Hey class, sorry I had to canceled today. Here are some notes from your colleague, Natalie Freilich, which we would have gone over together today. Feel free to comment or add your own response, for sake of participation.
"Major Companies are trying to keep their multi-billion dollar industry afloat and prospering by subconsciously brain washing us into this media/advertisement/consumption culture cycle that we cannot get out of. It is time to stop and take a step back to see how we are being manipulated." -Natalie Freilich
Key Tensions/Questions Generated by the Reading
•The range of Adbusters’ readers vary from high schoolers to people in their middle ages. Who do you think will take the most action to change their lives? The cynical youth or the tired adults?
•What can we each do to diminish major corporations and brandings hold over our lives?
•Is branding and monopoly the same thing? If one is removed will it diminish the other or will one continue to flourish on its own?
•The youth controls what is “cool.” How did we psychologically make branding the most important things in our lives?
•Do you seek the truth behind what your professors say? Or simply write down your notes to pass the class? Do seek further information?
•Have you made some change lately? Step out of the box and take a look at your life – do you want the American Dream or your own?
Definitions/New Terminology
•Mental Detox: The act of stepping away as much as possible from technology and proceeding to live your life for a period of time without it. To stop living virtually and begin to experience life in real time and the real world around you.
•Neocon: A liberal who has turned conservative. Usually from an intellectual community. Modern liberalism has not turned out the way they wanted so they switch to neoconservatism. Some have dropped out of the government and gone into colleges and the media futher influencing others.
•Heterodox: not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs.
•Branding: the promotion of a particular product or company by means of advertising and distinctive design.
Notes
•Major corporations have led to major consumption, which in turn has led to increased destructiveness of our environment. As we learned at the beginning of the year, more people know of the Mercedes Benz car logo than what poison ivy looks like.
•Wanting to become a graphic designer with advertisement, that would perhaps entail me working for one of these large corporations. AdBusters has made me aware since last year of the negative effects of large scale branding. If possible, I would like to work on a smaller scale with smaller and local companies, improving their design and logos.
•Declutter, declutter, declutter. Declutter information, stuff, and propaganda.
•Anyone can do this, it is not limited to the youth or the old.
Adbusters Articles, take a look (links below):
Neocon Indoctrinataion
A Textbook Insurgency
McCrriage of Justice
Laura Gillmore
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement
For this week’s Weekly Statement I want to respond to one of Natalie Freilich’s questions from the reading: “The youth controls what is “cool.” How did we psychologically make branding the most important things in our lives?” She asks us and past generations how we made commercial branding one of the most important things in our lives. I find this question interesting because to be honest my direct answer is that we did not make it one of the most important things in our lives. That might sound a little farfetched but I think we PERPETUATED branding to become one of the most important things in our lives instead of starting it. Well, then who started it? I believe that companies have MADE us MAKE commercial branding the most important thing in our lives. And this can be seen through product placement. Not only are posters, billboards, commercials and other advertisements surrounding us in order to sell us their products but also these products are even featured in movies, television shows, music, and sports. When we see our favorite character in a movie or a television show drinking out of a certain soda can, that soda becomes our favorite. When singers, bands, or rappers are singing about this fashion designer they wear and that specific alcohol they drink, that designer and that alcohol become our favorite. We may have liked or enjoyed a certain branding but I think the product companies have strategically learned how to make their branding the most important things in our lives, an obsession. How can a basketball player in his youth not want to buy the pair of Nike Air Dunks his favorite basketball player is wearing? And how can a soccer player in his youth who sees all his favorite soccer stars in the World Cup not want to wear the Adidas cleats and jersey’s that they are wearing? This scenario has reached an even higher level, in that if those amateur athletes wear the designer gear they might think they will become better athletes. So when we are asked why branding has become the most important thing in our lives I can only think how bad companies make me feel if I don’t buy their products. So to not feel inadequate we buy what we think is the necessary merchandise.
This is a side note but in the movie Wayne’s World Mike Myers and the other writers needed to fill up more time to make the movie complete so they decided to use product placement. But instead of placing products in the movie oh so nonchalantly like other movies, they decided to make a whole scene about mocking product placement while using the real products themselves. They used products like Doritos, Advil, Pizza Hut, Reebok, and Pepsi so blatantly while acting nonchalantly. I mentioned this scene because I thought it was a good example illustrating how we, the youth, should realize how ridiculous advertising and other companies tactics have become.
Shaili Das
ReplyDeleteWeekly Statement #9
For this week’s weekly statement I would like to discuss the idea of ad busters. When I first saw these ads I though they were quite interesting. They were spoofs of famous ads, which spoke about a serious matter. I think that in the 21st century this is an ingenious way of getting the information out there. In today’s society people are always looking at ads and find them hilarious, so why not combine those two ideas to help get important information out there.
For example, the Nike ad seems to be the most successful to me. When you first look at it seems like a normal Nike ad, but when you read the text you realize how people who ridiculous hours to make those shoes in addition to the other human rights issues Nike is known for. Or another good example of how design is used to help get information out there is the Absolut ads. Absolut is known for creating short sayings that convey a message of what the drink is like. For one of the spoofs the saying was “Absolut end”. I feel like ads like these reach out to people more compared to just factual ads which tend to get quite monotonous and overtime people just tend to ignore them.
I’m not sure if by completely publicizing these ads would completely change peoples decisions to do or purchase certain things but I feel like at least then they will know the ramifications that took place and can make their own judgment call and decide if they should take part in Nike’s unethical human working standards or take part in excessive drinking.
Also I believe that only ad busters will not change our decisions about the products we choose to purchase. I feel like the brand ambassadors have a huge influence on how many people by certain products. The proof that this is possible is that little kids have a huge influence on the economy. Because there are ads of famous people wearing certain things kids want to too. In order to bring awareness to the wrong doings of these corporate companies ambassadors need to stand up for these rights and not promote companies that are completely unethical. By doing this children will not be influenced to “buy the same shoes as David Beckham” especially if the shoes come from places that do follow acceptable human rights.