However, While advertising companies have never had it better, with more and more communication channels opening for them to reach us even on an individual basis, alternative advertising groups are growing at greater and greater speed.

Groups like the Billboard Liberation Front or Adbusters, which in many cases are run by ex-advertising execs, are attempting to fight advertising excesses on their own terms. 'Culture-jamming' a term coined by the band Negativland to signify 'blips in the flow of official messages' has become the new form of media sabotage that attempts to be as savvy as the advertisers are.

In part responsible for the ban now placed on billboard cigarette advertising in the US the Billboard Liberation Front waged war on cigarette manafacturers for many years. Camel cigarettes and in particular their friendly 'Joe Camel' mascot came under particular scrutiny from the group. In one of their most elaborate attacks, a neon billboard for Camel was stripped of its existing neon and new neon added. When night fell, the board glowed: "Am I Dead Yet?"

In a form know as an 'uncommercial' a Calvin Klein Obsession campaign was replaced with a slender model seductively caressing a toilet, vomiting. And a "Big Mac Attack" ad displayed a man on an operating table, hooked up to a heart monitor aglow with the Golden Arches.

Benetton, know for its marketing excesses also came under attack for its recent 'sentenced to death' campaign which featured real inmates on death row used to advertise its clothing. Toscani, the man behind the ad, received his own sentence when he was placed in 'culture-jammed' versions of the advert.

Europe has its own examples of 'Culture-jamming'. In Stockholm, a former graffiti artist, Akay's approach is methodical. He wears the apparel of a professional bill-poster, and has acquired a set of keys to access the subway system billboards. He has also emerged as a timely critic: last year, Stockholm was proclaimed the latest epicenter of cool by Wallpaper and Newsweek. Similar group such as the UK's Saatchi & Someone or Australia's BUGA-UP are also following suit.

Alternative advertising has also teamed up with environmental and other activist groups. The Coca-Cola Corporation has come under particular advertising scrutiny in recent years, in particular for its use of global warming HFCs in its dispenser units. While the familiar TV polar bear chimes "Always Coca-Cola," "I want my planet back," responds a typical Culture-Jamming poster. And now the internet also plays a powerful role in distilling their issues and mustering support. In response to a CokeSpotlight website set up by Adbusters and Greenpeace on which thousands of people put pressure on the soft drink giant, Coca-Cola recently announced its decision to phase out the pollutant by the 2004 Olympics.

Adbusters, recognised as culture-jamming central, not only prints a magazine version of its message but regularly organises high profile media events such as 'TV Turnoff Week' in April and 'Buy Nothing Day' on November 24th, an alternative to the "shop-till-you-drop" phenomenon.

Adbusters also recently called on design culture to take a look at itself as to its fundamental aims and aspirations with the re-publication of its 'First Things First 2000' manifesto in all the major design publications, from Blueprint to Emigre. As Adbusters see it: "more than any other profession, design stands in the crossfire of competing worldviews: modern vs. postmodern, commercial vs. uncommercial, Planet Earth vs. Planet Inc. Whether designers acknowledge it or not, their profession is one of the key sites of struggle over the production and distribution of meaning."

So, although 'Culture-jamming' can never truly compete with the power advertising has, which is primarily why the advertising companies shy from suing such groups, they can perhaps make us aware at least of the excesses advertising can reach and the limits to its intrusion into our private space.

More info:
Adbusters
BLF
Negativland
Joey Skaggs
cokespotlight.org

Previous artices >>