Apple iPad

Here some warm subjective camera shots of idealised Apple iPad users according to Apple. Or something like the following proposition:

'Are you a (cultured and well-informed) reader of The Economist, a (cool and up-to-date) Twitter user, a (savvy and enlightened) follower of TED talks and a (maybe nostalgic) friend of books? Are you (do you like to think of yourself as) all or either of the above?
Then you, who enjoy being all these things while sitting leisurely at home or at a trendy and generic café with sofas, wearing brand-new casual clothes, with your nicely air-brushed skin tone…, you must be an iPad person (buyer)'.

By the way, the ads bring an illustrative take on our contemporary cultural landscape, again, according to Apple: the titles of books we like to read (or just buy), e.g. Nineteen Eighty Four (now that’s a surprise); the people we like to listen to, e.g. Jamie Oliver (still?); the issues that we are concerned about (or supposed to be), e.g. climate change; the nothingness we like to spread via Twitter, e.g. a classic: “Just ate the best sandwich. Ever” (!).

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Apple: iPad
Euston Station (LU)
London

I am the rules

A year ago it was “the revolution of you”. Now we’ve moved to a first-person narrative with “I am the rules”. Either way, “you” and “I” are, of course, no other than constructed characters by the authors of these stories, i.e. the advertisers.
In this sense, what strikes me the most about this type of advertising discourse is how perilously blurred the distinction between fiction and reality has become; how by sheer repetition, over-exposure, and persuasive enchantments, the audiences of these advertising messages might end up ‘forgetting’ that those “you” and “I” are not really themselves.

Remember there was a time when marketing was mainly about the marketed product? Nike, for example, are experts at having moved on from that stage. Certainly, they still sell actual shoes (or sportswear in general), but what they effectively market is attitude, values and identity. I’d struggle if I had to explain this to my grandfather; yet, I’m in wonder that this fact has become so incontrovertible these days.

Most perverted of all is the appearance today that power has been given to the citizens, now christened as the new agents of capitalism. But this, it seems to me, is rather the product of a narrative device, a story that it’s being told by a narrator’s voice which has made its way inside of us; a voice saying stuff like for instance “I am the rules”; a first-person narrative voice which we risk taking for our own.

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Nike / Foot Locker: I am the rules
Euston Station (LU)
London

Look out!

I titled this blog ‘Ads in my way’ in reference to advertising placed in the public space, i.e. placed in people’s visual space. So a certain metonymical construction was at play there: the ‘way’ in ‘Ads in my way’ was actually meant as ‘visual way’; hence, physical 3D space taken for visual 2D space.
Lo, in this post which you are now reading the figurative has become actual: the above featured, just around the corner from where I live, is literally some ad in my way. One wonders what lack of common sense or minimum attention or basic regulation is needed to approve the placing of this piece of ‘street furniture’ in the middle of the sidewalk in everybody’s way.
One doesn’t need to be pushing a baby buggy, riding a mobility scooter or have visual impairment to find the advertising furniture very inconvenient.

May this perhaps serve as some sort of illustration of what I meant with the blog title. Doing the metonymy deconstruction journey back, advertising in the public space comes most often as an invasion of the public visual space, typically without people’s consent, yet with the (reluctant or less reluctant) collusion of institutions entrusted to manage that public space on behalf of the people. Thereby, an instance of the increasing desecration of the public realm.

It could be said that you could choose not to look at public advertising, but it’s not just that advertising in the public space is these days so pervasive, it also seems that you could smash your face into it if you didn’t look.

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High Road, N22
Wood Green
London

Monsters

After having put up a post on the poster for Sofia Coppola's Somewhere last week, I've just coincidentally come across this other one, which shares several elements with the former: a pair of young different-sex characters, tropical lush setting and a dystopian/science-fiction air to it..., and a Christmas season release. Other than that, and without the will to repeating myself, let this one serve as the stark antithesis to all of that which I had found inspiring in the poster for Somewhere. Let it be a benchmark.

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Vertigo Films: Monsters
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London

The Beatles. Now on iTunes

That’s the IMAX cinema viewed from my office window these days. Any time I dare look out, I find myself watched over by those four frozen gigantic icons; a rather unsettling feeling, I must admit.

Unsettling also that the IMAX cinema (part of the British Film Institute (BFI), a public cultural institution) is increasingly using its billboard space not to advertise currently screening film, but to generate income from hiring it out to external parties: there we’ve now got the Beatles courtesy of Apple iTunes, but from my memory I retrieve, among many film-unrelated products, cars, clothing brands, ice-creams and chocolate bars blown up to the impressive scale the IMAX offers.

The BFI charges £120,000/fortnight for the IMAX 360 degrees façade to interested advertising parties (as gathered from a colleague of mine who recently made an enquiry to place an advertisement there). Without knowing much about the BFI’s finances, I can only guess that renting out that space must be the BFI’s most profitable line of business. Of course, as a public institution whose funding has particularly been cut recently (what not?), it’s difficult to reproach the BFI for seeking the extra income. Thus, I’ll reproach the Establishment instead for insidiously stepping up the shift from the public to the private, leaving the balance between freedom and equality in the hands of the market, demoting citizens into consumers and, as I see it, for renouncing the aim of solidarity in favour of individual profit.

The Beatles appropriated by Apple, public culture appropriated by the logic of the free market…, and me not being able to do much more than just avoiding my office window these days. I never thought that we were so close to do the right thing, but I can see that we are now in fact getting further. Rather unsettling, I said.

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Apple iTunes: The Beatles. Now on iTunes
BFI IMAX Cinema, Waterloo
London

Return to Narnia this Christmas

Christmas, that special time of the year to remember with nostalgia the time when street Christmas lights simply meant 'Christmas'.

Now sponsorship has altered that meaning.

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20th Century Fox + Walden Media: Return to Narnia this Christmas
Regent Street, W1B
London 

Somewhere

It’s rather regrettable, but I rarely go to the cinema anymore, especially not to see brand new films, so I guess I’ve become estranged from the segment of population to whom film posters are aimed at.
Yet, the poster for Somewhere has really got me. I know nothing about the movie, only that is directed by Sofia Coppola, a lady with a hell of a last name who had written and directed Lost in Translation, which I had enjoyed watching at the time (so I’m admitting an initially positive bias).
However, I guess it is all of the inspiring questions that the poster puts forward what has been the bait I’ve bitten.

Usually, film posters present a clear range of expectations about the films they advertise, certainly their genre and often even a sketch of their plots. They typically offer questions for the ‘reader’ of the poster to guess in a quite easy way.
But the poster for Somewhere, I would say, poses questions with unsure answers: what is the relation between the two characters? Have they just met? Where is that location? And when is that? Is that a dystopian scenario à la Ballard’s ‘Drowned World’? Are they in their own dream? Are they maybe in my dream? Ultimately, am I losing the grip of myself?

So I’d say that the poster’s appeal is more about what it hides than what it shows, more about what is uncertain and open to (my) speculations than about what is dully evident: there, something is happening to someone at some point somewhere…, but where, when, who, what? It is –I think while inhaling deeply from my joint– as if it spoke of some unspeakable depths I should hear about.

I’m afraid, though, that in the end I won’t go to see the film, as I’m one who lives in fear of utter disappointment.

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Focus Features International: Somewhere
Euston Station (LU)
London

What happens after death?

I have this recurring thought that I should consider death more often and more deeply, that in general, at least in the Western society I live in, we all should consider death more often and more deeply: our death, the death of those we love and human death in a broad sense.
But even if recurring, this thought is usually a passing thought, lost among the too many thoughts of any single day.
That’s probably why I was appealed by this poster for the British Museum’s exhibition on the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, in which indeed a thorough consideration was given to the “afterlife”.

So there I was at 8:30 AM, changing trains in Leicester Square Tube Station on my way to work, my head between sleep and what laid in my working day ahead, suddenly -snap, wake up!- probed by a poster: "What happens after death?". And one line below: “Can you change into a bird?”.
The questions stayed with me as I continued walking along the underground corridor, thinking of death, of birds, of death and birds in underground corridors, on sleepy people walking along underground corridors rarely thinking of death, not to say turning into birds.

Damn it, they made me want to go and see the exhibition!


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British Museum. The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead: What happens after death? Can you change into a bird?
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London

We are London. Are you?

Just the tip of the iceberg of this multimedia 'We are London' campaign.

Quite a branding stretch here for German sporting-cum-fashion goods makers Adidas, carrying out a completely localised campaign in London, closely targeting the homeboys they hope to convert/keep loyal to the spell of their global brand.

Appealing to that something so reassuring as it's the sense of belonging, addressing the audience with a direct question -"Are you?"-, the advertisers have taken this campaign to Facebook and YouTube. Just follow the link in the poster if you are curious -you'll learn that the kid in the above poster is grime MC Maxsta from East Ham, one among several success stories of local kids from non-postcard London areas who have done well in the hip-hop scene and have agreed to tell us all about it while touring us around their 'hoods' wearing Adidas clothes.

I have to believe that this grim London / hip-hop scene / social media stuff gotta be the cool thing, but I'm afraid I'm just too old to know. It's not that I'm not a Londoner, you know what I'm sayin'?

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Adidas: We are London. Are you?
Euston Station (LU)
London

Future Beauty. 30 years of Japanese fashion

It really surprised me to find this ad boldly headlined in katakana writing. Not that the advertiser –the Barbican Art Gallery– probably expected its audience to be able to spell it out, but the point was made notwithstanding; the poster was for an exhibition on contemporary Japanese fashion and, apart from the unmissable hint to the Japanese rising sun flag in the poster design, the medium guest-stars as the message: the use of Japanese characters goes straight to the point denoting 'Japaneseness'; whatever is the actual meaning of those characters is irrelevant; 'Japaneseness' on its own appears to be cool enough (and I’d also add fun and playful and quirky and edgy and kooky and even cute and so feather-light), and that is simply the perk. Even the skin is deeper, but I guess that’s what we have around these days.

By the way, the katakana headline –if you were curious to know– just reads “Barbican” (バー = ‘Bar’; ビ = ‘bi’; カ = ‘ca’; ン = ‘n’); it could have been expected, couldn’t it?

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Barbican Art Gallery: Future Beauty. 30 years of Japanese Fashion
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London

Be younique

The copy reads: "Andrea Garbolino. Contest Hero. Turin. Be younique".
The story, I read at the Police dedicated webpage, is that a contest was organised to find the advertisement face for 2010. The participants, supposedly fans of Police accesories, had to submit pictures of themselves and their 'youniqueness'. And it was this chap who got it in the end. So it is a 'you' who makes the brand identity here -or something like that, you know.

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Police: Be younique
Leicester Square Station

De Byzance à Istanbul

This ad one caught my eye by the fact of being of an exhibition about Byzance/Istanbul as a hub of civilisations which takes place in Paris and is advertised in London (more particularly in Russell Square Station, the closest station to the British Museum, thus aiming to the appropriate target).

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Galeries Nationales, Paris: De Byzance à Istanbul
Russell Square Station (LU)
London 

Bringing the facts to life

This ad by the private TV channel ITV raises the issue of the cost of alcohol misuse for the National Health Service as an example of the factual and uncompromised information that ITV provides. However, it seems to me that the prevalent message conveyed by this eye-catching close-up image of three pretty girls enjoying their friendship, having fun and willing for more (supposedly after having 'misused' alcohol), is rather one of glorification of alcohol misuse.

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ITV News: Bringing the facts to life
Finsbury Park Station (LU)

It pays to think big

Using really strong brands to advertise your own not-so-strong brand? I'm not sure it works.
Even after having taken this picture, I couldn't remember what this ad was mainly about when I saw the thumbnail in my folder; I did only remember the iconic Ikea shed. Good for Ikea, I guess, who are enjoying free publicity.

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The Daily Telegraph: It pays to think big
Holborn Station (LU)

Be part of the times

Japan unusually portrayed in an ad that does not include a geisha. A bit disappointlingly, however, it features a robot

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The Times: Be part of the times
Leicester Square Station (LU)
London