A marketing plan we can get behind. Brought to you by the admirable folks over @ AdBusters. Music by Remano Eszilden, motion graphics by Alex Kurina.
We’re continuing our campaign for media democracy with a series of subvertisements aimed at disrupting the promotion of overconsumption and attacking the legitimacy of advertising. We want the right to broadcast these subverts and we’re willing to pay, but the major networks aren’t willing to air them. So far FOX has officially rejected our first spot, COMMERCIAL BREAKERS, and MTV has cut off communication entirely.
The idea behind COMMERCIAL BREAKERS is simply to sabotage the meaning of advertising and undermine the power of brands. The average TV ad presents the consumer with a crisis: a crisis of identity, a crisis of hunger, a messy floor, an unsightly blemish or erectile dysfunction. The crisis is always a crisis of choice, but there is only one choice: the product being advertised. Each ad expresses an individual brand’s vision of utopia; a perfect world constructed around a singular message: if you buy the product being advertised, you will be happy and content … if only for a moment.
This consumer utopia – beamed into our consciousness 24/7 – is a distraction from our real crisis, be it existential, spiritual, environmental, economic or political. And so rather than interpret advertising as a choice between colas or a choice between brands, we seek to reinterpret it as a choice between the real and the artificial. It’s not Pepsi vs. Coke, it’s Cool Diet Cola vs. Climate Doom.
brought to our attention by Will Sherman
