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Tuesday, September 2. 2008Re-mixing advertising
Shapeways is all about designing unique objects, personalizing the world around you. What we hope to do for a lot of 'things' in the future people are doing now with mash-ups of music and web applications. In an age of ever present media and advertising clouding our world people are also increasingly re-mixing branding and marketing messages put out by companies. The most famous of these groups is AdBusters. They have a hilarious and at the same time thought provoking gallery here.
It is interesting to note how similar the work of AdBusters is to some of the Worth1000 Photoshop contests. I loved the bad ads one.
Graffiti Research Lab is also doing some amusing and cutting edge stuff in this field, such as their laser projection of the NSA logo on the Verizon building.
This is food for thought for consumers but poses interesting problems for brands. Unilever won a lot of awards and attention with their Dove real beauty campaign. If you watch the movie it squarely blames the beauty industry for a lot of self-image problems women have. It promotes Dove as the brand that cares about women. The campaign website is all about making a difference and The Dove Self-Esteem fund. This, “was developed to help free the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes.”
The campaign is a fantastic one, way ahead of the curve. But, in a connected world where everyone has a lot of information as well as the tools to re-mix any message it also sets them up for a fall. You see, Unilever also owns the deodorant brand Axe. Those of you familiar with the Axe campaigns will probably know that the way that Axe depicts women might not exactly be in line with the lofty values outlined by Dove and its' Self-esteem fund. It was only a matter of time really until someone juxtaposed Axe footage alongside Dove footage to chilling effect.It seems that in connected world with few limits to information one person with a little leisure time can take on a corporate giant.
The whole Open-source, make, hack, re-mix and mash-up movement, as disparate as it is, stands to redress the balance in a lot of industries, advertising is just one of these. If advertising is about getting your message out to as many eyeballs as possible open source tells us that “given enough eyeballs all bugs are shallow” the plane where those two intersect will be one of the most interesting one's to watch in the coming years. Will consumer empowerment crush corporate communications like a bug? Or will the eyeballs themselves become shallow? Photo credit: marissaorton
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