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   - Corporations faking local with viral internet ads <#126a99a48b0920ff_1>
   - First US corporation runs for congress, as a
Republican<#126a99a48b0920ff_2>
   - Open Source Food and Genetic Engineering - Michael
Pollan<#126a99a48b0920ff_3>

  Corporations faking local with viral internet
ads<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/pvQJL_57UEo/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 11:31 PM PST

*Myths of Main Street: What does it really mean to “Go Local”?, Written by
Adam Bessi*

*Rudy – Cuban Gynecologist and American Autosalesman *– is the latest
YouTube sensation, whose unbelievably cheesy local ad for T.D.M. Auto Sales
out of High Point, NC hit national fame when it was featured on Leno as a
“Bad Ad.”

[image: rudy]

Rudy’s ad wasn’t designed by Rudy, but outsourced to two
self-proclaimed “Internetainers”,
Rhett and Link <http://rhettandlink.com/about/>, who look as if they stepped
straight out of a Mac ad on their highly polished website. The duo – who
have had a TV show, and have made web videos for Taco Bell, Hummer,
Cadillac, and other major, multinational corporations – appear to have a
knack for getting millions of hits on YouTube, and to “entertain first,
advertise second”. In other words, Rhett and Link are professional marketing
humorists, who produce funny content….which also happens to really advertise
products.

*So what would these guerrilla marketers for major corporations want with
Rudy?*

While the “Internetainers” are from North Carolina – like Rudy – the ad
isn’t authentically local, by their own proud admission. Rather, Rudy’s ad
is part of a larger – and very successful, in terms of number of hits – ad
campaign sponsored not by Rudy, but by Microbilt
Corportation<http://www.microbilt.com/>,
who wanted a series of “intentionally ‘local’ feeling commercials (complete
with bad edits and ridiculous concepts)”.

In other words, the ad is a simulation of how a local ad is – it looks like
one, is for an actual small business, and Rudy really is a Cuban
Gynecologist turned car dealer. Yet, unlike a “real” local ad, this one is
intentionally raw and unrefined by design, like a pair of $80 ripped jeans
from the Gap. Further, the ad appears not just for Rudy’s potential
customers, but is designed for a national audience, to promote Microbilt – a
national corporation which makes its business supporting small and medium
size businesses.

And while Microbilt may encourage local business, its ad campaign vividly
illustrates a real danger of the new “local” zeitgeist: “Local” is not a
reality, but a feel, a style, not a substance.

Source: 
Dailycensored.com<http://dailycensored.com/2010/02/06/myths-of-main-street-what-does-it-really-mean-to-“go-local”/>

First US corporation runs for congress, as a
Republican<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/zd0t4hAMP-M/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 11:15 PM PST

*First corporation runs for congress with slogan Corporations are people too
*

[image: 
badge_corporate_rights]<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United>

Murray Hill, Inc. is a Maryland corporation and a public relations and
advertising firm that announced at the end of January, 2010 that it intends
to run as a Republican for Maryland’s 8th Congressional district. The
company’s announcement that it will run for office came after the U.S.
Supreme Court’s landmark January, 2010 ruling in the Citizens
United<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United>case
that corporations have the same political and free-speech rights as
U.S. citizens. The company is selling mugs and T-Shirts with the political
slogan, “Corporations are people, too!”

Source: 
Sourcewatch<http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Murray_Hill,_Inc.>

Open Source Food and Genetic Engineering - Michael
Pollan<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/HAvhWqkr_Is/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 06 Feb 2010 09:26 PM PST

“The real key to genetic engineering is control of intellectual property of
the food crops that we depend on,” says author Michael Pollan of companies
like Monsanto. He advocates an open source GE model.

 Farming has become an occupation and cultural force of the past. Michael
Pollan’s talk promoted the premise — and hope — that farming can become an
occupation and force of the future. In the past century American farmers
were given the assignment to produce lots of calories cheaply, and they did.
They became the most productive humans on earth. A single farmer in Iowa
could feed 150 of his neighbors. That is a true modern miracle.

“American farmers are incredibly inventive, innovative, and accomplished.
They can do whatever we ask them, we just need to give them a new set of
requirements.” - The Long Now Foundation

Michael Pollan is the author of The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of
Four Meals, a New York Times bestseller. His previous books include The
Botany of Desire: A Plants-Eye View of the World (2001); A Place of My Own
(1997); and Second Nature (1991). A contributing writer to The New York
Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards,
including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the
Reuters-I.U.C.N. 2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. Pollan
served for many years as executive editor of Harpers Magazine and is now the
Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism at UC Berkeley. His
articles have been anthologized in Best American Science Writing 2004, Best
American Essays 2003, and the Norton Book of Nature Writing. He lives in the
San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer, and their
son, Isaac.

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