Enemies of consumer terror
Adbusters Fight Back with the Weapons of Advertising
Adbusters fight back with the weapons of advertisingTo throw sand into the economic gears of consumer and media society: this is the declared goal of Adbusters (a word combination of "advertising" and "to bust"), founded by Kalle Lasn in Vancouver in 1990. The ingenious means for this advertising-critical purpose are called "Subvertisments" or "Uncommercials" and are parodies of real existing image campaigns of American global brands such as Philip Morris, Camel, Coca-Cola, Nike or Calvin Klein.A subtle form of system critique
This strategy is much funnier and therefore more effective than the morally insensitive counter-advertising, which is mainly advocated in church circles or by fundamentalist pedagogues. In the German-speaking world in particular, this position is occasionally propagated in satirical magazines such as Titanic or Pardon. However, their mostly hand-crafted slogans and subjects attack the opponent head-on and therefore usually come across as crude, uninspired and banal - in other words, they miss their mark.
In "Subvertising," on the other hand, the aesthetics and image of the original are reversed with witty irony by creative professionals who at some point fell away from commercialism and, with Adbusters, run the world's first anti-advertising agency.
"Lasn calls this subtle form of system criticism "distorting advertising messages beyond recognition. Ideologically, "the last partisans of the communication society" (New York Times) can hardly be located, despite their carefully cultivated rebel image. This impression is confirmed by the supreme adbuster in his program pamphlet Culture Jam, which is unfortunately not (yet?) available in German: "We're not left or right, we're just straightforward." A recipe that could easily come from an advertiser's concept book... Oliver Classen
Kalle Lasn: Culture Jam. How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must. Harper Collins, New York 2001.
This strategy is much funnier and therefore more effective than the morally insensitive counter-advertising, which is mainly advocated in church circles or by fundamentalist pedagogues. In the German-speaking world in particular, this position is occasionally propagated in satirical magazines such as Titanic or Pardon. However, their mostly hand-crafted slogans and subjects attack the opponent head-on and therefore usually come across as crude, uninspired and banal - in other words, they miss their mark.
In "Subvertising," on the other hand, the aesthetics and image of the original are reversed with witty irony by creative professionals who at some point fell away from commercialism and, with Adbusters, run the world's first anti-advertising agency.
"Lasn calls this subtle form of system criticism "distorting advertising messages beyond recognition. Ideologically, "the last partisans of the communication society" (New York Times) can hardly be located, despite their carefully cultivated rebel image. This impression is confirmed by the supreme adbuster in his program pamphlet Culture Jam, which is unfortunately not (yet?) available in German: "We're not left or right, we're just straightforward." A recipe that could easily come from an advertiser's concept book... Oliver Classen
Kalle Lasn: Culture Jam. How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must. Harper Collins, New York 2001.
