Marketing and Advertising on the Net

Kalle Lasn is the founder of Adbuster magazine, a culture-jamming publication that has been around for about a decade. In February 2008, Lasn was defeated in a lawsuit he filed against Canadian TV conglomerate CanWest Global for refusing to sell television-advertising time to Adbusters for its advertisements created to parody and criticize the ills of business and marketing.

This is extremely problematic, according to Lasn, who sees it imperative that consumers like himself fight for their freedom of speech. This, he feels, doesn’t happen when messages are blocked by big business. “You can stand on the corner and shout at people as they are going by,” he says, “but if a handful of corporations have media in their pocket, they can totally hoodwink the public.”

In this case, CanWest refused to air a number of Adbusters 30-second subvertisements covering topics from forestry to high fashion. The Supreme Court of British Columbia dismissed his case finding private TV broadcasters free to air (or reject) whatever advertisements shown on their network. According to Georgetown University law professor Angela Campbell, cases like this are fairly common in the United States. Courts almost always side with broadcasters, citing a 1973 case, which decided broadcasters can control editorial content and can thus choose what ads run.

Lasn and Adbusters are fighting for their legal right to buy airtime under the same rules and conditions advertising agencies do, finding it absurd a public interest group can’t buy space on public airwaves. Lasn sees that the bigger problem lies not only in who has a voice and who doesn’t, but who is given a voice and who isn’t. If paying, what right is it for TV corporations, like CanWest, to block the message?

Sure –Adbusters ideas are loud and critical, but this is exactly the intent. One ad in particular ridicules Calvin Klein’s black-and-white underwear ads replacing a thin model with a normally proportioned woman bent over a toilet. Through narration an important question is asked: “Why are nine out of 10 women dissatisfied with some aspect of their own bodies?” The commercial ends with an answer: “The beauty industry is the beast.”

This Calvin Klein spoof and others by Adbusters utilize the technique of “subvertising”. According to Wikipedia, a subvert copies the look and feel of the ad or brand they’re criticizing, leading viewers to take a closer look. The idea behind this method is to create cognitive dissonance, revealing a deeper truth about the corporate environment and its effect on consumers, citizens, and the environment.

Adbusters Media Foundation is a non-profit anti-consumerist organization founded in Vancouver, Canada in the late eighties. Founders Lasn and Bill Schmalz describe themselves as, “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age

According to the brains behind Adbusters, “advertisers have taken over everything … It’s time for the backlash, and that backlash is the clean mental environment.”

In September 2004, Adbusters filed lawsuits against six major Canadian television broadcasters (including CanWest Global) for refusing to air their videos in spots the organization attempted to purchase. Adbusters Media Foundation claims that in blocking the videos to air, the organization’s freedom of expression was unjustly limited.

Adbusters has been called the leader of the culture jamming movement, characterized as a form of public activism in opposition to commercialism. Sometimes involving the transformation of mass media to produce a satirical look at the medium itself, a “culture jammer” is defined as a person who “disrupts the status quo of corporate influence”.

So what exactly does that mean? What does “disrupting the status quo of corporate influence” entail? Well, as I found, a great number of tactics are employed by the culture jammer including modifications to billboards and other outdoor promotions, as well as the creation of print advertisements redesigned not only to mimic but to mock the corporate brands they imitate. Essentially, this means taking the symbols, logos, and slogans successful brands use to communicate their value and changing them in clever and significant ways.

The aim of culture jamming is to highlight the consequences of corporate behavior visually by creating a contrast between the brand image and the subverted message. The culture jammer wants her message to be as public as possible because in essence she is voicing her objection to the issue – protesting her qualms with corporate culture.

The premise behind this, according to Adbusters, is “trickle up” activism; a funny designation considering the organization’s inherent nemesis is probably the economic “trickle down” theory. With “trickle up,” Adbusters encourages and honors culture jamming, supporting and showcasing consumer’s own versions of subvertising.

Backtracking to the case I started with (Adbusters v. CanWest Global), I have a hard time seeing why and how the non-profit lost to TV conglomerate CanWest. According to Fair Use laws, the parody of copyrighted work is legal as long as a number of factors are accounted for. First, the purpose of the parody is examined investigating whether the parody’s creator gained financially. Obviously it was not Adbuster’s intent to generate profit from its criticism – an argument further strengthened by the organization’s non-profit status. Second, the nature of the actual work is inspected to determine if the information parodied was factual or fiction. With regards to Adbuster’s work, the information conveyed may be offensive (perhaps because it’s brutally honest), but it’s not necessarily untrue. Third, the quantity of information taken from the original work is studied to verify that only portions were borrowed.

It is in the final factor where Adbusters’ legal pitfalls may lie. The fourth issue in Fair Use law is the effect borrowed, copied or parodied information may have on the potential market and the creator of the original work’s ability to profit. With Adbusters’ subvertising, light is shed on real issues surrounding the behavior of big business potentially (and aiming to) hurt the profit margins of those criticized.

This being said, I think the real issue lies in the choices broadcasters make when filling ad space. Theoretically, they are supposed to serve the public. Unfortunately, this intent seems to have become cloudy, as public interest (specifically their own) has become inextricably linked to the market.

Blocked from using one of the most powerful communication mediums, Lasn feels violated in his ability to voice his cause. This, he equates to a violation of human rights in the information age – the ability to communicate. His ultimate goal is to dismantle media conglomerates through lawsuits to hopefully gain at least one minute of airtime for every hour devoted to corporate interests.

It’s obvious that new technologies inherently challenge the old methods used to combat ethnical and copyright issues within media. It’s fortunate that organizations like Adbusters have the opportunity to thrive in the growing digital marketplace, voicing their concerns virally through their campaigns (International Buy Nothing Day), through commercials and videos, and in their own publications, available both in print and online. Still, there is no reason organizations like this should be blocked from communicating through the airwaves, especially because of the editorial (and financial) choices of conglomerates. The messages Adbusters’ aim to convey are intended to shed light on important issues facing the world today, yet because they essentially “bite the hand that feeds them,” they are rejected.

I’m not sure I feel as passionately about this as Lasn, but I do take issue with his blocked freedoms as a paying customer.

I discovered and used a lot of information within this post from article written by James H. Ewert Jr. in “In These Times” newspaper. Read it yourself: Adbusters’ Ads Busted