art not ads

Mindhacks briefly reports on recent studies in neuromarketing, the latest back-room fad in the struggle to gain a competitive edge in marketing and advertising. From the neuromarketing article on Wikipedia:

Neuromarketing is a new field of marketing that studies consumers sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Researchers use technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to measure changes in activity in parts of the brain, electroencephalography to measure activity in specific regional spectra of the brain response, and/or sensors to measure changes in ones physiological state (Heart Rate, Respiratory Rate, Galvanic Skin Response) to learn why consumers make the decisions they do, and what part of the brain is telling them to do it.

As Mindhacks points out:

if you read the newspaper articles [one in the NY Times and one in the Guardian] it’s shocking to compare their grandiose claims with this study which is currently the best ‘neuromarketing’ evidence

In other words, the marketers are marketing their own research tools — whether they work or not — both to the world and seemingly even to themselves. This smacks of pseudoscience. The usual process is bad enough: when the experimental results don’t match the desired outcome, research tends to be suppressed. But this is even worse. When the research methodology is marketed instead of its actual results, the cart is well and truly put before the horse.

The Anti Advertising Agency has published a succinct article on plans for advertising on the world-famous Golden Gate Bridge. The author neatly summarises the glaringly obvious white elephant here:

Here’s the problem, the conservative anti-government types have starved the government of funds, and now our elected officials are at a loss about what to do. You see, people all agree with the cut-taxes mantra, but sure don’t want any services to be cut! Of course the fact that taxes go towards things that we all want and need such as infrastructure and bridges that don’t collapse isn’t explained when politicians talk about tax cuts. So now, the Golden Gate Bridge district is going hat in hand to big corporations, who have got very low corporate tax rates, so they can fund a small portion of the expensive bridge maintenance. Of course, that advertising money which is paid to the Golden Gate Bridge will be a tax-deductible advertising expense to those corporations!

So we sell off the visual beauty of one of our nation’s landmarks for a paltry sum, and the bridge still can’t make enough to cover expenses. I’ve got an idea, how about we start taking in enough money in taxes to fund our basic infrastructure.

At least, that’s what this article in the newspaper Transit Toronto suggests. One interesting point made is that the revenue generated from advertising on Toronto public transport is minimal. Consequently the increase in fares, should the advertising be completely withdrawn, would be minimal too. And the public would potentially be far happier with their surroundings. In fact, it’s possible that by replacing the ads with art, the buses, trams and trains would attract more customers - off-setting the lost revenue from removing the advertising.

Thanks again, Andy!

This via MetaFilter:

“The city of Sao Paulo passed an ordinance last year banning outdoor advertising; photographer Tony de Marco has been documenting the skeletal remains of the advertising infrastructure throughout the city; the impact looks like the aftermath of a new type of atomic weapon that targets marketing but leaves buildings & people unscathed.”

The MetaFilter post has lots of interesting comments and some links to other equally fascinating stuff.

Art Not Ads International!

Thanks - Andy.

Funny adverts

When I mention Art Not Ads to people, there seems to be a fairly common response: “Ah, but what about that ad for XYZ? It’s really funny! If we didn’t have advertising, we’d have fewer funny things on TV/billboards/radio!”

Where do you start with such wrong-headedness? First, I suppose, there’s the inherent assumption that we need TV/billboards/radio for our entertainment. This is, of course, daft. With the BBC intent on dumbing-down its content in order to compete with the Murdoch-style popular media, TV and radio are increasingly the realm of banal lowest-common-denominator mush. Intellectual snobbery? Not really, just common sense. If the only half-decent publicly funded broadcasting corporation left on the planet insists on competing with the purveyors of reactionary claptrap then they’ll have to play by the same set of rules. There goes the neighbourhood.

A second assumption is that something funny must be OK. Well, that just doesn’t cut it, does it? I’m sure Jo Stalin knew a few good jokes. “Shame about the whole genocide business but he really knew how to work a crowd!” If something makes you laugh, does that mean it’s something you’d agree with universally? Funny does not equal correct. I sincerely hope anyone that finds Jeremy Clarkson funny, for example, can see that he’s a hideous force for Bad. (And anyone reading this and thinking “Ah! So you’re saying that funny things are wrong?” should be given a quick course in logic and put out of their misery.)

A third assumption is that advertising is the only way that entertainment can be funded or publicised. How nutty is that? Great Aunt Bertha’s nut-cake, that’s how nutty. Squirrel pie. It seems to me that the reverse perspective holds far more water: by corralling the cash, advertising agencies sap a lot of the creative talent. People “need jobs” after all, and a lot unfortunately tend to follow the cash. This perpetuates an environment where it’s very difficult to get non-corporate creativity shown to the public. This is similar to a discussion on the ANA pledgebank.com forum: one poster makes the point that charities are given advertising space if it’s spare, but didn’t seem to appreciate that this is the equivalent of pricing charities out of the advertsing market, then offering them the crumbs from the table and expecting them to be happy. Seems like an odd thing to be happy with.

A little economics

Reading back over the pledgebank.com forum, I don’t think I made one point clearly enough. The question was raised: what’s wrong with using advertising to fund a public service (e.g. bus, Tube, trains, etc). Here are some thoughts:

1. Advertising makes you spend your money with the advertisers. Simple. It has to do this, or there would be no point in advertising. Right? Right.
2. Advertisers pay the public service provider in order to advertise to the public.
3. You (being a member of the public, I presume) pay twice: once to the service provider, and second to the advertiser when you buy their products.
4. Advertisers make a profit, even after paying a share of their revenue to the service provider where they advertise.
5. This means that, by paying both the service provider and the advertiser, we are paying more than required to run the public service without the advertising.

Got that? It’s obvious really: the advertisers spend in order to get back more cash than they spend: in other words, to make a profit. They get that cash from the people who are exposed to the ads on the public services: you and me. The advertisers then deduct the amount they paid to the public service provider, in order to work out their profit. The net result is that by using a service funded by advertising, we spend more money than is necessary to run the service! And somehow people think that advertising provides us with “free money”, that somehow advertising is the most cost-effective way of funding a public service.

In fact, it seems that the only people it would benefit are those who are so completely opposed to advertising that they refuse to buy anything that they’ve seen advertised. Whereas those poor souls who are influenced to purchase advertised products are in fact paying way more than necessary for their so-called public service. Now that is nutty. Completely Alpen.

Art Not Oil describe themselves as “a rolling exhibition aimed at encouraging artists to create work that explores the damage that companies like BP are doing to the planet, and the role art can play in counteracting that damage”. Art Not Oil are dedicated to reclaiming art from oil sponsorship, and some of their members have joined the Art Not Ads pledge . Sponsorship of art is often used by the pro-corporate lobby as a sign of the benificence of the sponsor. It’s a lovely dream, to feel that the directors of a multinational company care so much about the little person that they want to enrich our lives with art exhibitions. Unfortunately it doesn’t take a genius to understand the real motivations: good PR, and distraction from other less popular activities. Sponsorship of the arts may not in itself be a bad thing, but the duplicity of the message, and the assumption that people can’t see through it or are too lazy to do so, are both deeply offensive.