New, improved McDonald's billboard #FdAdFriday

Wow. That must have taked a lot of Wite-Out...

Via 22 Words

Real-life ad blockers strike Stockholm subway

A Swedish activist group posted this video of their shenanigans in the Stockholm subway, removing all ads from a train car and a station.



While I can appreciate a good civil disobedience, and I agree it's nice to have a little break from ad overload, the stunt is pretty obnoxious to anyone involved in public transit.

The group is quoted in Animal NY:

“Public transport is nothing you can compromise about. It is a vital part of the urban nervous system and is a public matter, a premise for the city’s economical and social life to function. The fact that public transport is too expensive is both a structural issue as well as a reality for individual people. It is not fair that a millionaire and an unemployed person has to pay as much for public transport. With tax-paid, fare-free, public transport everyone pays according to how much they can pay.”

I would love for buses, trains, etc. to be able to be fare- and ad-free too. That would be awesome. Seriously. But if even a country like Sweden has to supplement taxpayer funding by collecting fare and selling ad space, you can be pretty sure that is not happening in any capitalist country anytime soon.

I get it. They're anarchists. Me, I just want to be able to take the bus to work. And as a rider, I have a feeling any social action that costs the transit system revenue is going to end up coming out of my pocket.

But hey, have fun sticking it to all the wrong people.

And is this not also an ad?

Honest Logos?

These logos, by designer Viktor Hertz, are a dose of radical realism. I guess.

(Via The Consumerist and Behance.net.)

They're full of righteous anger and sarcasm, but I preferred this concept when it came in the form of Wacky Packages. 

It was a more innocent time...

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.