A site called Vintage Ad Browser has over 100,000 categorized advertisements from today all the way back to the 1840s. Categorized by type and date. A great resource for research. (tx @twhid)

So the question is… is this a twix advertisement? or was it just that cool to paint a Twix logo on the back of your white portable radio in the heyday of 80’s graffiti-cool?

Picture via Mariasa Olson’s flickr set IMG_FAN

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.

Culture jammers and pranksters will be this month’s topic. Featured speakers are Alan Abel, perhaps the most infamous prankster in American prank history, subject of the recent award-winning documentary, Abel Raises Cain, and “founder” of mock citizens’ groups The Society for the Indecency to Naked Animals and Citizens Against Breastfeeding; Steve Lambert, guerrilla artist, founder of The Anti-Advertising Agency, and Senior Fellow at cutting-edge arts organization Eyebeam NYC; and Ron English, patriarch of the agit-pop art movement, corporate branding subversive, and subject of the documentary “POPaganda: The Art and Crimes of Ron English.”

The event will start at 8 pm on April 24th at the Happy Ending Lounge, and is free.

Event Details:

Happy Ending Lounge (official site, CitySearch, MySpace)
302 Broome St.
(between Forsyth and Eldridge)
212-334-9676
J/M/Z/F to Delancey
B/D to Grand Street
Look for the hot-pink awning with the words “Health Club” on it.

Doors open at 7:30.
Readings start at 8 sharp.
FREE!

One of my running themes is that there is nothing new about contemporary consumers being fed up with advertising. We hear all the time about supposed discovery that what sets today’s consumers apart is that they (we) “see through” marketing, and don’t trust it, etc.

So I made sure to bookmark the above image from blog Paleo-Future when it made the rounds while I was away last week. It’s from 1885, and titled “Advertising In The Near Future,” one of the earliest examples I’ve seen yet of popular distaste for ad overload and just how bad it could get. Particularly interesting in the satirical slathering of the Statue of Liberty with commercial slogans is the presence of “suredeath” cigarettes.

Clearly there were people who could “see through” marketing in the late 19th century, and who could count an audience that would get the joke. Just as clearly, seeing through marketing didn’t quite add up to resisting marketing. Kinda like today.

–Rob Walker

Looking To Rent A Billboard? You probably can’t afford it. http://www.outdoorbillboard.com/

Celebrate Advertising Week New York City! Public Relations even harder at work. http://www.advertisingweeknyc.com/

American Association of Advertising Agencies We’re still waiting for our complimentary membership. http://www.aaaa.org/

Outdoor Advertising Association of America They’re so proud of themselves. http://www.oaaa.org/

Outdoor Advertising Archive

See outdoor ads from the past. http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/hartman/oa/outdoor.html

Assvertise! This appears to be real. It also appears to demonstrate just how desperate advertising has become. http://ass-vertise.com/

Barricades + Advertising = Barricads

http://barricads.com/