Let the seller beware

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Take an ultrasound of a foetus in utero, gingerly place a shadow of a silver spoon in its mouth, then finish it off with a promise of ‘It Could Be You!’ and a daintily-placed Lotto emblem in the corner. Before you can say “two quick-picks and a Winning Streak, please”, you’ve got yourself a high-impact billboard advertising campaign that’s guaranteed to have tongues wagging across the nation. Deliberately provocative, potentially controversial and often downright crass concepts are meat and drink to the advertising industry, but it’s unlikely that the creatives behind the latest National Lottery campaign foresaw their target market biting back, much less turning their own medium against them.

Writ large across at least one of these high-visibility, all-weather billboards, is the counter-slogan “Ad Nauseam?” and the Lotto logo has been amended to read “Notto.” The message couldn’t be more clear. As advertising and marketing in this country have started to aspire to the cultural voraciousness of the US model, so too have the rumblings of dissent grown in volume.

Almost every expression of the world’s media is now reliant on advertising to survive, and in some cases the ads have so encroached upon editorial content that they come close to being the only content. If a critical voice has to scream to be heard above the increasing din of consumer culture, then commandeering the primary tools of the trade may be the best way to get your message across.

American collectives like Adbusters, Cicada and the San Francisco-based Billboard Liberation Front (‘Truth in Advertising Since 1977’) are masters of the game, targetting and mercilessly satirising corporate juggernauts like Apple, Philip Morris, Exxon and McDonalds. There is no real dogmatic political manifesto at the core of these groups, save for a palpable distaste for the machinations of modern capitalism.

Indeed, occupying much common cultural ground with the anti-capitalist protesters that shadow the WTO and IMF around the globe – they are media-savvy, well-connected and highly organised – their targets are usually chosen on the grounds of social and ethical concerns. In a world where Naomi Klein’s No Logo makes it onto the bestseller lists, the often jarring disparities between a brand image and the company’s actual business practice are frequently documented, but less frequently thrown back in the face of the offending party. Which is where the culture jammer steps in, spraycan and scaffolding at the ready.

Big Tobacco has been an obvious mark for the activists, and the iconic Joe Camel has been the butt (pardon me) of many spoofs and send-ups, a celebrated example being The Billboard Liberation Front’s tampering with an elaborate neon billboard to make it read “Am I Dead Yet?” next to a 20-foot high smoking (now skull-faced) camel with a saxophone. Shortly after the Exxon-Valdez disaster, BLF steamed in to Exxon’s side with an ameliorated poster bearing the legend “Shit Happens” above the company logo.

Of course, this being the hurly-burly post-modern world that it is, the advertising agencies soon cottoned on to the fact that these type of guerrilla tactics could be put to work for the noble purpose of, well, selling stuff. So, in an attempt to co-opt the language of the jammers, an agency working on behalf of Chrysler began a concentrated campaign of vandalising their own Chrysler Neon posters and placing random letters to eventually appear as ‘Hip’ or ‘Chill’. The response from the BLF was immediate – crews were dispatched to re-appropriate the posters, turning hip into hype and adding a dash of more sinister graffiti where it was deemed necessary. Chrysler responded with a somewhat peeved mumble.

Few adbusters have actually ended up in court. Firstly, the activists are extremely careful not to get caught, taking elaborate precautions like ground crew dressed as vagrants, casing the site for exits and security risks and temporarily disabling lighting systems. They are also generally wary of causing any permanent damage to a billboard, in order to minimise the severity of a criminal damage prosecution. It’s also considered good practice to leave a six-pack of beer for the cleanup crew employed to undo your good work. Perhaps the most important thing keeping the jammers out of the courts however is the reluctance of the corporations to pursue them through the legal system – the advertisers are well aware of the potential for a protracted and embarrassing courtside trawl through their ethical shortcomings.

The spirit of Adbusters and the BLF has managed to make it intact onto our own shores, with several attacks on Dublin billboards in the past year or so, such as the “I simply must have one of those” alterations made to several Dart-side alcohol campaigns. They may not yet have the sophistication of their American counterparts, but all that’s needed at a basic level is a can of paint, a sharp wit and a desire to work a little deflationary magic on the fantasy world of adland. The battle for public space has begun: caveat vendor.

www.billboardliberation.com

www.adbusters.org

www.rtmark.com