Coke celebrates bikini weather, internet responds predictably

The image above turned up today on Ads Of The World. Created by agency Phibious, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, it's a sexed-up — but mostly harmless — transformation of the brand into bikinis.

Within an hour of posting, AOTW's Ivan Raszl pointed out that there was already a parody version going around:

Posted on Facebook by Carlos Ríos, the caption reads "a real Coca-Cola's summer model, shall be like."

This is a common reaction to "junk food" advertising, familiar to readers of Adbusters:

Do you see the problem? Yes, soft drinks and fast food are fattening. But do we need to make fun of people's bodies to make this point?

PETA apparently thinks so, too:

Pic via Buzzfeed

It's another example how conflicting priorities and sensitivities make social media complicated. People who are against the corporate food industry want to make a statement about promoting unhealthy consumption, but in doing so they cross a line into "body shaming" that's hurtful to people other than their intended targets of derision.

Nothing™ by Adbusters

I don't always like Adbusters' anarchist assault on my livelihood, but when I do it's something like this. Classic.

New Adbusters ad: "Advertising is brain damage"

No argument from this adman. Whoever was responsible for that typography certainly was cerebrally compromised.

McDonald's wants to occupy your gut

This "lunch manifesto," in the style of social message videos like The Girl Effect, frames having lunch at the corporate behemoth as an act of rebellion against The Man.



Animal NY points out that, ironically, "in the early days of Occupy Wall Street, the McDonald’s located several blocks from Liberty Plaza served as a sort of unofficial comfort station for protesters". But now the OWS message has been "trivialized" to sell burgers.

The upside is that, unlike OWS, McDonald's food can't really "occupy" anyone for long...

Ad Hacks

People have probably been messing with ads since ads first appeared. Whether it's drawing a moustache (or worse) on the fashion model, adding social commentary to the copy, or re-editing TV spots, people just seem to love to repurpose creative and media placements to their own ends.

One of the best-known trends in this phenomenon is culturejamming, a term used by the people of Adbusters and Greenpeace to describe simple changes made to ads or logos that reveal their true nature:




You get the idea.

But in today's electronic media, jamming opportunities can be much more dramatic, such as when people break into electronic billboards.



So it was only inevitable that someone would find a way to access the giant video billboards going up in major cities all over the world.

And it came to pass, last Friday, that late-night traffic in Moscow came to a standstill as a 9 x 6 metre video billboard near the Kremlin suddenly started screening hard core pornography.



As amusing as this is, it kind of seems like a missed opportunity to make a really grand statement. People got out of their cars and videotaped the incident, and it's still making the news rounds three days later.

The billboard company owner accuses the hackers of "hooliganism". I just think they displayed a lack of imagination.

Jam this

Adbusters is at it again. In response to what they claim are illegal outdoor ad placements in New York City, a group of them painted over the ads with "delete" keys:



(By the way, I stole the image from their blog. I figure they'd appreciate the irony.)

While this culture jamming is intended to "air our grievances in the court of public opinion and witness our communities regain control of the space they occupy”, the people most interested in their work are probably the admen themselves.

In just about any agency creative department you walk in to, you'll find a copy of Adbusters Magazine lying around. While anarchists may gleefully imagine the headaches and outrage they're causing a bunch of suits on Madison Avenue, the reality is that working ad people are actually pretty subversive too. Anti-corporate culture-jamming may be one of the biggest inspirations for more and more intrusive traditional advertising and guerrilla campaigns.

One of my favourites of these was John St.'s campaign for Girl Guides that used fake sexy ads in magazines with a sticker apparently slapped over it saying "why girls need guides".

This latest culture jam was pretty cool. I'm already thinking about how I can do something like that for one of my clients.