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.

This story has been kicking about for a while, but it’s worth mentioning. Have you seen those awful ads that a certain tissue-manufacturer has been airing, where a guy sits on a blue couch in the street and invites people to “let it out” and talk to him? There’s a box of tissues on the table, and as the volunteers open up their hearts, they tug out a tissue to dry their eyes. Very touching.

The manufacturer in question, Kimberley-Clarke, make a proud boast of using 100% virgin fibre. Campaigners Kleercut say that this material largely comes from clear-cutting ancient forests, which are home to wolves, caribou, and other wildlife that are forced to move on as their habitat is destroyed. It certainly doesn’t look very pretty.

The Kleercut campaigners took to the streets of New York to interrupt the filming of some of these ads. The results are quite amusing. However, the really interesting part of that film from is the comments from the advertising film crew that can be heard in the opening sequences. The volunteers are told that their tears should be genuine, so they’ll need to discuss something moving.

Very few people are naive enough to think that the actual sessions on the blue couch are as open and heartwarming as the final edit purports; and some may not agree with Kleercut’s tactics. But it’s fascinating to get a glimpse into the machinations of an advertising campaign that sets out to deceive. Of course, TV is all theatre, but this advert uses members of the public in an ostensibly impromptu display of emotion, a facade that is demolished by the overheard comments in the film. The link to the final product is tenuous at best, though as any marketeer will tell you, if you engage the audience’s emotions, they’ll most likely remember the product. It’s disappointing that everyone involved in the ad, even presumably the volunteers for the blue couch, were aware that they were all being duplicitous about the premise of the ad. In any group activity, responsibility can become diffused among all participants, so the individuals feel little responsibility themselves. Is it a little harsh to suggest similar mechanisms are at work in advertising, particularly in cynical and exploitative ads? Is there any other reason that people are induced to take part in this sort of advertising? (Apart from cash of course..!)

Some intriguing adverts have appeared recently on London Underground trains. In trendy red, black and white, with pixelated lettering and dirty “urban” scrawls, the ads inform us of vaguely worrying “facts” - for example, 75% of information on the Internet is controlled by one company. The only other detail is a URL:

http://www.information-revolution.org

Could it be that a funky, media-savvy outfit has been formed just to look out for us average internet users? Has a digital Batman unleashed his fearsome data-privacy super-powers on the unjust of the web’s information oligarchy? How exciting! Visiting the site reveals some obtuse ramblings about an apparent group of chums who dreamt up this crazy scheme over a few beers one evening, and then knocked up a website. Okay, so not Batman exactly, but isn’t it great that a group of Citizens has formed to protect us from this pernicious Big Brother? Which begs the question, who is this Big Brother anyway? Ah, there it is, tucked away: it’s Google.

Can it be that these guys combine Batman’s sense of justice with David’s (of “David vs Goliath” [tm] fame) giant-slaying Biblical might? Why, that would be just great!

Erm, no. Of course not. It is apparently a bizarre attempt at kick-starting a “viral marketing” campaign. The website is operated by an advertising agency called Profero, whose clients include Yahoo! and Ask - two companies who are desperate to claw some of the market out of Google’s sticky fingers. Considering the site is in Ask’s index, but neither Google nor Yahoo! have indexed the site yet, suggests that Ask have sponsored this. That’s just guess-work of course. (Update: Inspired guess-work it seems. An ad on TV last night confirms it is indeed Ask behind this atrocious campaign. Where exactly do they think all this pompous cyber-warrior nonsense is going to get them? Where will it end? Will they not rest until their CEO is hoisted onto the shoulders of the unshackled hoi-polloi, who, weeping hot tears of thanks after years of oppression, rally around their saviour - a 3rd rate search engine???)

The campaign is so hugely clumsy it beggars belief. It’s so easy to register a website anonymously, and they didn’t even bother doing that. Spattering fnords all over London advertising media is such an out-dated advertising technique it just makes you cringe (and has doubtless attracted the attention of Google’s legal department). Companies like Nike and Reebok conducted sophisticated viral marketing campaigns decades ago, before it was even known by that name, by paying teenage taste-makers to wear their products and tell their friends how great they were (read Naomi Klein’s book “No Logo” for more detail on that sordid industry). However viral marketing is so formulaic these days that Profero can’t even be bothered to do anything beyond the basics: trendy ads, blah blah, website, blah, privacy paranoia, blah blah, blog, vox-pop video interviews, done. That’ll be several thousand pounds, please, thank you. I’m surprised they haven’t spooged it all over YouTube and MySpace. Well, never mind, at least they offer us free t-shirts so that we can “get involved”. Thanks for that.

The thing that’s really odd is that Profero’s campaign is so ball-achingly poor that they must assume that either (a) the populous is stupid enough to swallow it, or (b) their client is stupid enough to pay for it. Unfortunately the latter is clearly true.

London’s Metro “newspaper” today carries an interview with psychologist Oliver James. His latest book, “Affluenza”, looks into the link between consumerist aspirations and mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and substance abuse. His views are undeniably tinted by his politics, but he backs up his points with some interesting evidence. Some choice quotes:

“One in four people in English-speaking countries has suffered a mental illness in the past 12 months compared with 11.5 percent of Western Europeans… Affluenza makes you ill because it prevents you meeting fundamental psychological needs. Instead you’re lured by ‘wants’ confected by advertisers who encourage consumption… All of us [have become] obsessed with having more money to have a ‘better’ lifestyle… Maybe we should be satisfied with what we’ve got. Your best bet is to try to have happy, satisfying relationships.”

A slight twist on an old story, with a very familiar conclusion.

A beer-pusher is currently advertising its drug using the slogan “belong”. The desperate importance of “belonging” is illustrated by film of a huge, swarming flock of birds; in the background plays one of those a chirpy pop-rock songs that seem to be 10-a-penny at the moment.

It’s a little cryptic, so I’ve hunted high and low for a translation, and apparently, this is what it means:

“Belong! It doesn’t matter what all this is about; in fact, we’re not even going to tell you. That’s not important any more, those days are gone. You just need to BELONG. Everyone else belongs, and that’s what’s important, isn’t it? Join the herd, you’ll be safe. It doesn’t matter what we’re selling, you need it because everyone else tells you. Don’t question it, don’t try to resist, and don’t be different - whatever you do, DON’T BE DIFFERENT. Don’t think, don’t question, just BELONG. Belonging is what’s important, and you can illustrate your belonging by purchasing the correct products. Everything’s the same these days anyway: it doesn’t really matter what you buy, so you may as well BELONG. Why wouldn’t you want to BELONG? Why on Earth wouldn’t you? It doesn’t matter what it is that you belong to, don’t worry about that. It’s like an exclusive club where all your mates are members! In fact, you’ll automatically make friends just by joining! Well, not friends exactly, but at least you’ll know who you don’t like, and that’s everyone who’s not in the club, right? So everyone who is in the club must be your friend. It’s obvious. All this could be yours, just by buying some piss-poor lager. Seriously! That’s what we’re offering. Membership to some nebulous herd of clueless people who’re waiting to be told what to do, what to think, what to wear, what to buy - people just like you! Now some people say that you could save money by not BELONGING, by not purchasing those special things that you need to show in order to BELONG. But where’s the fun in that? You work hard for that cash, so spend it! And what better to spend it on than BELONGING?”

Wow, that sounds just brilliant.

After indulging in a little “web Zen” i.e. typing “artnotads” into Google and seeing what’s out there, I spotted that Art Not Ads is mentioned in the Broken Windows blog back in July 2006. Wikipedia discusses the “broken windows theory of urban degeneration with these words:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.” A successful strategy for preventing vandalism… is to fix the problems when they are small. Repair the broken windows within a short time, say, a day or a week, and the tendency is that vandals are much less likely to break more windows or do further damage.

An interesting notion. The Broken Windows blog describes itself as a “thorn in the side of marketing”, and they point out that advertising isn’t working , citing ad-company Titan’s use of their own billboards to advertise, erm, themselves. This harks back to comments from a while ago on the Pledgebank notice board that when people justify advertising as a means of funding public services, they’re missing the point. Ad execs don’t sit around in boardrooms all day wondering “How on earth can we find more cash for the public, dammit?” - they sit around wondering how they can make more cash for their clients (and hence themselves). Advertising hoardings are cash-cows, pure and simple, and the agencies want more and more of them. There seem to be so many that they are actually left vacant. And yet worthy causes such as charities and Platform for Art are left to pick up the crumbs from the table, and told to be thankful. What a bizarre situation.

I took a trip into London on the Tube a couple of days ago, and surfaced at Tottenham Court Road. I haven’t been there for a while, so I hadn’t seen the flat-screen TVs that line the escalators. There must be 30 of them, each side. So that’s something like 60 screens projecting animated adverts to the people who are chugging their way up the escalators. The ads change of course, so by the time you’ve reached the top, each screen may have displayed several ads. It’s a long escalator so most people stand rather than walk. I didn’t notice, but I’d be surprised if the ads aren’t timed so that the screens update as you roll past them, to make sure you get optimal exposure to brand names, slogans, and the like.

And of course, Tottenham Court Road isn’t the only place that does this. Waterloo and Liverpool Street stations both have enormous plasma screens, each one several metres across, replete with loudspeakers, projecting advertising and corporate news to the waiting masses.

This all begs the simple question, who gave permission to do this? I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that the London Underground is controlled by the Mayor, and the Mayor represents the people of the city. Have the people of London been clamouring for televisual advertising to brighten their journeys? London Underground wishes to improve its service but it’s not clear whether the people of London were consulted about the options available. It seems that an increasing amount of intrusive advertising is the only solution that has been considered.

If anyone can clear up how this has happened, or if you have any opinions on the subject, I’d love to hear them. Email ANA at . I’ll have to contact the Mayor’s office and the London Underground to get the low-down. Feel free to join in!

PS. If you’re not familiar with “Television, Drug of the Nation ” by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, check it out, you may like it.

Courtesy of a gracious informant from Contagious Magazine (an advertising and marketing industry magazine).

It seems that even advertising industry insiders are growing sick and tired of the increasingly intrusive nature of advertising, and have dubbed the latest tactics “urban spam”. The pro-industry “trends and lifestyle” website psfk.com offers up some thoughts on the rise of “advertecture” and other intrusive and overwhelming advertising techniques, and even offers a “warning” in the form of this video (hosted by YouTube).

It’s fascinating to find that even advertisers and marketers feel that some tactics overstep the mark. Even some pro-industry publications and organisations are decrying “urban spam” practises. It would be very easy to caricature the people who create these campaigns as idiotic Nathan Barleys , since their determination to dream up ever-so-clever op-art in exchange for cash, in order to experiment with the public psyche, is seemingly both narcissistic and sociopathic. However that would be to offer them a way out. “You’re over-reacting!” they’d cry. “We’re just having a larf!” they’d wink. But it’s not just members of the public who are finding this guff increasingly irritating; it’s clearly becoming an embarrassment to the industry. Of course “extreme ad placement” garners praise from some quarters as well as criticism . Good lord. “Extreme ad placement”. How do these people sleep at night?

In fact, here’s a link to the blog of an advertising account planner called Russel Davis , since he’s blogging about how unsavoury he finds urban spam (although unsurprisingly he does tend to have a pro-advertising slant). Here’s a quick quote to tempt you over there:

We should all stop before someone invents a Dr Strangelovey interruptive marketing doomsday machine that we can’t turn off.

Hallelujah brother, although I think it may already have happened.

A kind reader sent me an audio clip (MP3 format) from a recent Radio 4 broadcast discussing the future of advertising in London’s rail stations.

As we guessed a while ago on this blog, the images on the plasma screens that line escalators can indeed be controlled so that the image changes as you roll past, ensuring optimal brand exposure. The interviewee also reveals that the large cross-platform advertising will soon be projected moving images, rather than static posters.

I’m sure you’d agree: the future has arrived. It’s maximally intrusive, and nobody asked for it.

(To those who have mentioned the prevalence of London-related stories, my apologies. However, if you have anything relating to the increasing intrusion of advertising in public spaces in your area, then please do get in touch, and we’ll see what can be done).

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.