Posts Tagged ‘ads’
“Once a culture becomes entirely advertising friendly, it ceases to be a culture at all”*…
Local commercials — those gems of advertising offering sincere pledges of service and strange visuals seemingly inspired by bath salts — didn’t disappoint this year. These ads find a special place in culture and memory with catchy songs, dated graphics and grainy film. So without further ado, revel in the cheesy glory of summer 2015’s bad local ads. If you’re lucky, you might run into one of these local celebrities at the grocery store (or the dog park).
Talking dogs, bombastic lawyers, and more– from Ad Age, “The Best of 2015’s Bad Local Ads (So Far).”
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As we reach for the remote, we might send archetypal birthday greetings to Carl Gustav Jung; he was born on this date in 1875. A psychiatrist and psychotherapist, he founded the practice of Analytic Psychotherapy. His concepts of the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and extraversion and introversion were widely influential in psychology, but also in philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, literature, and religious studies… and might give readers who viewed the spots at the link above reason for introspection.
“Slow but steady wins the race”*…
Slow TV comes to the U.S…
TV viewers in Duluth, Minnesota had the opportunity to witness a record-setting premiere last Staurday: the world’s first thirteen-hour-long commercial– an ad for the the chain that Jon Stewart loves to hate, Arby’s.
The door of a smoker will open, the brisket will be placed inside, smoke will flow in, and for just short of 13 hours, the viewer will watch it smoke through a window. A small logo in the corner of the screen identifies Arby’s…
At 13 hours, the commercial will be longer than pre-game coverage of the Super Bowl (6½ hours), and not much shorter than Richard Wagner’s operatic “Ring” cycle (14½ hours)… Indeed, when the commercial passes the one-hour mark, it will have exceeded the Guinness World Record for longest TV commercial, currently held by Nivea…
The manager of My9, the Duluth station that aired the spot, reported that he got “a ‘ton’ of media calls about the stunt—that is, six or seven.”
Read more here.
* Aesop
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As we proclaim “Out damned spot! Out, I say!“, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that Chuck Berry opened “Berry Land” (AKA “Berry Park”), an amusement park and resort built on his estate outside of St. Louis. The 30-acre complex had hotel rooms, a miniature golf course, a Ferris wheel, a nightclub, children’s barbecue pits, and a guitar-shaped swimming pool. The attraction closed in 1961, when Berry was convicted of a Mann Act violation.
“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable”*…
Camille Corot – Recollections of Mortefontaine
Artist Etienne Lavie has taken photos of Paris in which advertisements in the background are replaced with classical paintings…
Pierre-Auguste Renoir – La Lecture
See more of the series– “OMG Who Stole My Ads?”– at Lavie’s site.
[via Laughing Squid]
* George Bernard Shaw
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As we appreciate the finer things, we might recall that it was on this date in 1886 that Thomas Eakins, the realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and teacher widely regarded as one of the most important artists in American art history, resigned from the Philadelphia Academy of Art. Eakins, almost obsessively interesting in the precise rendering of the human form, had stirred scandal in the school by employing a nude male model in one of his classes.
Eakins’ self-portrait
In a flash (mob)…
Over 27 million YouTube viewers have watched Saatchi & Saatchi’s “T-Mobile Dance,” a (supposed) flash mob that comes together at London’s Liverpool Station in terpsichorean tribute to the wireless carrier– and winner of “Commercial of the Year” at 2010’s British Television Advertising Awards.
Rival agency M&C Saatchi took the same concept and used it in Beirut…
It’s no more a genuinely-spontaneous gathering than the British “mob” on which it riffs. But this testament to social media, shot (earlier this month,on March 5th) in a Middle Eastern airport in promotional service of international travel and commerce (Duty Free), coexists with the regional reality of spontaneous social and political unrest– unrest that actually has been abetted by social media, unrest that actually has the emergent character of flash mobs…
The ironies abound.
[via VSL]
As we monitor our Twitter feeds more closely, we might celebrate another example of “art-in-the-service-of-commerce imitating life– only more so”: on this date (April Fool’s Day) in 1963 that the ABC television network aired the premiere episode of General Hospital, the daytime drama that became the network’s (and television’s) most enduring soap opera– and the longest-running serial program produced in Hollywood. (The world’s longest-running soap opera currently airing on television is the British series Coronation Street, on air since December 9, 1960.)
85% confusion and 15% commission*…
Advertising is about selling desire, dreams. But compared to the dreams that animate the creators of advertising, well…
More glimpses into the fantasies of the Marketing-Industrial Complex at Things Real People Don’t Say About Advertising.
* “Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission.” – Fred Allen
As we console ourselves with Thomas Jefferson’s observation that “the most truthful part of a newspaper is the advertisements,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1985 that Playboy, a periodical valued by its loyal male readership for its enriching articles and informative advertisements, announced an end to the stapling of “centerfold” spreads.
1985 issues, unfettered by staples (source)
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