Compulsory Spam

Brookyln Vegan just posted a sad example of what seems to be a growing trend of compulsory spam. Someone at a recent Knitting Factory show posted a photo of their 21+ wristband and it's an advert for a movie called "In the Land of Women".

I realize that this post has now become a complicit part of someone's ad campaign but you have got to wonder whether marketers and the people who hire them understand the concept of ill will against their products when things get advertised like this. This kind of thing does not make me MORE likely to now see this movie... It makes me LESS likely to. But perhaps I'm in the minority.

One company, called Billboard Bands is behind this new "Non Traditional Media Platform" and has exclusive contracts in place with "over 150 trendy nightspots in the top 20 markets" where they can "reach today’s trendsetters and influencers". According to their site (which I encourage you to browse through):

With Billboard Bands’ wristbands, you can wrap your brand message right around the wrists of young working professionals. Worn for the entirety of a club-goer’s stay, Billboard Bands offers an innovative platform for creative advertising and promotion on a national scale, and at many of America’s most exclusive and talked-about nightspots.

HBO is one client who has already signed up with the company to promote their show Entourage (link). Has anyone considered that, perhaps, some people might not like to be human billboards or part of a "Non Traditional Media Platform" campaign?

In the past few months Tonic, Sin-e, CBGBs and the Continental have all bitten the dust so I can't really knock the Knitting Factory for doing anything in it's power to stay above water in a very hostile environment. Last week, it was announced that the building the knit currently occupies at 74 Leonard is up for sale. Meanwhile, Live Nation is buying up large venues like Iriving Plaza in NY, the Palladium in LA, and the Brixton Academy in the UK (well, actually they only have a 56% ownership stake in the last one, but it's pretty much the same thing). I really hope that this kind of thing is not a sign of things to come in these venues. To be fair, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Every day you see lots of examples of urban spam. A typical example is a giant billboard the Gap erected on the Westside highway directly in front of Frank Gehry's new building.

The ad blogs and marketing trade press regularly discuss the "anti-marketing" sentiment best summed up by Bill Hicks in his famous rant. Across this spectrum you have idealists who want to destroy all ads (and are kind of silly), environmentalists (and others) who would like to simply see a more pleasant landscape and many, many regular people who sometimes get fatigued by having to stare at ads when they step into an elevator or use a public bathroom.

I think a decent place to draw the line is "compulsory spam". Being forced to become a human "billboard" in order to attend a concert is over the line for me. Bus Radio, where school age children are forced to listen to advertising while on the way to public school is another example. I would probably put  plans to put advertising on security bins at the airport into this bucket as well because you are essentially forced to look at it by law.

I guess compared to these sorts of things, erecting giant billboards in front of landmarks and other over zealous marketing tactics, while certainly in very poor taste and lamentable, are somewhat more tolerable.... I've been conditioned to accept it.

Of course there's also plenty of examples out there of people who don't mind being billboards. Curiously 16 people over at Brooklyn Vegan have commented on the post which also asked what they were doing this weekend and not one person has responded to the image, so maybe other people don't see anything wrong with this practice.

Original photo by Tokyohana

Comments

[St Vincent]

Count me in as one who is less likely to want to see/buy/do something if it's been over-hyped. When someone crosses that line (and it ain't far for me), I want to do what is the opposite of what is intended for the ad. Which, of course, makes contemporary ironic hipster anti-ads doubly annoying.

I actually love old advertising and have collected tons of old magazines mainly for the cool old ads. Beautiful layout, lithography, colors and actual TEXT in complete sentences that conveys actual product information, not just massaged images and sparse words invoking pleasant associations like we have now. Sure, many of those old ads were fatuous, crass and insultingly simplistic, but most were done by professionals with a level of craft and skill that's often completely absent today.

Having said that, if an ad can be straightforward about a product or service and is displayed and distributed with some restraint and taste, I don't mind it so much... that's usually when I'm looking at a niche publication regarding interest of mine, though.

The rest of the time, if I feel like my awareness is being preyed upon by ceaseless repetition and insinuation into my life, I get annoyed _really_ quickly. The handband ads squarely fall into this category. As does crap like naming public stadiums for corporations or products... Tidy Bowl Arena, Mega-Corp Stadium and such. Look, take your money and either support culture or don't, but please, just piss off with your ad campaign already, okay?

This is all just another symptom of the erosion of any kind of dignified public space in our culture. Feh.

[HalfSpeed]

A good book that I am reading right now that addresses wasted, boring advertising and promotes quality, creative advertising directed towards only those specific consumers that would either benefit or buy. It is called PUNK MARKETING. The book is in my car, so I can't tell you the names of the two authors, but it
is a really great read. They even go so far as to slam the ignorant, ill-mannered, self important, ugly attitude that so much of our modern society...err...population exhibits 24/7. Entertaining, factual and very thought provoking...and very, very PUNK!

[Dale Hazelton]

When I first saw advertisements above urinals and such in the late 80s early 90s, I knew it was the beginning of market intrusion in all aspects of our lives. Viral marketing will continue to increase as long as media buying companies come up with cheap ways to shove logos in our faces, and poor bar owners could use the extra $25 a month, or the free wristbands. I always went to a bar to forget my corporate job and that atmosphere, not have it shoved in my face while I'm relieving myself.

[Clayton]

It may not be that they don't see anything wrong with it, but instead that they don't see it at all. We have become so accustomed to the ceaseless inundation. If someone pointed it out to the readers in such a way that it played to their political leanings, many would likely side with you. Unfortunately, we are very lazy and it takes a lot of media chicanery to really make us fume.

The recent Don Imus controversy is a great example. How many times does Ann Coulter have to refer to middle easterners as "ragheads" before FOX cuts the umbilical? Not that Imus doesn't deserve to be fired. It's not my place to say, but it does seem that our righteous indignation is often curtailed by our barely extant attention span.

As for compulsory advertising, this reminds me of Channel One, which, to paraphrase an old friend of mine, makes schoolkids sit through Oxy commercials depicting the ostracization of bepimpled loners, followed by preachy fluff pieces condemning the belittlement of teens with eating disorders. Thank God they're tanking, but it sure took them long enough.

We have been trained to accept this. Remember the 1980s? How many kids spent their parents money on Coca-Cola shirts and Spuds McKenzie baseball hats? Of course, our indignance didn't really bubble over until Joe Camel's ouster, even though alcohol is a leading cause of teenage deaths across the country. Shilling for Coca-Cola and Budweiser wasn't compulsory in the truest sense, but if you remember how popular that merchandise was, you'll have no trouble agreeing that it might as well have been. For many impressionable kids, at least.

I may be flogging a dead horse here, but I also hate the fact that every time I watch a movie at a theater, I have to sit through sometimes fifteen minutes of cellphone ads and $60M Coca-Cola GTA-knockoffs before the previews. And occasionally, even a few between the previews and the feature. Not to mention the product placement and the jerkoff blocking my exit with handbills in the lobby. No wonder people download.

[Nicholas]

Advertisers must pull their hair out when they realize there are 8 to 6 hours a night where they can't advertise to us because we're asleep.

When they figure out a way to project images into our dreams we'll be having them about sugar drinks, bad cell phone plans, and HBO specials.

[Parq]

I have been saying for years that I fully expect to live to see a day when advertizers will cut a deal with landlords and local communities that will allow them, legally, to come into your home and put advertizing on your living room wall. They will have the right to enter your homes periodically to check on "their" property, and there will be substantial fines for defacing or covering up the ads. Hell, they're already allowed to paste them on the sidewalks, in the streets, even over the manhole covers (readers who don't live in cities: no, I'm not exaggerating.)

And I, too, have long been wondering how long before they start inserting ads into our dreams. Either that, or they'll be allowed to tattoo ads onto the insides of our eyelids.

[Parq]

And while we're on the subject:

http://tinyurl.com/3d5j6u

[Clayton]

I know where I'm vacationing this year.

[K]

Really, if you're sick of the ads you should stop watching television. It's a machine designed to brainwash you into slavery, but at least now it still has a switch and you can turn it off. Better still, shoot it dead. Ahhh, blessed relief, like being cured of the clap after twenty dripping years...

As regards all the advertizing pasted on walls and the like, are we all so dead creatively that we can't add our own work? If the kiddie thugs in my nabe can piss on stuff, so can you, and to much better effect. I recommend a nice laundry marker, or print up a bunch of though balloon stickers for instant application. There, now that stupid ad has become an artwork. It's that simple. Do it now. Stop being consumers and start being creators.

[Clayton]

Who watches television? Haven't owned one in more than a decade. It's all online, commercial free. But motion seconded.

[Cheese Snob Wendy]

Hooray for Sao Paulo!
But you don't have to get your passport to be in the land of no billboards.
Vermont hasn't had billboards in over 30 years. It's a law.
Go here:
http://www.scenic.org/billboards/case_studies/vermont