The world advertising industry is so ubiquitous and deeply embedded, almost subliminal in its pervasiveness and presence that its size does not really register. Its global revenue stream is about $500 Billion, give or take; about twenty times the size of the American film industry in sales.The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity showcases the best commercials of the year. Probably the largest ad festival in the world, Cannes Lions now calls itself “the International Festival of Creativity” instead of the “International Advertising Festival.” The change, the organization said, was in keeping with the festival’s evolution from the TV advertising festival of its roots toward the celebration of “creative excellence in all forms of communication” ; in other words across internet based media platforms.
The change or orientation highlights a larger problem that encompasses cashing in on new media culture and appropriating the playing field on which it is predicated on. That is, this new frontier is all taking place in private corporate spaces; there are no public public spaces on the Internet. The soon to be logos by our profile pictures on Facebook are testament to this corporate hounding, that shadows the on-line experience. In any event, The online public space was conceded and privatised from the get-go ,which is disturbing since the ad agencies are getting free state subsidized access because the development of the Internet was almost exclusively achieved with public funds.
In his Great Criticism series, Wang Guangyi brought together the opposing qualities of Socialism and consumerism to create paintings that tell a story of two worlds meeting (Saatchi Gallery, 2009). Wang appropriated imagery from socialist propaganda art and interposed images of Western advertising logos, such as Coca-Cola, on the top of the well-known Chinese iconography. In Great Criticism: Coca-Cola, Wang's most well-known and most reproduced painting, he shows three people in dress typical of the time of the Cultural Revolution towering over the Coca-Cola logo. During the era of Mao's Cultural Revolution these people would represent the way of the future. However, in this image they are not holding the hammers and tools typical of the time; instead they hold an ink pen as if they had just written out the popular logo below them (Chinese Contemporary Art, 2009).read more: http://teachartwiki.wikispaces.com/Great+Criticism+Coca-Cola--Wang+Guangyi
…Although the ads are creative; ie. Manipulative and seductively that push all the levers, it remains a lot of money invested in buying “things” as high profit, that for the most part have generic equivalents or are clearly not needed. The size of the industry indicates as well that productive capacity far exceeds consumptive necessity. And the industry itself represents the soft vanguard of the developed world’s warped gender bias, racism, militarism and consumerism. The problem is complex and profound, since the major investors in these companies are the pension funds allegedly safeguarding the savings for retirement income; there is a fear that changing corporate culture and beyond-more freedoms and liberty- will impoverish the individual.One of the appalling successes of global commerce is to expand on the older industrial age values that injustice, both social and economic is a normal, wholesome and ultimately beneficial in enhancing the value of the system.
Jonathan McIntosh, Rebellious Pixels: In late 2010, the Chevron corporation rolled out their new “We Agree” advertising campaign. I guess it was meant to present Chevron as a common sense oriented yet pragmatic and caring mega conglomerate. Needless to say it comes across as a desperate and failed attempt at human authenticity. The fail reached epic proportions when the ad campaign was leaked and punk’d by political pranksters The Yes Men even before it officially launched. The Yes Men then put out a call to artists, remixes and pranksters to create more “We Agree” spoofs. Read More: http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/2011/chevron-villains-agree-print-ad-spoofs
“It is not surprising that Coca-Cola finds itself in deep trouble in Europe. And this has to do with the company’s corporate culture. If you think about it, Coca-Cola sells sugared water. That’s all. Just sugared water. Yet it has managed to do it so skillfully for so long that it has taken on an almost mystical aura, even to its employees. Its success is due to a corporate culture that comprises superior marketing with that of aggressive legal enforcement. Coca-Cola lawyers are among the most aggressive in the world, enforcing the company’s rules on how and where Coca-Cola is sold.” Read More: http://www.globalspec.com/reference/48631/203279/criticism-of-coca-cola-s-culture a
Houpt: You can see some stark cultural differences in last year’s Cannes winners. One spot which won silver last year out of JWT Bangkok for Muang Thai life insurance showed a man getting a phone call informing him he has liver cancer. His wife and son are shown destitute. Then the narrator says: Oh, he has insurance for that condition! And they leap up in joy. Then they’re told he has something else, they fall down etc., then leap up again when they find out he’s covered for that too. It goes on a few times. It struck me as something that would never fly in North America. read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/adhocracy/from-tear-jerker-to-erotic-golf-balls/article1885559/page2/ image: http://www.jwt.com/content/424056/muang-thai-life-assurance-muang-thai-multiple-ci
At the end of the day, it all boils down to corporate power and the pursuit of profits being valued far more than the public good, media literacy or a free and open culture. The act of what T.S. Eliot called the “shoring up of fragments.” ; we cannot reconcile death since the idea of “purpose” in regard to human life is so determined by this corporate web of imagery, advertising etc. which creates the cycle of fear and loathing; or so dumbed-down there is no existential questioning. The advertising message of embracing life in the immediate, moment to moment way is a total perversion, by channeling this idea into instant gratification.
Houpt: There are many evangelists in the industry for the extraordinary changes it’s undergoing: TV is regarded as less important, and social media – in all its manifestations – is still growing. Is it odd, then, that there’s all this attention paid to the TV/film category?…
…Tony Granger: Film now has been liberated from that box in your lounge, and has been liberated from its 15-second and 30-second shackle. Film now can live on a massive screen – 3D in a cinema – or it can live on your handheld device. People watch film everywhere. This is actually making the power of storytelling through film even more powerful, right? Because if you love a piece of film, you’re going to send it on to your friends, and they’re going to send it on to their friends. And film is almost combining with word-of-mouth. When advertising first started, before it started, it was all word of mouth, and now film is actually becoming the new word-of-mouth….
"Wang's paintings force China and the rest of the world to look closely at China, its history, and what that history means in the modernized world of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Images from the Cultural Revolution were so widespread and influenced so many people in their time, whether for good or bad. And now, with the Western world knocking down China's door, images from advertisements are taking over the role of promotion (Spalding, David, 2009). Only t
And it’s brilliant that we can have an industry that still has traditional media but has the potential of creating completely new media. The iPad technology is going to change the way print behaves, too. Is print going to be film, or is it going to be a portal? [On a tablet device] you can interact with a car, you can turn it around, you can drive it, you can get inside it – and that’s all living on a print page on the iPad. So it’s an enormously exciting time, and those who are inquisitive and enthusiastic about our business are going to flourish, and those who aren’t, just aren’t going to be there.Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/adhocracy/from-tear-jerker-to-erotic-golf-balls/article1885559/
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Read More: http://www.canneslions.com/ a
"But these fatal blows to the greatness of criticism do not spell its absolute end; Benjamin tells us that criticism must change and the model for this change is the advertisement or, simply, anything that creates a "perceived contact with things." Like advertising, criticism must touch and fascinate readers: because they are touched by it, blown away by it, or simply "warmed by the subject," people desire it. In a more theoretical sense, Benjamin tells us that criticism, like advertising, should affect the reader with visceral projections of "fragmented" intensity which circumvent any form of contemplation. This intensity, something like a "burst of energy," affects the very life of the subject. " read more: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=506 image: http://chevronthinkswerestupid.org/gallery
Frank Rose: But seeing new media as a threat–that’s a pattern we fall into again and again. Now it’s video games and the Internet. Before that it was TV, and before that it was the movies, and a couple hundred years ago it was serial fiction and people like Dickens. The only constant is that whatever is new is threatening. And usually it’s considered threatening because it’s too immersive–you could get lost in it. But that’s exactly what fiction is. If it’s good enough, people are going to want to inhabit it.
Henry Jenkins: You argue that the digital world has created an “authorship crisis.” What do you mean? How are audiences and producers responding to this crisis? Read More: http://www.henryjenkins.org/
With a certain amount of confusion, I think. It’s certainly understandable. We’ve spent the last hundred-plus years with a strict delineation between author and audience–you read a book, you watch a movie, and that’s it. You’re a consumer. We came to think of this as the natural order of things, but in fact it was just a function of the limitations of our technology. Mass media, which is the only media we’ve ever known until now, had no mechanism for participation and only very limited, after-the-fact mechanisms for feedback. But there was nothing natural about that. That’s why you had stuff like fan fiction springing up in the shadows, mostly out of sight of the legal operatives whose job was to enforce this regime….
"Cleanliness is one area with which guys are notorious for needing some help. AXE, a leader in men’s grooming, created a new video to give guys some helpful hints on the best way to keep all of their parts clean. The AXE “Cleans Your Balls” video, starring Jaime Pressly as fictional tennis star, Monica Blake, humorously highlights the cleaning power of the improved AXE Detailer Shower Tool and the importance of maintaining clean equipment. “I had a blast working with AXE on this video,” said Jaime Pressly. "The comedic undertones were hilarious and there were definitely a few laugh-out-loud moments on set, where I thought to myself … ‘only AXE.’” To celebrate the launch of this new video and the updated Detailer, AXE held the AXECYB.com launch party, hosted by Khloe Kardashian Odom, at the Sky Lodge in Park City, UT during Sundance. Celebrities from film, television and music, including Malin Akerman, Adrien Brody, Wilmer Valderrama and Stephanie Pratt came out to the hottest party at Sundance to screen the AXE “Cleans Your Balls” video and enjoyed special performances by DJ Steve Aoki ..." read more: http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/axe/42092/
Before culture became a consumable, it was something people shared. The problem is, that was so long ago we’ve forgotten how to do it. So when I talk about participatory storytelling, a lot of people think I mean choose-your-own-ending or something like that. Actually, that’s not what I mean at all. I see branching storylines as a really primitive mechanism. Giving people a say in the story isn’t as simplistic as letting them decide what happens next–A, B, or C.
But what does it mean, exactly? That’s what everybody’s trying to figure out. Technology has finally created a mechanism for people to have a voice, but authors are still working out how to deal with it. Read More: http://www.henryjenkins.org/
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