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.
###
More information about the Stayfree
mailing list