A beer poster on a shop outside of Kigali

The most prevalent of these signs is the blue-hued Primus beer postings, which frequent the storefronts — usually tacked onto the side, next to the door. Their informal treatment makes their display feel compulsory — approximating how a NYC restaurant might treat a department of health certificate. In the western city, the arrangement of ads is much more careful…and even hierarchical (it wouldn’t be amiss to say that they are arranged by money more than they are arranged by people; i.e. the most visible positioning = the most expensive slot.)  In this context, dispassion in arrangement is reserved for the strictly obligatory: the no smoking sign, the choking safety poster, the restroom sign. Refreshingly, all signs seem to get the same treatment in Rwanda.

The Primus beer signs in Rwanda are a strange player here. The sole vestige of western ad aesthetics complete with logotype, spot colors, copyright notice (all alien in this agrarian culture) — they are also utilitarian objects, dutifully pointing to the beer. “The beer is HERE!” This indexical function is immediately at odds with the western advertising’s tendency to disembody the brand from the object. Oftentimes, a NYC billboard will advertise a product that is practically unattainable in terms of the reasonable logistic measures. (Those showy 2003 Target billboards come to mind: the company consumed Times Square with ads before a store was open anywhere near Manhattan…much to popular annoyance.) The Primus ads sit [logically] at the nexus of consumer and beer, brand and product.

How does such a practical arrangement of signage become the exception rather than the rule? Why do these beer signs seem so weird?? For a better answer than can be provided here, I recommend looking at Susan Sontag’s essay, Posters: Advertisement, Art, Political Artifact, Commodity. In this 1970 essay, Sontag examines the assorted postings that cover the western city — distinguishing between the advertisement poster and the public notice.  While “posters” historically arose out of the tradition of the public notice, she considers them notably distinct in “presupposing the modern concept of the public – in which members of society are defined as spectators or consumers.”  Posters actively compete for the consumer: “the values of the poster are first those of ‘appeal’, and only second of information” while public notices “inform” – ostensibly conveying the straight facts on good authority.  The beer posters share qualities of each communication method- straddling Sontag’s definitions (in utilitarian defiance of western ad usage.) Although meant to stimulate commerce (or at least enable it) Rwandan shopkeeps’ deadpan use of the posters to point to the beer makes them function like an informative public notice — the tone of the communication is more akin to signage than appeal. The proximity of the notice to the goods bridges the brand to a physical product. It is a public notice… one that happens to lack the expected civic dimension and instead points to beer.

We drive for miles through farm villages without any signage at all – not even beer posters.  At set intervals, a different type of signage emerges as a repeating motif. Sober reminders of the 1994 genocide appear on the side of the road – rendered in uniform block-lettered hand-painted type on standard white posts.  Each sign shows a pair of hands in repose with text that bears the general message of “Genocide: Never let it happen again” (as roughly translated by our driver.) Here is the proper, traditional public notice: the sign with a civic message to a country which has literally hit the reset button on what “civic” engagement means.

To say that Rwandans had no other choice is an understatement — the country’s lone museum, the Genocide Museum, chronicles the ruin of a nation in horrifying detail. However, to say that they’ve had no choice also undermines the immense philosophical and political accomplishments of the people. It is impressive — even to the casual observer. One instantly picks up on a sense of “mass cooperation”: drivers yield to cars and pedestrians, strangers engage in polite conversation, Kigali residents excitedly discuss the city’s planned projects as if they were their own. Our driver enthusiastically chats with us about education reform, family planning initiatives, rural housing planning, urban street planning, and the political empowerment of women. There is virtually no crime to speak of. Everyone — right up to the nation’s president— is required to sweep their street once a month. They have more women in their Parliament than Sweden. Fifteen years after hitting “reset”, Rwanda is a nation of people wholly dedicated to civic enrichment — they are busy designing their future through policy.

The genocide street signs stand as a reminder of this sentiment — the genocide was a beginning for unity, rather than an end. Rather than serving as an authoritative mandate from an aloof government, its interpretation emanates from the people. It is the people’s sign, a symbol of unity. This is a public-notice-as-monument — reminding Rwanda’s public of their accomplishments and setting the tone for the new generation. The sign’s deadpan format belies the over-arching convictions of a nation singularly fixated on the future.

A more western ad campaign inside the capital city of Kigali…for cooking oil

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1. James Howard Kunstler on Public Space
2. Poster Boy; NYPD You’ve Got The Wrong Man!
3. Public Ad Campaign: Newest PAC Work

It was a special introductory offer. Normally it is $12.95 per flight, and I assume there is a monthly price as well for the permanently plane bound business travelers, and once they have your information, how hard is it to cancel or get out of the system. The salesman’s aggressiveness couched in friendliness had all the markings of classic corporate addiction creation. It was not unlike the real drug dealer, for whom the first hit is always on the house. It is a standard business strategy, but it doesn’t make it any less repulsive. Just remember AOL. Ever try to use their introductory offer, and then cancel after that free month, or maybe even a few more months; they practically would not let you. And then they call you and call you to get you to resume service

I knew almost immediately that I wouldn’t use the service; i felt like the corporate dealer was trying to make a user out of me, plus excessive registration processes repulse me, and even my junk email account is beginning to get overloaded. Also it was a 9AM flight, and I had only slept 5 hours. So I slept the first four hours, and woke up surrounded by people doing the same meaningless things that the internet is so useful for. I am pinned in by a guy in a speedy round of iPhone IM’ing that seems to never stop (his active arm needs room and he keeps elbowing me in the side), a guy who is playing WoW, and exhibiting all the signs of that form of addiction (though doesn’t he know that 5 hours is not long enough for a meaningful quest!), and a guy who is intently looking at something, though I can’t tell what.

I’m not about to argue that there is something sacred about plane travel, or that it is peaceful in any way, but it was one of the places where we were temporarily removed from the constant daily bombardment of information. If only for two or five or twelve hours, we did not see any advertisements, did not have to respond to urgent emails in our inbox, could not waste our time IM’ing or obsessively browsing eBay. This border has progressively deteriorated, most notably with the introduction of personal TV screens on the back of each seat, which allow a flight of people to all watch their choice of hundreds of stations. In my experience only two thirds of these screens actually turn off, the others you dim down to a lower setting but they will not turn off completely.

There is a new bus service out of New York that has Wifi on all their busses. I like their busses not primarily for the wifi, but because the entire experience is an attempt to upgrade the bus riding experience. They are direct busses to Boston, Philadelphia, etc, with new clean seats, and the entire bus doesn’t smell like urine, and/or McDonalds. I have used the WiFi on those busses, but I like the power jack for every seat as much as the wifi.

But there is something different about the experience of flying pre-wifi and the experience of riding a bus pre-wifi. The airplane was always a place of continuous white noise from the ventilation, the hushed conversations, and the hum of the engines. It was almost like being crammed into a tiny seat at a library with a really really loud air conditioning system. Buses were more like being at a really loud restaurant full of people whose conversations you didn’t want to overhear; people talking way too loudly into their cell phones, having arguments with the person they were sitting with, or listening to music too loud so the sound escapes their cheap earbuds and leaks into the rest of the space. While the introduction of wifi has taken away one space that was free of perma-communication, it has actually tamed the far more obnoxious perma-communication on the bus.

Cell phones ringing on subway trains have to be the strangest rupture created by the growing reach of wireless networks. There are certain subway stations in New York that are close enough to the ground that they get reception. It changes from provider to provider, but I have had my phone ring, or seen other peoples phones ring in a number of stations. The ones that are most prevalent are Atlantic Pacific and Nevins Street on the 2/3 line, and Bleecker on the 6 line. There are others, but these are the ones that have stuck in my memory. The 2/3 platform at Atlantic Pacific has such good reception that I often will call my parents on the west coast from the platform as a way to pass the time waiting for late night transfers.

This all sounds benign, and mildly beneficial, but the rupture comes when the train is moving. When you pull into Atlantic Pacific, the door open and close, and right as the train starts moving someone’s phone rings. Loudly. They are startled themselves, and scramble to find it. At best they can open the phone and bark out a quick “I’m on the train! Going to lose reception. Call you back” as the train returns to the tunnel and the line goes dead.

A similar situation happens on the B/Q lines when they cross the Manhattan bridge. There is the surprise call phenomenon, but there is also this mass rush to check voicemail, or txt msgs. And on the evening commute home a very large percentage of the riders all pop open their phones and call their spouses, partners, children to let them know “I’m on the bridge, i’ll be home in…” whatever time corresponds to how many stops they have left.

My understanding is that the reason you are not allowed to talk on your cell phone during an airplane flight has nothing to do with safety and pilot/ground communications. My understanding is that you are either way too high to get a signal, so it is pointless, or when you are close enough to get a signal, during takeoff and landing, the plane is moving so fast that you are moving from cell tower to cell tower so quickly that it overloads the system. Your phone is asking the next tower to make a connection before it has even heard back from the last tower that it is closing that connection. Your phone does this regardless of whether you are actively talking. You can never maintain a connection long enough to actually have a conversation, and take this pattern and multiply it by a plane full of cellphones and multiply that by the constant flow of planes taking off and landing, and you get the makings of an unintentional Denial Of Service attack.

Add into this mix the TV/advertisement screens inside and outside the NYC cabs, the LED screens on subway stations, the LED billboards that have to increase driver crash rates, the cell phones and texting that do increase driver crash rates, in-dash automobile pseudo-computers, and the list goes on.

We are flying over Lake Tahoe, and will start the landing process soon, so I will have to turn off my computer. My stomach is grumbling despite the fact that I made my lunch for the flight, now that they no longer serve even pretzels without a price. Flying has never been a true pleasure. My high school physics teacher repeatedly bemoaned the rise of the casual flyer who did not get dressed up for the event. But even in the era that people got dressed up for the special occasion, it wasn’t because flying was peaceful, or fun. It was just one of the last spaces that was outside of the communication network.

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1. The next frontier for ads – Your geometry quiz

Strange Maps, via The Plank:

This map, used in a Mexican ad campaign, shows what the US-Mexican border would look like in an ‘absolut’ (i.e. perfect) world: a large part of the US’s west is annexed to Mexico.

Needless to say this map made its way to ‘El Norte’, annoying and upsetting many Americans – even leading to calls for a boycott of the Swedish-made vodka. What must be particularly annoying is that this map has some basis in fact.

The Plank also points to the reaction of someone named Michelle Malkin:

The advertising firm that created the Absolut Reconquista ad is Teran/TBWA. Teran is based in Mexico City. The company’s website boasts a pretentious statement of philosophy advocating “disruption” as a “tool for change” and “agent of growth.” (Scroll your mouse over the little buttons in the upper-right margin.) The firm advocates “overturning assumptions and prejudices that get in the way of imagining new possibilities and visionary ideas that help create a larger share of the future.”

Translation: The company advocates overturning borders that get in the way of imagining new maps of North America that help Mexico create a larger share of the continent.

Well. Two things.

First: An ad agency with a pretentious mission statement full of doublespeak clichés about change and disruption? No way! Say it isn’t so! That’s never happened before!

Second: Like every other agency, what these marketing pros “advocate” is getting paid by their clients. The way they get paid by their clients is to get their clients talked about and noticed. And that was Absolut-ly the goal here. Ad agencies don’t have a political motive. They have a profit motive.

Lifted entirely from R. Walker’s Murketing blog. (Thanks Rob!)

No related posts.

From IllegalSigns.CA:

Humber College’s Convergence Magazine has published this article [PDF] about IllegalSigns.ca. It breaks a bit of new ground with the following quotes:

“The billboard lobby is a very powerful lobby,they do a lot of schmoozing of councilors,” concedes Toronto Councillor Howard Moscoe. “The billboard industry makes millions and millions of dollars off their affairs and can afford to hire people to lobby for them. Of course, councillors, we’re supposed to be immune from all that.”

“It’s turned the issue into a circus and has reduced the Toronto-East York community council into a council with a fetish about signs, rather than one dealing with development and other issues that are far more important than signs,” says Toronto City Councillor Kyle Rae.

Related posts:

1. IllegalSigns.CA, we love you.
2. Article in Columbus Dispatch
3. With billboards, cities are facing the digital decision

The takeover of public space for commercial promotion may be offensive, but it is usually legal. Occasionally, however, it is not. On Friday, March 14, it bordered on the criminal.

That’s where I come in. I was the victim.

As a Times reporter, I tend to focus quickly on illegal marketing campaigns…. So I sensed a story on the evening of the 14th, when I came across two or three young men stapling posters for a new hip-hop album to lampposts, traffic signs and sidewalk scaffolding on Broadway, between 21st and 22nd Streets.

It is unlawful, the city’s administrative code says, for anyone to “attach or affix by any means whatsoever any handbill, poster, notice, sign” on lampposts, traffic signs and sign poles or “other such item or structure in any street.” signsThe sign-hanging team would place stacks of posters in wastebaskets at the street corners, then draw from that supply to cover nearby street fixtures.

I began photographing the poster operation. After about two minutes, one man asked me why I was taking pictures. “Because what you’re doing is illegal,” I replied. He answered, “Breaking cameras is illegal, too, but if you don’t stop taking pictures, I’ll break your camera.” He modified “camera” with an adjective I am not permitted to repeat here. I identified myself as a reporter from The Times. “I’ll break your camera,” he said, using that adjective again, “and you can print that in your paper.”

I distinctly remember thinking, “No, I can’t.” Then, rather than antagonize him further, I started taking pictures of the poster-covered scaffold pipes across Broadway.

The approach came so swiftly, I cannot even say whether it was from in front or behind. But I do remember a furious face inches away from mine as the man said he had warned me not to take any more pictures. The next few minutes are — as they say — a blur. I was suddenly on my back on the sidewalk, near the curb, trying to hold on to my camera and fend off my assailant, with my right leg pressed against his chest.

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Read more…Illegal Signs and a Reporters Broken Camera – City Room – Metro – New York Times Blog

Note: Not to discourage you from trying to stop illegal advertising as it happens. Remember, when you see illegal ads call 311, if you see it happening in progress, call 911. It might seem extreme, but the laws for graffiti are extreme.

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1. Sáo Paulo Bans Outdoor Advertising in 2007
2. NY Times on Saturation Advertising
3. NYT: Pay Phones Turned Mini-Billboards

Two Sundays ago, Bryan posted this photo and complained about all the ACC logos visible therein. This led to a lengthy back-and-forth in the comments section about logo creep — mostly about swooshes and other maker’s marks, not about conference logos. The discussion, which I did not take part in (I was at a bar watching football and caught up on the comments later), featured several arguments and analogies that I hear again and again regarding logo creep — arguments that are, frankly, way off-base. Some similar arguments came up yesterday regarding Michael Jordan’s taped-over Adidas logo.

As you all know, I hate logo creep and see it as a symptom of a much bigger problem (i.e., the encroachment of advertising into public space). I know some of you feel differently, and I also know that to a certain extent this is generational: I grew up in an era when there were no manufacturer’s logos on uniforms; many of you have grown up in an era when such logos are ubiquitous. But even if we disagree on whether logo creep is a problem, we can at least try to keep the debate on a logical plane and not make straw man arguments or apples/oranges comparisons.

With that in mind, I’m going to try to address many of the arguments that came up two Sundays ago, along with some other arguments I frequently hear. I know some of you are tired of this topic, but you’ll have to deal with it for one more day — I wanted to get all my thoughts on the matter in one place, and that place is here.

Let’s start with a simple premise that I think everyone here can agree with: Uniforms are special. They serve as the primary bond between fan and team. Players come and go, yet we keep rooting for (or against) that uniform, no matter who wears it. Jerry Seinfeld described this as “rooting for laundry”; I go further and say it’s a unique form of brand loyalty. Elsewhere on the consumer landscape, your loyalty to a brand is at least somewhat dependant on the content and quality of that brand — it has to taste good, or function well, or whatever. If the content changes, your loyalty will probably change too (that’s what the Coke execs learned with the New Coke debacle). But with sports, the content of a team, and the quality of that content, is changing all the time, yet we remain loyal to that logo, those colors, that uniform.

Just to make the point in a more specific way: Everyone here knows that I love the Mets and hate the Yankees. But if those two rosters were traded for each other today — straight up, 25 guys for 25 guys — who would I root for tomorrow? It’s a no-brainer: I’d root for the guys wearing the Mets uniforms, even if I hated them the day before. That, my friends, is a very special and unique bond. And that’s ultimately why most of us are here at this site to begin with.

Personally, I feel that cluttering up the fan/team bond with advertising logos — whether it’s a Nike swoosh, a McDonald’s patch, or a big soccer sponsorship insignia — cheapens and sullies that bond. It diminishes the team and, by extension, all of us. You may disagree. Let’s discuss…

Look, of course companies are gonna put their logos on the uniforms they make. Duh, it’s called marketing.
Yes, we all know it’s called marketing. The question isn’t about why they do it; the question is whether there are some places — like, say, on a uniform — where marketing is inappropriate.

But it is appropriate on a uniform. It makes sense for a company to put its logo on the clothing it makes. They’d be stupid not to do it.
Take a look at your feet right now. Unless you’re wearing sneakers, I’m willing to bet that there are no logos on your footwear. There are probably no visible logos on your shirt or sweater, either. If you’re wearing a tie, there’s almost certainly no visible logo on that. Are the manufacturers of those products stupid?

More to the point, look at any pre-1990 major-level sports photo. You won’t see any manufacturers’ logos there, either. Were Spalding, Wilson, and Rawlings all stupid for decades, and then they suddenly wised up in the 1990s? Or did the sportswear industry decide to push the boundaries to see how much advertising they could push into the public eye?

While we’re at it, let’s look at some non-sports uniforms, like the ones being worn by UPS deliverymen, cops, airline pilots, or Burger King employees. See any manufacturers’ logos on any of those?

Look, a sports uniform is a logo, and it already stands for a brand — the brand of the team that wears it. The uni manufacturer is simply a vendor providing a product to a client. The client (i.e., the team) is what’s important, not the vendor.

Here’s another way to look at it: Some company made the buttons on the uniform, and another company made the zippers, and some mill made the fabric, and another mill made the thread, and some sewing shop stitched all the components together. But you don’t see all their logos on the uniform, right? Of course not — what matters is the end-product brand, not all the little sub-contracted components. And in the case of a uniform, the end-product brand is the team.

Saying that the Reebok logo shouldn’t appear on, say, the Cowboys’ football uniform is like saying a car company shouldn’t put its logo on a car that it makes.
No, that’s a poor analogy. Let’s take, for example, the Ford Focus. The brand that it stands for is, y’know, the Ford Focus, so of course Ford is gonna put their name on it. But the Cowboys uniform stands for the Dallas Cowboys — it has nothing to do with Reebok. (In fact, the Cowboys’ uniform has been largely unchanged for decades, so what exactly is the difference between their uniform now, when it has the Reebok logo on the sleeve, versus 10 years ago, when it had the Nike swoosh on the sleeve? Nothing, except for the change in logos. In short, a different company bought advertising space on the jersey.)

Getting back to the car analogy: What if the steel mill that produced the steel for the Focus insisted that its logo be visible on all of the car’s doors? And what if the manufacturer of every other component of the car did the same? That’s the proper analogy — that would be the automotive equivalent of logo creep. But of course those companies don’t put their logos all over a car, nor would it be appropriate for them to do so.

Wait a minute, my car has Firestone tires and AC sparkplugs, and those logos are visible.
But those are items that you, the driver, can switch out and replace with other brands — they’re more akin to a fielder’s glove or a goalie’s pads. They’re equipment, which can be purchased from a variety of sources, not part of the car’s “uniform.” I’ve never had a problem with logos on equipment, because equipment is a matter of personal choice, not team uniformity.

OK, maybe you have a point when a company is just the latest manufacturer to produce an old, pre-existing design. But in a lot of cases, the sportswear companies are actually creating the designs we see on the field. Why shouldn’t they take credit for that in a visible way?
Do you know who designed the chair you’re sitting in right now? Or the building where that chair is situated? Or any of the hundreds of objects with which you interact on a daily basis? For better or worse, designers in our culture generally don’t get to sign their work — they, like the manufacturers they work for, are simply vendors supplying a service for a client.

Even if you think designers should get visible credit (an argument that I agree has some merit, but one that we’ll save for another day), that doesn’t really change the parameters of the logo creep debate as it applies to uniforms. Small example: Todd Radom designed the Anaheim Angels’ uniforms — so should his logo or initials be on the sleeve? I think most of us (maybe even Todd) would agree that the answer is no. And if that’s the case, then why should a uniform designed by Nike carry a swoosh?

Look, sports is all about business now, so logo creep is just part of the deal.
Romantic nostalgia aside, sports has always been a business. You think Walter O’Malley wasn’t a businessman? Or Calvin Griffith? Or Charles Comiskey? In fact, the team owners from that era were arguably more revenue-obsessed than today’s owners, because most of them had no other business holdings besides their teams, while many of today’s owners got wealthy in other industries and then bought a team as a vanity project. So while the dollar amounts may be bigger today, it’s not as though sports has suddenly morphed into a business after spending generations functioning as something else.

Anyway, the “It’s just business” argument misses the larger point: Yes, sports teams are business entities, but I would argue, strongly, that they’re also civic entities — that’s why we care about them so much! They carry the name of our cities and states, we rally around them, we live and die with them. Moreover, most of them have gotten big tax breaks and/or play in facilities that were built with public money, and many college and most high school teams represent public scholastic institutions, so the public has a stake in their behavior — a stake that goes beyond the bottom line of the accounting ledger. In short: I don’t want to see my team, in which I have a huge emotional investment, selling out part of its uniform to an advertiser. These teams already make tons of money — there’s a big difference between business and greed.

How can you tell a team, or a league, or anyone else, not to capitalize on a potential revenue stream? That’s just common sense, plus it’s the American way.
Just because you can sell something, that doesn’t mean you should sell it. You could make a lot of money selling a kidney, putting your family’s heirloom silverware up for auction on eBay, or pimping out your sister, but that doesn’t mean any of those things is a good idea. There are certain things that we, as a society, have said are not for sale. Remember the outcry when MLB wanted to put Spider-Man 2 ads on the bases a few years back? Personally, I see little difference between that and a swoosh on a uniform sleeve, although I realize many fans don’t see those as comparable examples.

In the larger sense, the “It’s just business” argument essentially boils down every human interaction to its economic value, which is both reductive and offensive. The things we value most highly — love, faith, art, genius, charity, friendship, family, nature, community, etc. — all transcend monetary issues. In fact, that’s a big part of why we value them so highly. I believe the fan/team relationship, as symbolized by the uniform, should fall into that category too.

As for the “American way” argument, putting ad logos on uniforms is actually the European way. We’ve mostly avoided that here in America, except for manufacturer’s marks. I wish we could avoid those, too.

Well, good for you, Mr. Holier Than Thou, but the horse is already out of the barn. Look around you — you’ve lost the argument. Logo creep is everywhere in sports. Give it up already!
First of all, it’s not everywhere. There are no manufacturer’s logos on NBA uniforms (to David Stern’s everlasting credit), or on college basketball jerseys, or on MLB caps, or on socks in any of the four major pro leagues, and I want to make sure those situations stay that way. Moreover, I want to raise awareness about the encroachment of advertising in places where I don’t think it belongs. Even if it’s too late to keep the Majestic logo off of a baseball uniform, I hope it’s not too late to make sure a MasterCard sleeve patch never appears there. And it’s never too late to make people think a bit harder about what they see during a sporting event — that’s what Uni Watch is all about.

Well, it’s fine for you to say a team shouldn’t maximize its revenue. But Nike gives college athletic departments a lot of money in return for all those swooshes, and that money goes a long way toward helping all sorts of student athletes. If they turn down that money, how are you gonna replace it? Are you gonna write a big check yourself?
I’m not going to get into a long discussion over the cesspool of money that characterizes so much of college sports, but the above-stated argument makes two major suppositions: (1) Major funding for college athletics is an entitlement, and (2) the athletic department is essentially for sale to the highest bidder. I reject both of these notions.

But for the sake of argument, let’s go along with the idea that big money for college athletics is a good thing. Now, we both know that Nike isn’t giving out all that money from the goodness of their hearts — they’re doing it because they think they’ll get a good return on that investment, which means it’s essentially dirty money. By way of analogy, let’s say American Express offered to give the state of Illinois a huge sum of money targeted for the state’s school system — but in return, the AmEx logo would have to be printed on the statehouse dome, AmEx ads would have to be posted throughout state facilities, and the state itself would have to be renamed “American Express Presents Illinois.” Would that be a good idea? Not to me, no matter how much money they were offering. And if you think that hypothetical example is ridiculous, ask yourself how ridiculous “the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl” and “the FedEx Orange Bowl” would have sounded 15 years ago.

I’m sick of all this corporate-bashing — you just hate brands and products and capitalism and consumerism.
If you knew anything about my pre-Uni Watch writing, you’d know that I’m fascinated by consumer culture. Hell, I have an iconic product tattooed on my right arm. Again, my problem isn’t with consumerism per se — it’s with consumerism run amok. We may all have different ideas of what “run amok” means, but to me it means, among other things, a Nike logo on a uniform sleeve. And it certainly means MJ having to tape over the Adidas logo on his practice jersey.

You’re such a hypocrite. If you hate logos so much, why do you slap the Uni Watch logo on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and lots of other merchandise?
Yes, I put my logo on T-shirts, just like the Mets put their logo on T-shirts, and Nike puts a giant swoosh on T-shirts. I have no problem with any of that — I just don’t want a swoosh and a Mets logo together on the same shirt, because they have nothing to do with each other. I’m not taking issue with marketing per se — my gripe is about marketing in inappropriate places, like on a uniform.

Yeah, but you’re still a big phony, because the Google logo appears all over the Uni Watch home page. Now there’s some logo creep!
Actually, quite a few logos appear on the Uni Watch home page. That’s advertising for ya. Publications and web sites are traditional and appropriate places for ads to appear — that’s how publications and web sites stay in business (especially web sites, since most of them — including this one — give away their content for free, as opposed to most publications, which have a cover price). One more time: I’m not opposed to advertising and marketing per se — I’m simply opposed to them in places where I feel they don’t belong. I think a team’s uniform is one of those places.

You know, I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I’m sick of hearing about it. I love sports, I love uniforms, and I want to enjoy them without thinking too hard about any of this stuff.

I’m actually more sympathetic to this point of view than you might expect. I think we all have areas where we’d rather have blinders on and ignore troubling information because it gets in the way of our enjoyment. Case in point: I love animals, but I also love eating meat. When I hear vegetarians talking about the deplorable conditions in cattle feedlots and such, I tend to tune it out — not because I think they’re wrong, but because I want to keep enjoying my steak without wrestling too hard with any ethical and moral implications. This is, as Al Gore puts it, an inconvenient truth.

So I understand that I may come across as a crank regarding this issue. And really, I’m not trying to ruin your good time — it’s just something I happen to feel strongly about. And that feeling comes from the same place as the rest of Uni Watch.

No related posts.

It’s been a while since we checked in on the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, but I would feel remiss in not pointing out the new round of criticism its getting.

If you haven’t seen them, the Dove commercials are as genius as they are insidious (see Onslaught and Evolution, for instance). As the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood pointed out last month, Dove is owned by Unilever, which also produces Axe body spray and other personal hygiene products. So while the makers of Dove attack advertising that exploits female bodies, they’re producing scores of those ads at the very same time. The Axe campaign, however, is particularly obnoxious. As media literacy consultant Bob McCannon has said:

In all my years of doing school workshops, I have never seen anything like the reaction of middle and high school kids. Almost ALL (no exaggeration) know the words to the Axe song, “Bom Chicka Wah Wah,” by heart and sing it immediately and enthusiastically with the video, and most of them have been to the Axe “spanking vixens” site.

Now someone has re-edited Dove’s latest commercial—replacing bikini bunnies from generic sources with those from Axe commercials—to call attention to Unilever’s hypocrisy. See A Message from Unilever. With luck, word will get around to all of those middle and high school teachers using the Dove spots as media literacy. The real lesson here is not that Dove supports “real beauty” but that corporations will say anything—even ostensibly critical things—to sell their crap.

Related posts:

1. How Advertising Will Undo Itself (scenario one)
2. George Saunders on Stay Free!

Since being so busy, some bits of relevant news have slipped by. Here’s a few to hold you over, with more to come in the near future…

Lobbying to Legalize Advertising A year ago the Municipal Art Society and other community groups began to pressure the New York Department of Buildings to enforce existing laws that ban advertising on scaffolding construction sheds and construction sites. After realizing the fine/profit ratio was out of proportion, the DoB physically removed much of the illegal advertising.

An article in this weeks Village Voice explains that the DoB actually paid the advertisers to remove their own illegal ads. Also in the article: Outdoor Advertisers are heavily lobbying Melinda Katz, a Queens City Council member and candidate for City Comptroller, who has written legislation to make advertising on construction sheds legal. Worth reading.

By the way, Queens is home to another corrupt politician, showboat legislator, Peter Vallone Jr., who angles for votes by vilifying graffiti and advocating for disproportionate fines and jail time for writers. Queens, where’s the justice?

Locked Into A Bad Lease Earlier this year two highway sized billboards were erected, one on top of the other, entering Greenwich Village in Manhattan. They reach higher than 3 stories, loom over housing, and have generally not been well received in the neighborhood. In a NY Times article, the landlord who had them installed expressed regrets:

”I personally want to unequivocally apologize for having made the decision to install the billboards,” he said in the statement. ”It was a business decision made without fully envisioning the sheer size of the signage and without understanding the emotional impact it would trigger.” Mr. Achenbaum added, however, that he could not remove the billboards because he was ”bound to a long-term lease” with Sign In Properties, a signage company, for 20 years. Ms. Cohen added that if the hotel broke the lease, it would be contractually obligated to pay Sign In the projected lifetime revenue of the billboard, which she said would be a ”multimillion-dollar sum,” as well as the cost of the structure. In his statement, Mr. Achenbaum also said that to make amends, he had offered to let artists display their work on the back of the billboards in the future, and to give those artists $5,000 grants. The program has not begun yet, according to Ms. Cohen, because Mr. Achenbaum must first secure city permission to display the works.

Ouch, that’s some lease. So the shortsighted landlord, thoughts clouded by greed, has had a change of heart. That’s nice. Sorta.

Related posts:

1. What advertisers pay to catch your wandering eye
2. Sáo Paulo Bans Outdoor Advertising in 2007
3. NY Dept. of Buildings Strikes Back!

3M, which remains the largest producer of the material, uses an adhesive similar to the one on its Post-it notes, enabling installers to place vinyl strips on a vehicle that do not stick until pressure is applied. The material is popular for wrapping racecars, helicopters, planes, boats and even buildings. Far from hurting the paint job, the wrap preserves it. The company either gives its brand ambassadors free cars or, more often, pays them as much as $800 a month. In the last seven years, FreeCar Media has hired about 7,000 motorists, who are instructed to park outside whenever possible, refrain from smoking, littering or swearing in their vehicle, and to attend a monthly influencer event where they hand out samples or coupons. They also have to send reports frequently with photographs to show where their cars have been.

Of course, if you’re driving a mobile billboard, you are a de-facto ambassador of the company brand. So they also police their drivers behavior.

People whose cars were wrapped with ads for two Coca-Cola products — Planet Java, a bottled coffee, and Vault, an energy drink — were cautioned against sipping Pepsi products behind the wheel. Nor could they park at restaurant chains like KFC or Pizza Hut that serve Pepsi exclusively, Mr. Livingston said. “We weren’t allowed to have alcohol in or around the car, or use profanity,” said Mr. Harris, who now lives in Brooklyn and is a few credits shy of a degree in advertising. “When you’re out, you’re supposed to be representing the brand.”

The whole thing raises all kinds of alarm bells. I suppose my biggest concern would be the evasion of regulation. The amount of billboards on the roadways is tightly regulated, and this seems like a way to get around that. This should be regulated from the outset as billboards are.

Related posts:

1. Living Billboards
2. NYT: Pay Phones Turned Mini-Billboards
3. Sáo Paulo Bans Outdoor Advertising in 2007

There Are 12 Kinds of Ads in the World Resist them all! In 1978, Donald Gunn was a creative director for the advertising agency Leo Burnett. Though his position implied expertise, Gunn felt he was often just throwing darts—relying on inspiration and luck (instead of proven formulas) to make great ads. So, he decided to inject some analytical rigor into the process: He took a yearlong sabbatical, studied the best TV ads he could find, and looked for elemental patterns. After much research, Gunn determined that nearly all good ads fall into one of 12 categories—or “master formats,” in his words. At last year’s Clio Awards, I saw Gunn give a lecture about these formats (using ads mostly from the ’70s and ’80s as examples), and I was fascinated by his theory. I soon found myself categorizing every ad I saw on TV. It was a revelation: The curtain had been pulled back on all those sly sales tactics at the heart of persuasive advertising. This slide show presents some recent ads exemplifying each of Gunn’s 12 basic categories. With a little practice, you, too, will be ticking off the master formats during commercial breaks.

Check out the story at Slate to see the slideshow.

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1. World’s Smallest Advert Subvert
2. Ads on Barf Bags
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