Thursday, June 26, 2008

Instances of Hypocrisy - part 356

An advertising honcho has complained that the viewer created content spoofing TV advertisements, generated via ABC1's program taking apart the advertising industry, The Gruen Transfer, "'demeaned and trivialised' a $12 billion industry".

Well, it's a bit rich coming from the advertising industry, considering how many people feel demeaned and trivialised by advertising. It's nice to see the shoe on the other foot for a change.

Apparently, the show's call for viewers to download segments of audio, video and other raw material and 'mash' them up into new spoof ads has generated over 600 uploaded film clips!

1 Comments:

At June 28, 2008 3:16 pm, Blogger Kirsty said...

Yes, it's a bit difficult to feel too sorry for them.

Also, I'm thinking here of the episode of The Gruen Transfer (TGT)where they discussed a 4WD advertiser who used the same technology as the ABC site does. Of course the culture jammers went to town enumerating the destructive capacity of 4WDs or SUVs (since the advertiser was American) and the company predictably got upset and pulled down the website. When the advertising professionals were discussing the case on TGT they unanimously advised that the company shouldn't have reacted the way they did, but left the site up, suggesting they merely drew further negative attention to their cause.

As always, folk should probably take account of the context of things before jumping to knee jerk conclusions. If anything I think the whole program takes advertising very seriously offering a critical perspective on it as a creative business designed not only to sell products but increase awareness about charities etc (as we saw just last week with the discussion of the ad raising awareness of sex slavery).

 

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