Or you know, capitalism! Following up our class presentation today I was thinking the entire time how the advertising/marketing world is taking the trends happening in popular culture (think of what Adorno was saying with any sort of resistance is just put back into the cycle) and tries to use it to their advantage. In this case, with the explosion of the internet, there is a lot of user generated content that gives people a chance to express themselves and sometimes, if the content strikes a cord, blast them into internet stardom. As I mentioned in class, these videos are typically made famous by accident, and normally the people creating them do not intend to garner 30 million hits on Youtube, but it happens.
Then we have big marketing agencies pick up on this and re-appropriate the idea, and create successful campaigns based on this idea of unintentional, quirky, placement or ideas. I found a website that showcases 20 creative guerrilla marketing campaigns which are the epitome of this idea. What is interesting is how many of these campaigns take the idea of the original and remix it in order to be effective. Here are a couple I saw that caught my eye:
I've always wondered if such advertising campaigns take away from the effectiveness of more (ahem) 'pure' forms of culture jamming? This so called culture jamming for the sake of advertising almost seems like a bit of a slap in the face.
ReplyDeleteI just stumbled upon this ad campaign for a career-centre website in Germany. The ads fall under the same kind of form of culture jamming as you're presenting here. I found these ads quite creative, and possibly effective, although they too are using the culture jam for capitalist purposes. Entertaining still, especially since I definitely used to believe this was how electronic devices worked when I was a little munchkin... guilty.
ReplyDeleteCheck it!
http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2011/03/15/lifes-too-short-for-the-wrong-job/
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhile I can see how the use of culture jamming techniques by advertisers is problematic, it is also important to recognize that these new forms of ads provide new opportunities for culture jamming. When we talked about culture jamming in class, it was pointed out that culture jams are becoming increasingly digital, because it is easier to manipulate and distribute digital content and material. However, I would argue that, because those culture jams are so easy to create, physical forms of culture jamming have become that much more significant and effective. For example, the Billboard Liberation Front (BLF), a culture jamming organization, are dedicated to improving outdoor advertisements by physically altering them to change their message. I would argue that the kind of culture jamming that BLF does is a more effective way of getting their message across, because it transforms the physical space around it, while digital culture jams do not. I think these new forms of advertisements could bring culture jamming back into the physical world as new possibilities for transforming corporate messages and shaping the space around it.
ReplyDelete