial designers becoming more innovative to catch consumer attention.
Coops Paints
Advertising is the language of our Culture, as BLF CEO Jack Napier noted almost as many years ago. And the primary use of language is to to communicate ideas. The most efficient and direct communication of an idea comes through the most elegant use of the least amount of words to communicate that idea. It’s quite clear from the image in this Stella Artois billboard ad what the message IS. The BLF merely wishes to assist this campaign by paring down the words in order to match that message most perfectly. – BLF Education Officer, R.O. Thornhill:
The BLF (www.billboardliberation.com) has been improving outdoor advertising since 1977. Prior campaigns have included work for Exxon, R.J. Reynolds, and Apple Computers.
June 27, 2010
San Francisco
The Billboard Liberation Front (BLF) is honored to announce a new marketing partnership with Philip Morris (PM) that finally brings together the rugged sense of American independence with your most important choice as a consumer: your death. The message of “My Life. My Death. My Choice.” informs and empowers the consumer to choose, as their god given right, how they want to die. Philip Morris brings this message to the co
er to remind them that some rights are inalienable in life as they are in death. …
All former Marlboro Men, Wayne McLaren, David McLean and Dick Hammer, were unavailable for comment due to their rugged, manly choice of death by lung cancer.
ADDENDUM:
Old fashioned notions about art, science and spirituality being the peak achievements and the noblest goals of the spirit of man have been dashed on the crystalline shores of Acquisition; the holy pursuit of consumer goods. All old forms and philosophies have been cleverly co-opted and re”spun” as marketing strategies and consumer campaigns by the new shamans, the Ad men.
"Artists are judged and rewarded on the basis of their relative standing in the ongoing commodification of art objects. Bowing to fashion and the vagaries of gallery culture, these creators attempt to manufacture collectible baubles and contemporary or "period" objects that will successfully penetrate the collectors market. The most successful artists are those who can most successfully sell their art. With increasing frequency they apprentice to the Advertisers; no longer needing to falsely maintain the distinction between "Fine" & "Commercial" art. "
Spiritualism, literature and the physical arts: painting, sculpture, music and dance are by and large produced, packaged and consumed in the same fashion as a new car. Product contents, dictated by trends in hipness, contain a half-life matching the producers calender for being supplanted by newer models.
D.S. Black:I start with the simple idea that advertising is theft. I know those are fighting words, but when you consider that the battleground, the theater of operations is human consciousness, the I between our eyes, and that the stakes are what one makes of the world through the din of perception–then it is easy to understand why we do what we do. It's either write, or be written. I can raise a pen or a brush in defense of my own mental environment, or allow myself to be the passive, infinitely impressed palimpsest which is the consumer caught in the maw of a marketing campaign.
“At the heart of Western culture—OUR Culture, is the myth of the rugged individual adhering to a singular and personal code of ethics that, despite outside influences, coercion, group think, etc, etc., will survive and thrive, sustaining the spirit of the righteous loner who chooses his associations and makes his way boldly through a corrupt and obsequious world. You know, John Wayne, Ayn Rand, blah blah blah. Well, as silly as this may all seem to any college educated, post-modern, deconstructed “zen” practitioner, it really is true. It’s what made the United States, despite ALL of the well documented egregious miscalculations and mistakes we’ve made, the greatest most beneficent, open, inclusive and grand culture in history. The old aphorism “democracy is the worst form of government…except ALL the others..” rings true. It’s what we’ve got and we have to work with it. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. State Socialism collapsed in upon itself inevitably. Let’s hope our “pioneer spirit” helps prod the evolving Trans National Global Industrial Plutocracy into the same pit that the Commies fell into. Then we can get back to business as usual: individuals and small business interacting with one another out of choice as well as necessity driven by self interested tempered with community need.
A kid with a crayon writing his own response to a multi-million dollar ad campaign can only be seen as part of the grand history of INDIVIDUAL THOUGHT and the messy yet mandatory democratic ideal.”
"It’s just that they were selling their silly products (which I use by the way—same as you.) with images of Dead People.™ We had no choice but to rectify this unseemly situation. When it comes to public service billboards, or cute kitty billboards or Mother Theresa billboards, we see them as fair targets as well."
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