Tom Selleck - First TV Commercial

I was doing some research on Reagan and Iran Contra. One thing led to another and, well, you know how it is. The video uploader writes:

I directed this spot with Tom, Patti Deutsch, Teri Garr and Penny Marshall. This was Tom's first and he was so terrific, I gave him the wardrobe. He told me many years later that it was his only suit and he wore it for every casting interview. 

Patti, Teri and Penny had done very little work at this early point in their careers. It was a pleasure directing all of them. This commercial was written by Jackie End, a creative force at Wells, Rich, Greene in NY. She was a favorite client then and happily for me, she is still a dear friend today.

Meet The Superhumans

Via Rob

Banksy On Advertising

“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.

You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like, wherever they like with total impunity.

Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.

You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”

For further Banksy posts click the banksy tag below

The People's Artist - Banksy - One of a kind - Respect

Mmmmm Monsanto Ad Copy - "GMO Food Is Yummy . Don't Worry About The Ingredients"

Alex Bogusky put me on to this ad against Prop 37. Amazing when the world's leading adman is courageous enough to say that advertising tells lies about the most critical issues.

If you ever wondered what a creative Prussian looks and acts like Alex is quite close. He'd look fab in an Officer's uniform and one those shiny spiked nickel helmets they wore.

8.1 The Fascist Advertising Complex

 

There's no need to worry about an intellectual outcry from the advertising community on this because 95% claim to be working on the 5% that is sweet. I know, hard to figure out the math but that's the way it works in the Tardis.

Greatness

British War Propaganda, The Red Arrows & A Dog Called Nigger

The Daily Mail's portrayal of Flight Lieutenant Steve Morris and Wing Commander Andy Turk is obnoxious propaganda that has the British welling up with tears of pride and comments like 'good job boys' in the Daily Mail when the reality of Flight Lieutenant Steve Morris and Wing Commander Andy Turk's handiwork is in the video below. 

Go on. I dare you to look at it. RAF Marham should be closed down when these pilots answer charges of war crimes and genocide.

Update: I subsequently learned that the dog pilot propaganda imagery is a Dambusters nostalgia trigger using of all things a dog called nigger. This will excite the 'good job' demographic even more. All we need now is a Red Arrows flyby and the next military hardware bill will be rubber stamped for national security reasons and paid by the unwitting British people who think killing machines are normal. They're not and I see a world where we don't need to fawn over the ceremonial death of others. It's inhuman to do so.

Update: 24/08/22 - I told you the Red Arrows were toxic. It's like flag wanks. The people who love to sanitize war because they're cowards are the first to swoon over a flyby of genociders and, well read it for yourself.

Unreal

Why settle for real when you can have unreal?

IBM 5100 First Portable Computer (John Titor Time Travel Mission)

The last video I only discovered yesterday and I used to know the creator but his Youtube account was shut down. OccultScience101 if you're listening I want to get back in touch. For the background to the John Titor story click on the tag below.

Oishi - It's A Question Of Taste

Let me think. First we have an online mall. It is promoting a new consumption model that encourages more material consumption using credit and borrowing initiatives. These are named after Western naked short selling through the financial markets by portraying the idea of three women taking their clothes off. What's not to like about that?

Sometimes I think we did a smashing job of converting China and frankly the disrobing is the least offensive thing.

Slavoj Žižek On Advertising Vs. Academia

I love Slavoj Žižek though as our existential crisis moves up the hierarchy of needs, I find his musings on spirituality (for an atheist who says my God more than anyone else) somewhat threadbare. Particularly so when in this 2004 interview he wades into a shameless defence of St Paul while pointedly ignoring the Archontic threat articulated in the Gnostic texts....or maybe he just doesn't know.

However he's still brilliant and likeable given his shtick is to offend everyone while rarely stating what he believes in. I loved the end of this interview where he talks about taking money for some advertising work.

The Believer Magazine: You wrote some Lacanian-style quotations for last fall’s Abercrombie & Fitch catalog. How did that come about?

Slavoj Žižek: Oh yes, I was helping someone who helped me once. It was easy, he sent me a series of provocative images, and I just wrote silly Lacanian statements about them. My critics have attacked me saying, how can you conscientiously accept money from such a company? I said, with less guilt than accepting money from the American university system.

Bill Hicks On Advertising & Marketing

By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself. 

No, no, no it's just a little thought. I'm just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they'll take root - I don't know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. 

Seriously though, if you are, do. 

Aaah, no really, there's no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan's little helpers. Okay - kill yourself - seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you're going, "there's going to be a joke coming," there's no fucking joke coming. You are Satan's spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It's the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. 

Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, "he's doing a joke..." there's no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a Yank friend - I don't care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking makinations. Machi... Whatever, you know what I mean. 

I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, "Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that anti-marketing dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart." 

Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! 

"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing." 

Godammit, I'm not doing that, you scum-bags! Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet! 

"Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill's very bright to do that." 

God, I'm just caught in a fucking web. 

"Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market - look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar..." 

How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don't you? 

"What didya do today honey?" 

"Oh, we made ah, we made ah arsenic a childhood food now, goodnight." [snores] "Yeah we just said you know is your baby really too loud? You know?" [snores] "Yeah, you know the mums will love it." [snores] 

Sleep like fucking children, don't ya, this is your world isn't it?

Nielsen Stats Confirm Death Of TV Not reported on TV

This is too funny. The death of TV is not being reported by TV (go figure) and also reinforces my point that the corporate media have a profit incentive in lying to people about food, health, politics and about those wars abroad.

Aaron Barnhart broke this news in the Kansas City Star using data that is six months old. Nobody serious has picked up on it including advertising planners it seems. Allow me to summarize the most beautiful trend in humanity.

The total number of U.S. households with TV sets declined year to year for the first time since Nielsen started counting TV ownership.

The number of households with no TV at all is at its highest level since 1975. Three percent of homes are TV-free.

Here are the graphs and chart's:

I put it to you that we live crucial times. That being informed by anything but a profit first, foremost, and last news media corporate entity, (like News International and Sky) is the difference between a healthy or a grossly distorted world view. 


Don't let TV or Newspapers paint your reality. Particularly the corporate media news. Read lots and widely on the internet. Disagree with people in the comments. At least you know you're not being spoon fed.

Top Ten Twitter Tips For Filtering Out Reality

Never have a cause

Never tweet about war

Never tweet about protest

Never comment on political matters

Only follow people in your field of work

Only ever retweet people in your line of work

Do not ever encourage dialogue with new followers

Only tweet about your work (and the occasional amuse gul)

Only tweet on the geography that matters to you and your work

Always consider your job safety and corporate loyalties before tweeting

Here's To The Crazy Ones. The Misfits, The Occupiers

Adland insists it has a finger on the cultural pulse but in recent months its counter-intuitive incentive to pretend the outside world doesn't exist is in full swing. It's a little bit like NYPD beating peaceful protesters while the rest of the world waits for a banker to be arrested. Everybody knows it's a sham but those within the NYPD and banking circles are obliged to stifle their own consciences because it pays the bills. Interestingly those least sensitive to this injustice are statistically most exposed to the news agendas of the corporate media that put profits before people by portraying in the news, peaceful protesters as undesirable. This is all paid for by brands in the commercial breaks. It's branded lying.

So is Adland now finally decoupled from a love of Apple-endorsed misfits, embrace of mistakes and lionization of authenticity in social media? 


While Adland ignores the outside world it's plain to see that the fundamentals are changing? It would be a piss poor planner who failed to extrapolate the momentum of failing markets, degraded ecology, consumer debt exhaustion and most critically the first global protest to ignite all continents including culturally deferential Asia.

And to be silent about it is the nail in the branded coffin.

It's a mistake if brands are going to grow up and be part of the future. The service to self consumer culture is inextricably linked with capitalism's ferocious greed. If 20th century advertising collapsed, along with the Euro or Dollar tomorrow (not inconceivable), it would leave brands as an historical anomaly of less significance than gentleman's wig wearing which lasted for over two hundred years.

Get out into the world and speak up about the difference between right and wrong. If you're unsure what that is, the heart knows more then the brain. 

Ask your heart. Is this the right thing? It will speak to you.

Pope Bans Benetton's UNHATE Advertising, Endorses Child Pornography

Why would the Pope endorse child pornography and yet ban advertising that makes a little fun of the notion that we should love our fellow man? Is it because of those rumours in Rome and Andrew Sullivan's wink that the Pope is a homosexual? He does rather look like he's having a jolly time when the all male acrobat troop came to the Vatican, stripped and ripped doesn't he?

In a way Benetton were doing the more intelligent side of ad agency Crispin Porter Bogusky before they even existed. It's no surprise that the top down hierarchical control psychopaths of the Vatican and pretty much every government and right wing paper absolutely hate this advertising. They pretend they seek peace and reconciliation but it's alien to their psychology and so they hate us humans for laughing and having strong feelings about peace and love. Beware those who don't hug, laugh or love art and even sometimes cry. Think about that.

Currently there are over 1000 international press stories. That's what I call an idea.

A Bloody Great Winter

Be careful what you wish for.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying - Orwell On Advertising

"The interesting thing about the New Albion was that it was so completely modern in spirit. There was hardly a soul in the firm who was not perfectly well aware that publicity — advertising — is the dirtiest ramp that capitalism has yet produced. In the red lead firm there had still lingered certain notions of commercial honour and usefulness. But such things would have been laughed at in the New Albion. Most of the employees were the hard-boiled, Americanized, go-getting type to whom nothing in the world is sacred, except money. They had their cynical code worked out. The public are swine; advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket. And yet beneath their cynicism there was the final naivete, the blind worship of the money-god. Gordon studied them unobtrusively. As before, he did his work passably well and his fellow-employees looked down on him. Nothing had changed in his inner mind. He still despised and repudiated the money-code. Somehow, sooner or later, he was going to escape from it; even now, after his first fiasco, he still plotted to escape. He was in the money world, but not of it. As for the types about him, the little bowler-hatted worms who never turned, and the go-getters, the American business-college gutter-crawlers, they rather amused him than not. He liked studying their slavish keep-your-job mentality. He was the chief among them takin’ notes."


Has George Monbiot linked the normalising effect of advertising to consumer fetish in yesterdays Guardian piece? Is Occupy Madison Avenue next? 


My own thoughts some months ago are over here. The entire .pdf of Keep the aspidistra flying is available over here. It's my favourite Orwell after Down and out in Paris and London.

We Are The 99%

It's the context that makes this interesting enough to post as it resonates with the the current protest slogan and/or tweet of 'We're the 99%' resounding at #occupywallstreet and large cities around the world. I think the intellectual space for commercial messages that illuminate our collective aspirations like this are are possibly one of the few ways forward if something as disruptive as say zero point energy emerged from the vaults of Lockheed Martin Skunkworks or wherever oil busting technology goes to die. 

Otherwise there's no real case for branding. Utility prospers over competitive volume control in egalitarian cultures where supply and demand as well as price parity and quality kind of level out the need advertise. And believe me given the extraordinary lengths big oil corporations have taken to suppress energy technology, I'm convinced that free energy, levels a lot of playing fields.

Anyway I thought I'd ramble a bit because the ad has so little to do with Whiskey drinking but is a lovely idea. I got it over at George Parker's blog which is worth following for the straightest shooting corporate commentary on the net and that's not bullshit. Not bad for a gnarly old ad whore.

Second Laugh Of The Day - T Mobile

Via Famous Rob