A correspondent in New Zealand has a question for us all. Anyone got any thoughts?
"Down here in New Zealand the local city councillors of Auckland are proposing a total ban on all outdoor media city-wide in a belief that such commercial messages are screwing up the city, destroying the ambience of our architecture, and generally can be blamed for all things bad that has stopped the city from becoming "Paris in the Pacific" yadda yadda etc.
Obviously both advertisers and outdoor companies are doing their nut and as you can imagine kittens are being born all over town, and to be honest so much has been said on the subject to date it doesn't need further thinking about, but one journo down here has picked up on a recent speech by Stephan Loerke, MD of the World Federation of Advertisers (who?) who opened an address in Auckland recently by saying "Perhaps, industry's greatest challenge today is an anti-brand, anti-corporate, anti-advertising sentiment that is pervading society........... It is time for us to face the truth that on many levels, and in increasingly influential circles, attacking advertising has become fashionable not just among consumer and pressure groups but in society as a whole"
The local journalist is writing an article that "attacking advertising has become fashionable and that restricting advertising has become a populist, vote-winning policy measure with no heed taken for the unintended consequence of such restrictions"
I have been asked to respond to the journo by Monday next week.
My open question to those such as myself who read your fabulous blog is this:
"Does society as a whole actually hate advertising as proposed by Loerke in his recent address?
My thoughts:
Is advertising welcomed as a form of entertainment? (Superbowl break being the most extreme example)
40% of those with Tivo who technologically could avoid ads still choose not to (recent Nielsen study)
Is the question instead that people don't hate "advertising" but hate irrelevance?"
Many people have raved about this fantastic film from Studio Smack but I first found it via City Of Sound. As Dan points out, it's hard to see it as just a critique of 'urban spam', surely no-one's saying that clocks or the keypads on cash machines are graphic pollution, they're fairly necessary in the life of a city. And the film makes all this stuff look rather beautiful. But it does serve to make us look again at the cities we walk through, which is always a good idea.
I've been thinking about urban spam. I'm supposed to be saying something clever about it on the World Service on Friday. It's clearly subjective; one person's spam is another person's useful service or entertaining promotion. Just like with email spam. It's just the balance of annoyance to usefulness is way our of wack. But I think the reason it winds so many people up is it makes us examine the deal we've done, as a society, with marketing and forces to decide if we want to do it again.
Not many people are bothered by the fact of ads on TV or in newspapers. We know why they're there. They're paying for the content and we're used to seeing them there. We don't think them. But when 'ads' turn up somewhere new, somewhere we're not used to seeing them (which increasingly they do, because of the interuptive marketing arms race) we're forced to think about them, to decide whether their presence in this new, novel place is a deal we want to do. Will we swap some attention for some entertainment, or a coupon? Maybe we will, but I think, when it's somewhere new, when we're confronted with a new invasion of our attention space then the bar gets raised. We're used to ignoring the bad ads on TV or in the papers. Our filters automatically screen out the dumb. But we're not set to do that in new places, new environments, so if brands are going to invade those spaces, they'd better be very confident they've got a deal worth doing.
Or something.
The urban spam backlash begins. Hurrah.
Inspired by Coudal's Dear Cell Phone User Cards and an incident with a chugger. I decided to make these cards. (Assisted by the noble Ben of The Design Conspiracy who did that designer thing of making the type smaller and moving it off centre a bit and somehow making it look beautiful in a way that ordinary people can't even if we make the type smaller and move it off centre. I'll never understand it.)
Anyway, that's the front up there. And this is the back
There's a pdf here with 8 of them on for you to cut out and distribute, if you wish. And there's what Ben tells me is an InDesign file here.He says you'll be annoyed that it doesn't include any fonts but that it's wrong to distribute fonts so we haven't. Anyway, this means that the font-enabled and designers amongst you can make your own versions if you like. And maybe someone might even make a 'Stop Bothering Me With Your Stop Bothering Me With Your Urban Spam Cards' Card. Which I guess would be perfectly valid.
I was thinking of making a set for myself on some nice card and putting them in a smart Muji card holder. (Not that I'll ever have the guts to distribute them). If anyone would like one too let me know and I'll work out a cost.
Urban Spam This Coke poster shouts Goal! at you when you walk past. (Literally, not in the way art directors say a poster 'shouts' at you). Intrusive and annoying. via MIT adlab.
Not Urban Spam This Pepsi poster lets you listen to some music if you plug your headphones in. Not annoying, actually intriguing. It's the difference between offering to share with someone and imposing yourself on someone. via Make
Richard Reynolds is a planner to admire. I'd heard about his smart, interesting t-shirts a while ago, and ordered a couple, and they're great. And then I heard that he was also doing this, which is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time and is the complete antithesis of urban spam, and should be a compulsary activity for everyone who ever felt tempted to do some dumb ambient campaign.
And - and this should be useful and instructive for all you junior planners and people looking to find a job - there's something incredibly hire-able about someone like Richard, someone who does stuff, as opposed to the usual planning I-just-think-stuff stereotype, this is a very valuable quality in a planner. (Of course I've never met the man, so he could be a horrible planner, but I very much doubt it.) Visit Guerilla Gardening. Give the man some support.
I think this is very definitely not urban spam. Because it's funny, original, appropriate and interesting. Which gives it value.
via MIT ad lab.
More urban spam from coffee republic. It seems part of the experience they're trying to offer you is the feeling of constantly being sold to. Not so much a third space, more an enormous shelf-wobbler.
This is an example of what I mean by Urban Spam (not the fact that this coffee cup is on some street furniture, I just put it there to shoot it).
We got given this cup and 'to-go sleeve' at Coffee Republic. It's got a rubbish Motorola ad on it. Motorola have spammed me, with Coffee Republic's complicity. By buying the coffee you willingly and happily get into a relationship with Coffee Republic. You don't sign up to receieve ads. I didn't get a discount from Coffee Republic for consuming this ad, though they presumably got some money from Motorola.
It's not a big deal, I'm not hugely bothered, but it's all part of the last desperate interruptive marketing arms race, which is just going to annoy every consumer on earth before the industry learns that attention needs to earned not bought.
We should all stop before someone invents a Dr Strangelovey interruptive marketing doomsday machine that we can't turn off.
