The Anti-Advertising Agency » china

Portland Summer Advertising Smorgasbord

Michael Mandiberg — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:43:19 +0000

This is a mixed up collection of funny advertising pictures from my 5 weeks in Portland. Some funny, some tragic, some WTR R U Serious?!!

The lamppost with all the flyers for music shows says “Dont Advertise” but… do they mean, don’t advertise anything other than indy rock. Or does no one care?

At first we thought that the Ginger Ale was listed as Sugar Free because it has Corn Syrup in it, not real Sugar. That would have been some amazing mislabling. Instead, they just ran out of the diet version, and slid everything over. Kind of a let down, but still funny.

The antique store has its new antiques, delivered in a new container from china. Oh, authenticity.

And the Mens Multi. So much for the rumors that it doesn’t exist.

And last but not least, this young woman was go-go dancing in her red-white-blue underwear on the street corner in NW Portland trying to get people to come into the lingerie shop for a big sale. Sex sells, but is that really how bad the economy is, that the company is that desperate, and the young woman is that willing to… dance near-naked on the street for money? I mean, I wholly approve dancing naked on the street for fun, but for money, its just a whole other thing.

James Powderly back in US

Steve Lambert — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:51:14 +0000

James Powderly just returned from being detained in Beijing. Having spoken to James, this short video is really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s a bit more at artnet, and the Brooklyn Paper and more to be published in the days to come.

James is one of the founders of the Graffiti Research Lab and an Anti-Advertising Agency collaborator.

Olympissed

Emily Gallagher — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:00:44 +0000

Olympic ad wrap up: We at the AAA can’t have much of an olympic ad piss party because we were so disgusted by the political and social justice issues surrounding the olympics themselves. We were too busy watching our friends and allies get abused, detained and harassed while most tv viewers drooled over swimmers’ abdominals.

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!

GRL’s James Powderly Detained in Beijing

Steve Lambert — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:14:27 +0000

EYEBEAM PRESS RELEASE:
No word from the American artist 24 hours after being taken into Chinese custody.
Powderly was in Beijing to unveil a project made with pro-Tibet activist group.

New York City, August 19, 2008, 7:30PM EST- Artist and Eyebeam alum James Powderly was detained by Chinese authorities in Beijing early Wednesday, according to a message received by Students for a Free Tibet around 5PM Beijing Standard Time, said an SFT spokesperson. The message, sent through the social networking site Twitter, read “held since 3AM”, said friend and SFT board member Nathan Dorjee. Powderly has not been heard from since-more than 24 hours later-and his whereabouts remain unknown, he said.

“Freedom of speech has always been central to James’ practice, and we support this commitment. Most importantly, we hope for his quick release,” said Eyebeam Executive Director Amanda McDonald Crowley. Powderly was a fellow in Eyebeam’s R&D OpenLab in 2005-2006, and a senior fellow in the OpenLab from 2006-2007.

Powderly is also co-founder of the Grafitti Research Lab, a project developed during his fellowship at Eyebeam. He was in Beijing collaborating with the activists to project messages onto the facades of prominent Beijing buildings using a laser beam and stencils. The artist was detained before the planned launch of the project-dubbed the “Green Chinese Lantern”-in which a beam of light would be used to display graphics and text on structures up to two stories high, said Dorjee. It is unclear how Chinese authorities learned of the plan.

Also today, five activists with Students for a Free Tibet were detained after displaying a banner that spelled out “Free Tibet” in LED Throwies, the open source technology pioneered by the Grafitti Research Lab and popularized online and worldwide. This brings the number of SFT protestors detained in Beijing to 42. In the majority of these cases, the individuals were heard from and deported within 6-12 hours of their arrest, said Dorjee.

Upon learning of the detention, fellow artist, collaborator, and current Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert said, “He’s an amazing, entertaining, brilliant, and committed person. Not all of us have the courage to travel to China to make such a statement at a key time like this. He’s a great friend and obviously, like so many others, I’m concerned about his well-being. I hope he’s allowed to return home as soon as possible.”

The L.A.S.E.R. Stencil technology is a modification of the GRL’s L.A.S.E.R. Tag, which was featured in the 2007 Eyebeam exhibition Open City. This portable, updated version is the size of a flashlight, requires one person to operate, and is intended for use with homemade micro-stencils.

Students for a Free Tibet, a group with more than 700 chapters worldwide, has been staging protests in Beijing over the course of the past two weeks. According to Dorjee, who is also the group’s technical advisor, GRL technology was an ideal fit for the spectacle of the Olympics, and called the GRL the “go-to group for open source urban expression”.

For the latest information and images, please visit the website of Students for a Free Tibet. Additional images for download:

The Grafitti Research Lab, with images made using the L.A.S.E.R. Stencil (in the US)
LED Throwies

Additional coverage:

Boing Boing
The Washington Post
Gothamist
Associated Press

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Dangerous Business

Anne Elizabeth Moore — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:17:24 +0000

Now, I like your freedom of speech as much as the next gal—technically more, probably—but i’m not about to get all up in arms because some ad industry blog has been receiving death threats for discussing a campaign that links government-backed violence, human rights violations, the Olympic Games, and the Chinese government. Especially when journalists, activists, and the Swedish Red Cross have been suffering worse, for years.

The alleged death threats were aimed at “a beyond-a-blog, commercial-laden delirium of heaven and hell for advertising addicts around the world, gossips about advertising stunts and marketing mishaps. The latest advertising news from a creative point of view served fresh daily since 2000″—barf—that builds buzz around such brilliant campaigns as Saatchi and Saatchi’s hilarious and spot-on campaign about human trafficking—in which humans were actually advertised for sale! My god the genius! It’s funny because it’s true! And also because it might have appeared first in the Onion!

The ads, for a Swedish Red Cross campaign, depict citizens being beaten, choked, attacked, and otherwise threatened by allegedly Chinese enforcers. Chinese ad enthusiasts and death-threateners, however, charge that the abusers are actually Nepalese. The images are accompanied by the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games logos. Some can be seen here, but because the charming ad blog above has imprinted its own logo on the images, I’m not going to repost. Human rights violations and abuses of activists and journalists have been tied directly to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Apparently the Swedish Red Cross tired of the death threats and opted to remove the images from its own site. Because, one assumes, the Swedish Red Cross isn’t surprised when violating long-held Chinese mandates restricting press freedom results in death threats. But apparently, the ad world is.