Terracycle upcycles consumer waste into new salable goods. They primarily harvest their raw material from schoolchildren as part of charity drives, though they are now placing recycling stations at certain Walmart stores. At the Walmart centers they pay 3 cents per piece, but only for a narrow range of product packaging; the website supports a wider range of recyclables.

The spirit of the project is wonderful, but the problem is that it creates zombie advertising and branding for these undead consumer objects. Which is actually not all that surprising, as the Walmart program is sponsored by the very brands whose packaging are featured in the upcycled goods.

Now you can send your children to school with Capri Sun drinks, Lunchables, and Oreos in their Capri Sun lunchbox, and feel really good about returning the packages to Walmart, where you can buy more of the same processed food to send your child to school with. Capri Sun, Lunchables, Oreos, et al certainly feel really good about the branding opportunity, as do the big box retailers who are are partnered in the program as well.

Despite my cynicism about sponsorship and branding, the program is pretty incredible in the interpersonal organization that it has created, and the logistical barriers that it has overcome. The mechanism that it has put in place can hopefully be used to produce tools or goods whose central purpose is not advertising and branding. It seems that some of the products they are making either come from unbranded raw materials like film strips and bike chains, or they are using the plain inside surface of the packaging. These are more like Freitag bags. Not only are this last group of upcycled goods unbranded, they are actually much nicer looking and much more likely to be actually used.

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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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This is 16 minutes long animated film of logos and and advertising characters produced by a serious 3D house in France, and nominated for an Oscar, but yet in dire threat of lawsuits for use of corporate logos. At least this is according to the blogs, which, are… well… contradictory. But it is a hell of a great 13 minutes. Great villains, chase scenes, and a surreal vision of contemporary corporate life. It helps if you know Los Angeles.

Great fun. Sad truths. Fantastical visions.

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Luckily, I watched the Olympics twice and easily discovered a festering sore– Nike’s campaign, who had the clever idea to protect their investments by utilizing the DRAMA and SUFFERING of losing athletes. Because really, do we identify more with Jackie Joyner Kersee, or Marion Jones? Where was Nike when I was giving mock interviews in rollerblades in my garage at age 11? I definitely sucked at sports– the ultimate underdog! I would have been perfect!

Apparently the campaign wasn’t necessarily meant to be like this. It was a strategy to save face in case any of their endorsed athletes disappointed them. Choosing athletes as product pushers is a risky move… remember reebok’s “Dan and Dave” campaign, where, oops! Dan didn’t qualify for the olympics five weeks before the event. Ouch.

But capitalizing off of anyone’s humiliation or embarassment is bound to bite you in the ass. Nike, in the ad campaign, turned out to be the biggest loser– because they made some really uncute decisions when an anonymous blogger started a rumor:

Liu Xiang, the Chinese track and fielder who did not compete “because of an injury,” was pushed out because Nike didn’t want him to lose, which they felt was inevitable.
Nike suspiciously overreacted, making threats to hunt down the blogger like Osama Bin Laden. Who did they ask to help them? The Chinese Government!

Charlie Brooks, the representative for Nike, assured us that this wasn’t about freedom of speech, but protecting brand image. Oh, okay Charlie! I won’t read into the situation. A manhunt over an internet rumor in an intensely loving and fair country like China is just about branding! That’s fine, then. I thought, for a moment, it might be about valuing money and objects over human beings… which is also why I thought you’d exploit a suffering and embarassed athlete’s misfortune to hock sportswear. And now, Charlie Brooks won’t talk about it anymore.

I think Marina Hyde from the Guardian says it best in her column on the foible:

Don’t Brooks’ employers find that at odds with the kind of inspirational rhetoric that drives their adverts, where mavericks speak truth to power, and the individual is fetishised? No comment. Does Nike have a position on democracy? No comment. Because it feels like just the kind of abstract noun Nike would be drawn to in the cause of selling stuff. No comment.

What will happen next? Advertising screw-ups are almost as breathtaking as the Olympics themselves. Just think of all the drama Aeschylus missed out on, living in the BA (Before Advertising) period!

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How is a call for proper branding actually going to change the supposed illness from which our nation suffers? If anyone can tell me, great, cause I have no interest in reading the book to find out.

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YouTube – Dothegreenthing.com: Tears Of A Cloud

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“Michael Kraus saw the alert about the long taxi line. So he called his brother who lives nearby and got a ride home. Now he owes him a turkey sandwich.”

So advertising is about imagining potential futures. It is about hope, and aspirations and dreams. Is getting a ride home from the airport all those ad people could imagine using their service for? How about finding the subway station so they could take public transport. Now that would be something for the “community.”

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There is a mock-scandalous advertisement out there for cologne, or underwear, (or cologne-and-underwear) that has some actress showing some nipple. They submitted it for TV, got rejected, and are now all mock-righteous.

OF COURSE IT WAS GOING TO BE REJECTED! That was the whole plan. And then a bunch of bloggers would write about it, and the YouTube video would get millions of free impressions. Cheap advertising.

Which is why I’m not going to link to it.

But I will say that I slowed it down to check, so you didn’t have to, and frankly the web video quality was so crappy that I couldn’t even see the nipple. Maybe on HDTV (but it ain’t ever gonna get on HDTV…) So it is double hype.

N.B. this is the first AAA post tagged “sex.” Steve, how did that happen?

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While I would really prefer to think that there is someone out there with a fetish for licking recently cleaned objects in hotel rooms, and wants to share that with the rest of the world, all signs point towards a marketing stunt. There are several clear logo shots in the opening sequence. The clip is silent save when the woman says “very clean” after a long sensual lick of the toilet bowl. She then shows an open hand to the camera with the url “exstay.com” on it.

Exstay.com redirects to ExtendedStay.com. It seems that Extended Stay has owned Exstay.com since 1996!. There are some reports that for a moment exstay had its own content, but I can’t verify that.

There are going to be Tipper Gores who are going to get all pissy because they are using sex to sell. I guess I’m used to ads using sex to sell. I’m not used to ads pretending to just be straight up amateur fetish porn, only to reveal that they in fact were viral marketing. I can handle the sex. I don’t like being tricked.

And the weird thing is that I can’t get the brand name and logo out of my brain now. I have forgotten most of the licking scenes, but I keep thinking about the hotel name. I hate it when they win. I hate it when they win.

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