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

Open happiness

Old charm, nostalgia…, it’s cola Christmas, tis the season to celebrate and to go shopping for presents, although unfortunately, as the 'little girl who has become a woman' in the ad does, you might have to carry them all around awkwardly in your hand (carrier bags don’t look so cool). But it’s okay, in spite of that and of the overwhelming crowds in Oxford Street, you are still in the mood to smile and make your rosy cheeks glow at the chance encounter with cola Santa; and lucky you, you still have a free hand to grab his nicely shaped cola bottle (Freudian connotations at work).

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Coca-cola: Open happiness
Lascotts Road, N22
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 

Your kettle is full of fur and...

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Yorkshire Tea: Your kettle is full of fur and...
Russell Square Station (LU)
London

Holidays are coming

Well..., Coca-cola, the no. 1 global brand. So what is in this ad? Self-reference to previous and wider campaigns (TV); the substitution of the not so all-inclusive word ‘Christmas’ by the more politically correct ‘holidays’; the iconic simplicity and cosy familiarity of the glass bottle; the Americana of the eighteen wheeler truck; the hijacking of Santa Claus; and more subjectively, the rather unsettling dark undertones of the image, that half-night setting, the truck with its headlights on, rather menacing reminding me of that evil beast of Spielberg’s “Duel”, which in its Spanish version was more explicitly titled “El Diablo sobre Ruedas” (“The Devil on Wheels”)…, yes, holidays are coming, Coca-cola is coming…

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Coca-cola: Holidays are coming
Stamford Street, SE1
1 Dec 2009