Stay Free! | 5 September 2001

Carrie McLaren carrie at stayfreemagazine.org
Wed Sep 5 00:09:06 EDT 2001



Hello. I have finally gotten off my you-know-what and posted a couple 
of things from the latest ("history") issue on the website.

Table of contents:
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/index.html

As advertisers rush to cover every available surface, are they 
driving us insane? [see below]
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/adcreep.html




OUT YONDER:

"Advertising can alter childhood memories, making people remember 
events that never happened"
http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,546686,00.html
Harrowing.


A group called the Yes Men brilliantly sabotaged the "Textiles of the 
Future" conference in Finland... one activist posed as a WTO official 
and--to much applause from the industry crowd--hailed free trade, 
called Gandhi misguided, and blamed Lincoln for outlawing slavery. 
Then the guy ripped off his business suit to reveal "a golden leotard 
with a three-foot-long phallus."
http://www.theyesmen.org/finland/


Rtmark, god bless 'em, have posted audio files of a recent Public 
Relations Society of America seminar. So if you would like to know 
how the powers that be try to "Counteract Anti-Corporate Activism on 
the Web," tune in here:
http://rtmark.com/prsa/



ATTN: NEW YORK

If you're free Sept. 10, please join a coalition of activists, 
educators, and health organizations in protest. The focus of attack 
is the Golden Marble Awards, an annual ceremony that honors 
advertising to kids. The coalition has already scored one victory 
against the forces of darkness -- After singling out Scholastic for 
sponsoring the award ceremony, Scholastic withdrew.

Monday, Sept. 10
9-12:  summit (inside hotel)
12 - 1:30: protest (outside)
Grand Hyatt  -- Park Ave. and 42nd Street

Details here:
http://www.commercialexploitation.com/


hope to see some of you all then,
carrie


- - - - -


As advertisers rush to cover every available surface, are they 
driving us insane?
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/18/adcreep.html

by Carrie McLaren

It's July 12, 2000. A rocket bearing Pizza Hut's logo launches into 
space. And that evening, on NBC's Nightly News, a wide-eyed 
advertising exec is telling the nation about an exciting new ad 
medium. Not the ad stickers on bananas (so 1996). Not the slogans 
imprinted on beach sands (ditto). Not the cell phone pitches on 
tabletops, or the sailing billboard, or the Volkswagon "autowraps," 
which can turn your everyday car into an advertising vehicle. No, 
she's talking about-get this!-elevator commercials. That's television 
in the elevator! There'll be no more agonizing wait on the lift to 
the office. "People actually miss their floors," enthuses the rep. 
"They get so engrossed in the story!"

Chances are, however, that the people she's referring are advertisers 
and their clients. Most humans, even those who loved the Chihauhau, 
are markedly less thrilled about the prospect of yet another new ad 
medium. People approach these ads in one of two ways: either by 
ignoring them, or making a game of it by trying to figure out what 
could possibly be next. Ads on toilets? Gas pumps? Rooftops? The 
vertical edges of stair steps? Considering ads already adorn all the 
above, it is essentially a game of no contest. Perhaps the only real 
challenge would be to find spaces without advertising. Credit cards, 
ATM receipts, sports stadiums, hotel keys, even the bottom of the 
each hole on the golf course-no space is left unscathed.

Naturally, advertisers aren't limited by physical surfaces (or lack 
thereof). Broadcast Team in Ormond Beach, Florida, specializes in 
telemarketing geared to answering machines. The company hires 
celebrities to record a pitch-Dick Clark for American Music Awards; 
Michael Bolton for his new album-which is then left as a "personal" 
message: "Hi, this is Dick Clark. I'm sorry to reach you at home, but 
I just wanted to call your attention to a television special . . ."

Nor are advertisers constrained by laws. "Street blimps" (large, 
flat, billboards-on-wheels) drive around cities such as Manhattan, 
despite ordinances banning them. Companies spraypaint ads on 
sidewalks and streetposts, and indulge in equally illegal "wild 
posting." The fines paid by transgressors-usually a fraction of what 
legit advertising costs-are prefigured in the budget. Last year, 
Reebok painted over 200 "mini-billboards" on sidewalks in downtown 
Manhattan. The company was required to pay only $11,000 in cleanup 
costs. By comparison, advertising on 200 phone booths during that 
period would have cost over $400,000.

The catch-all trade term for such new new advertising is "ambient," 
or, as the British call it, the "pavement and urinals" category. 
Although it has been around for decades, the category has exploded in 
recent years. And this year is expected to be the biggest yet, with 
promises of canned fragrances (Digicents' "Snortal," touted as "the 
world's first scent-enabled Web portal") and Radio Shack's 
sponsorship of a robot on the moon.

Advertisers cite several reasons for the explosion of ambient. 
Soaring network television rates coupled with declining audiences 
(particularly generations X and Y) and increased competition from 
internet and cable outlets have made it difficult to blanket a brand 
message like the old days. A booming economy fueled with dot-com 
money added to the ad glut. And the desire to microtarget people at 
precisely timed moments all make ambient the "it" form.

What these explanations miss, however, is that the forces behind 
ambient are inherent in the advertising process. Advertising works 
somewhat like bacteria: After its hosts (consumers) are exposed, they 
become immune, so new strains of ads must develop and grow. These new 
strains are quickly copied, adding clutter, requiring new strains to 
emerge. Over time, advertising clutter leads to diminishing returns 
for individual campaigns. The more advertising grows, the more it 
must grow. The cycle accelerates and what was formerly considered 
unethical, offensive, or gauche is gradually mainstreamed out of 
necessity.

Take bathrooms for example. When Zoom Media, a company that places 
advertising in restaurant and club bathrooms, launched ten years ago, 
the category faced "the toilet syndrome"-no company wanted to promote 
its brand near the crapper. The promise of reaching a captive, 
targeted audience eventually made converts, though. While Zoom's 
revenues in 1991 totaled $40,000, that figure grew to $12 million in 
1999. Perhaps the most significant growth, however, is the form the 
ads take. Initially limited to posters on stall doors and walls, 
bathroom advertising has gone hi-tech with CD-ROMs and audio. The 
content of these ads has likewise become more, uh, ambitious. A new 
ABC-TV campaign speaks to men through the urinal, telling jokes like: 
"Oh my God, look at the size of that thing!'' and "Hey, watch your 
shoes!" A recent men's room campaign for Kozmo advises, "That Girl's 
a bitch. Why don't you go home and rent a movie?"

Similarly, ads have spread to territories formerly kept in check by 
some vestige of ethics: school buses and textbooks, historical 
monuments, doctor's offices, even whole cities. Sacramento, 
California, calls its corporate sponsorship plan "Capital Spirit." In 
Manhattan, trees along 23rd Street are adorned with Old Navy logos. 
It's no surprise, then, that "ambient" advertising is also known as 
"ad creep," a word that single-handedly suggests both advertising's 
growth and its creators. And though the term, like ambient, is new, 
its roots run deep.

In 1759, Samuel Johnson wrote in The Idler that "Advertisements are 
now so numerous that they are very negligently perused." This was 
over a century before anything that could be considered an 
advertising industry existed, but almost as soon as it did (by the 
1910s and 20s) ad men warned of "saturation" or what is now called 
"clutter." The key difference between then and now is that, formerly, 
the media used by advertising-newspapers, radio, television-were 
commonly understood to be public goods. Ad men felt obligated (if 
only out of legal concerns) to keep public interests in mind. The new 
breed of ad "creatives" are not nearly so encumbered, giddily 
promoting their ability to reach a "captive audience" with "forced 
media."

Incidentally, said selling point also happens to be one of main 
problems, as critics see it: people can't get away from this stuff. 
In April 2000, Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, sent a 
letter to ad agencies inquiring: "Do you recognize any place to be 
off-limits to advertising? In your view, where should your industry 
draw the line?" He received no response. Advertisers have the freedom 
to advertise, apparently, but you aren't free to avoid it.

Not that you would want to. To hear the marketers tell it, 
advertising is a gift, relieving you of the agony of a reflective 
moment, that fifteen seconds of waiting for your cash at the ATM. The 
Outdoor Advertising Association of American calls billboards the "art 
gallery of the roadways and the theater of the streets." (The same 
organization once published a study showing that billboards improve 
safety by preventing driver "mild disorientation" and "excessive 
fantasy formation.")

Advertisers insist the response to ambient ads is "tremendous" (Zoom 

Media), "overwhelmingly positive" (beachnbillboard.com), that ambient 
ads are "hot and chic . . . cool and hip" (Starcom Worldwide), and 
that criticisms are minimal: a few grumpy ATM customers here and 
there. At the same time, they recognize that ad fatigue is real. 
People are said to see upwards of 3,000 ads a day, and tuning out 
most of them is necessary to stay functional. The Wall Street Journal 
reported that following a Coca-Cola-sponsored racing event that was 
littered with Coke signs, giant inflatable Coke bottles, and a Coke 
logo covering the middle of the race track, only one-third of the 
attendees could name Coke as the sponsor.

Advertising is, to some extent, a victim of its own success. And to 
maintain the same level of success, it evades public criticism by 
rendering that criticism moot-by blanketing the environment so that 
there is no escape. In so doing, ambient's biggest impact may, 
ironically, be the most invisible. In the same way that advertising 
determines what people will or won't see on the news, ambient 
advertisers aim to control what they will or won't see outside, at 
work, or wherever.

Far from shying away from this dystopic vision, corporations embrace 
it. Compac chose ATMs and elevators for its recent "Non Stop" ad 
campaign because, according to one spokesman, "We wanted to send a 
message that we're everywhere, that we're unstoppable."

A guerrilla campaign for CFRB, a Toronto talk radio station, was even 
more direct. CFRB's ad agency Roche Macaulay & Partners Advertising 
told Strategy, "We wanted [the campaign] to become part of the 
cityscape-a universal thing like homelessness and crime that everyone 
has an opinion about." So Roche Macaulay blanketed Toronto with signs 
bearing such questions as: "How far away do you think the nearest 
crack house is?" and "Could you live on this street corner for a 
week?" After at least one billboard drew angry calls from residents, 
Roche Macaulay cheered. Apparently, when people complain, it shows 
they're awake and consciously viewing the brand.

Even better than merely saturating the environment is getting people 
to interact with it. Floorgraphics, a company that places "adhesive 
billboards" on grocery store floors, designed a "Got Milk?" ad to 
look like a puddle of spilt milk, complete with an actual milk carton 
lying on its side. Unwitting supermarket shoppers would hunt down 
store employees to point out the "hazard."

Such tactics may seem innocuous (even funny) as isolated incidents; 
the problems are only apparent when ads are multiplied by thousands 
and constantly force-fed to the public.

"There's a negative correlation between all that advertising hoopla 
and interesting ideas we can create ourselves," says longtime Village 
Voice ad columnist Leslie Savan. Incessant advertising, she adds, 
"drains us and depresses our ability to think that life can be fun 
and interesting outside of what corporate culture brings. It's as if 
the color has drained out of our brains onto the signs on the floor."

With this in mind, maybe the future of advertising calls for a new 
game. As Savan suggests, our minds and spirits are the ultimate media 
for sale. Left unchecked, ad glut will only worsen, and any downtime 
people have in between absorbing media messages will be defined as 
waste. Thus, rather than measuring ad growth by fruit stickers and 
gas pumps, we should start looking at IQ points and pulse rates. Once 
every conceivable surface has been taken, advertising's growth can 
come only at the expense of our own.

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