(Most of what is below I wrote up yesterday, and then opened Pete's and
Karen's new e-mails today. Pete's raises the issue of advertising
pervasiveness, and ethics and morality; Karen's that of media influence
on social change. I felt compelled to comment on how slowly progress is
unfolding due to corporate interests gaining control.)
NK
Good point about the moving ads, Karen. Compound that with people on
meds, those not on meds who should be, those intoxicated by alcohol or
other substances, people who cannot easily distinguish between illusion
and reality -- which would also include young children and certain
presidents.
The twisted minds in marketing, corporations willing to buy up these
infringements upon our visual spaces, and the governments that prefer to
support the corporation rather than the individual's rights ...
We were watching Blade Runner for the umpteenth time the other week.
Plenty of lively holo ads that appear on buildings and air space of
flying ship/cars. Ads are rampant. Philip K. Dick had it right, though
perhaps not as invasively imagined as what Pete has described. Yet,
interestingly, the story he wrote, possibly in the early seventies, was
set in 2014, marked by personal craft/spaceships as the common mode of
transportation, paranoid corrupt government, dense air pollution and
sentient androids. I couldn't help but realize that much of what had
been occupying my thoughts lately regarding civilization's lack of
progress was underscored in the dating of a film whose story line should
have been as foretelling of the future as was Orwell's 1984.
I'm not likely alone in thinking that we should have come a lot further
along than we have. With basically only computers (with both their
wonderful and double edged sword programs) and the world wide web to
speak for progress over the last few decades, one is left wondering how
it is that things have actually slowed down, whereas they should have
been speeding up exponentially. Perhaps using the previous century as an
indicator is no longer possible.
I'm left to conclude that greed itself has ironically played the biggest
hand. Oil and gas, and car manufacturers suppressing hybrids and
electromagnetic and solar powered vehicles. War and security
expenditures, by which just a few profited, and whose authors' defensive
posturing only gave rise to greater insecurity, diverted most funding
that should have gone towards sustainable energy and products. The
greatest progress in medicine seems to have been a toss up between the
realization that they can target radiation therapy for cancer (rather
than radiating an entire section of the body), and the realization that
cancer itself is brought about by toxins, lack of oxygen, and viruses.
For all the $billions collected for research, this was the best they
could come up with. Artificial limbs have been coming along nicely, some
drugs, and heart and diaphragm pacemakers, but likely because big Pharma
hasn't interfered as much in these areas. Science is unable to keep up
with the destruction it is assigned to counteract in the wake of much of
its own genius. GM foods, continued pesticide use, and public management
of almost all natural resources has resulted in disaster. Now global
warming acceleration is reality, due to the so-called progress, but
mostly thanks to greed.
I expected to be riding around in spaceships by now, and that world
peace would be much further along. I thought that world hunger, poverty
and disease would have been much closer to extinction. I thought that
greed would not be escalating, and that inequality amongst peoples,
classes, and sexes would be close to over. World wide, inequality has
grown worse, and genocide are still commonplace, characterized by far
more atrocious crimes. Class inequality is generally far greater. Women
have made strides (primarily) in the western world, yet are even more
afraid to walk the night streets, and men still basically run the world
on both sides. In poorer countries especially women will succumb to
rape, prostitution and AIDS. Children, whom I had envisioned engaged in
mind expansion and aerial gymnastics have been enslaved, militarized,
corporatized and medicalized.
Most real progress has been hampered by the perpetuation of the
corporate/war economy, and never so much as in the last five years.
Advertising strategies reflect this perfectly, and not only thrive in
its arena, but raise the stakes higher still. Media, next to the Bush
White House, plays the greatest role in propaganda for war and
defensiveness. For every step forward in communications delivery,
government tightens the reins on personal liberties. Next will come
greater control over information highways. Without free flowing
essential, as opposed to manipulative information, restricted though it
is now, we cannot have hope for a future free and innovative society.
There are likely fewer restrictions on advertising in place than on news
items, if put into the context of national security, job security or the
Patriot Acts. This can only be expected to magnify with increasing
corporatism.
Natalia Kuzmyn
*******************************************
Karen Watters Cole wrote:
Explains the popularity of TiVo, doesn't it? People just trying to
weed out some of the visual clutter in everyday life.
Does this seem to blur the line between what is tactile real and what
is virtual reality? Since I am taking care of elders who are losing
sight and hearing, among other things, it strikes me that moving cars
on the sides of buildings would confuse senior drivers and floors that
move like a movie screen would unsettle more than just the happy hour
crowd at restaurants.
You know, I don't recall in the science fiction movies/series that
there was a lot of advertisement in the future. Maybe as a punishment?
KwC
National Desk; SECTA
Anywhere the Eye Can See, It's Now Likely to See an Ad
15 January 2007The New York Times
Add this to the endangered list: blank spaces.
Advertisers seem determined to fill every last one of them.
Supermarket eggs have been stamped with the names of CBS television
shows. Subway turnstiles bear messages from Geico auto insurance.
Chinese food cartons promote Continental Airways. US Airways is
selling ads on motion sickness bags. And the trays used in airport
security lines have been hawking Rolodexes.
Marketers used to try their hardest to reach people at home, when they
were watching TV or reading newspapers or magazines. But consumers'
viewing and reading habits are so scattershot now that many
advertisers say the best way to reach time-pressed consumers is to try
to catch their eye at literally every turn.
''We never know where the consumer is going to be at any point in
time, so we have to find a way to be everywhere,'' said Linda Kaplan
Thaler, chief executive at the Kaplan Thaler Group, a New York ad
agency. ''Ubiquity is the new exclusivity.''
No consumer, it seems, is too young. Some school buses now play radio
ads meant for children. Last summer, Walt Disney advertised its
''Little Einsteins'' DVDs for preschoolers on the paper liners of
examination tables in 2,000 pediatricians' offices, according to
Supply Marketing, a company that gives doctors free supplies in
exchange for using branded products.
Some people have had enough. Last month, after some ''Got Milk?''
billboards started emitting the odor of chocolate chip cookies at San
Francisco bus stops, many people complained, and the city told the
California Milk Processing Board to turn off the smell.
And this month the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey cancelled
a plan to post ads for Geico at tollbooths and elsewhere around the
George Washington Bridge, a deal that was valued at $3.2 million.
Politicians and preservationists had raised aesthetic concerns, and
some had complained the city was selling the ad space too inexpensively.
Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in
a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with
up to 5,000 today. About half the 4,110 people surveyed last spring by
Yankelovich said they thought marketing and advertising today was out
of control.
Some ad agencies and the companies that hire them are taking heed,
calling the placement of ads everywhere a waste of money.
''What all marketers are dealing with is an absolute sensory
overload,'' said Gretchen Hofmann, executive vice president of
marketing and sales at Universal Orlando Resort. The landscape is
''overly saturated'' as companies press harder to make their products
stand out, she said.
Outright advertising is just one contributing factor. The feeling of
ubiquity may also be fueled by spam e-mail messages and the increasing
use of name-brand items in TV shows and movies, a trend known as
product placement. Plus, companies are finding new ways to offer free
services to people who agree to view their ads, particularly on the
Internet or on cellphones.
More is on the horizon. Old-fashioned billboards are being converted
to digital screens, which are considered the next big thing. They
allow advertisers to change messages frequently from remote computers,
timing their pitches to sales events or the hour of the day. People
can expect to see more of them not only along highways, but also in
stores, gyms, doctors' offices and on the sides of buildings,
marketing executives say.
The trend may lead to more showdowns as civic pride is affronted.
''They're making our community look like Las Vegas,'' said Barbara
Thomason, president of the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce, of
the scores of digital signs she has noticed popping up in the last few
years. ''The word 'trashy' has been used.''
Some advertising executives say that as long as an advertisement is
entertaining, people do not necessarily mind the intrusion -- and may
even welcome it.
In some office buildings, for instance, video screens in elevators
provide news and information as well as ads. This year video screens
will be placed in about 5,000 New York City taxicabs, where passengers
will see both advertisements and NBC programs, according to Clear
Channel Outdoor, which is installing the screens.
''If you do it the right way, you actually win points,'' said John
McNeil, executive creative director at McCann Worldgroup San
Francisco. His agency designed ads for Microsoft that appeared on tray
tables in US Airways planes last spring.
But advertisers are still trying to determine exactly what the right
way is, and that has led to some intriguing experiments.
At the Amway Arena in Orlando, Fla., for instance, an interactive
floor display for McDonald's last year showed the head of a teenage
boy with small Big Mac burgers flying past; when people stepped on the
ad, the burgers bounced away from their feet.
An interactive ad for Adidas appears in the Herald Square subway
station in New York City. Passers-by last week said they liked the
sign, which looked like a static picture of a sneaker until someone
walked past it, triggering a motion sensor that sent a spray of
miniature sneakers flying.
''It makes me interested in the sneakers,'' said Roscoe Evans, 36, a
personal trainer from Waterbury, Conn. ''I'd rather have it in here
than out on the street.''
Andrea Mendez and Julie Wheaton, both working in New York for a year
for Teach for America, said the sign was ''cool'' and suitable for its
location. ''But I wouldn't want to see it back in Spokane,'' said Ms.
Wheaton, who is from the state of Washington.
Toyota projected ads for its Scion cars on the sides of buildings in
14 cities, including Chicago, Atlanta and Dallas. Unilever also
projected ads, for its Axe men's fragrance, on buildings in places
like Tampa and Milwaukee. But this tactic does not always go over
well: last month, when branches of Chase Bank and Commerce Bank
projected ads on New York sidewalks, the city told the banks to turn
off the unauthorized beams.
Ad executives say that new forms of advertising take trial and error.
''No one wants to annoy the consumer,'' said Bill Bean, director of
trade insight at Miller Brewing Company. ''However, there are many
annoying ads that sell products, and it's very difficult to tell what
annoys one consumer and what pleases another.''
Advertisers may not be able to get their logos everywhere. For
instance, while companies like Verizon and Continental Airlines seem
to have had success in giving out free (or inexpensive) boxes to
pizzerias, some stores say they do not want the branded merchandise.
''It would offend as many of our customers, and could cost us as much
business as the money we'd save by having free boxes,'' said Kevin
Behnke, general manager of Cosmo's Pizza in Boulder, Colo. ''Boulder's
kind of anti-commercial.''
Connie Garrido, president of the WOW Factory, an ad agency, said that
advertisers took risks when they put messages in offbeat places, but
that such risks could often be worthwhile. A campaign that reaches
people outside their homes is ''very good for awareness because it's
out there, it's in your face, and you can blanket a marketplace,'' she
said. ''It's one of the last mass mediums.''
Revenue from these new and unusual ads is still small and hard to
measure. The ''alternative media'' category represented $387 million
in spending in the United States last year, up from $24 million in
2000, according to PQ Media, a research firm. But the 2006 figure
still represented a tiny part of out-of-home advertising, which
generated $6.8 billion that year, according to figures PQ Media
compiled for the private equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson.
''If you reach consumers out of the house, they're more likely to act
than if they're sitting on their couches,'' said Jack Sullivan, senior
vice president and out-of-home media director at Starcom USA, an
advertising agency.
One company that says that nontraditional advertising has worked is
Perry Ellis, the clothing designer, which gave 594,000 free shirt
boxes and hanging bags to dry cleaners in New York, Miami, Los Angeles
and San Francisco last year. Perry Ellis still gets phone calls from
the laundries asking for more bags, said Pablo de Echevarria, senior
vice president of marketing.
''We're always looking for new mediums and places that have not been
used before -- it's an effort to get over the clutter,'' Mr. de
Echevarria said.
''But,'' he added, ''I guess we end up creating more clutter.''
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