Anti-Ad Agency Makes Ads Against Ads

anti_ad_agency.jpg

Appropriating ads and turning them into fuck-the-man messages is not actually anti-advertising. It's turning an ad into another (granted, irony-rich and possibly more sophisticated) ad.

While like Mortarblog we have serious doubts about the Anti-Advertising Agency's claim that "city dwellers see 5,000 ads per day," we agree that the world out there is oversaturated ad-wise. But in an ideal world, that raises the bar for us - not to become more ostentatious with our messages, but to make them more slow-moving and subtle. In an ideal world, anyway.

We dig what the Anti-Ad Agency's trying to do. It's important to ask questions about the presence of ads in our daily lives. But isn't that what this whole consumer-gen thing is all about? It's our strong suspicion that, short of finding a society bent on ridding themselves of ads, what they truly want are ads on their terms and not The Man's. That's okay with us.

by Angela Natividad    Feb- 2-07   Click to Comment   
Topic: Agencies, Good, Online, Outdoor   

Enjoy what you've read? Subscribe to Adrants Daily and receive the daily contents of this site each day along with free whitepapers.



Comments



Comments

Steve from the Anti-Advertising Agency here. The figures came from this quote from the New York Times:

Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a person living in a city 30 years ago saw up to 2,000 ad messages a day, compared with up to 5,000 today. About half the 4,110 people surveyed last spring by Yankelovich said they thought marketing and advertising today was out of control.

Also, I've heard about the irony of detourning ads to promote counter advertising messages since the start of this project. We basically address it on the AAA FAQ. I suppose you could say we're using a mix of social marketing and culture jamming. If you ever want to talk about it in more detail, please feel free to contact me.

Posted by: Steve Lambert on February 3, 2007 9:54 PM

Its not an ad because they AREN'T SELLING ANYTHING!
And you you're basically saying that you want to see as many ads as are currently up but you want them to be more "slow-moving". WHAT? We realize that being anti-ad is essentially being anti-corporate, and being anti-corporate is essentially being anti-exploitative of our brothers and sisters and of the planet. You see, being anti-corporate is not something that San Fransiscans do to be trendy: corporations are a real problem that ads only exacerbate. I encourage you to analyze your love for ads and replace it with a love for something more socially conscious.

Posted by: emily on July 26, 2007 5:00 PM

A few thoughts of my own on this horrible little situation:

http://without-stars.blogspot.com/2009/07/this-image-is-foreign-and-repulsive.html

Posted by: Fent on July 25, 2009 10:18 AM

A few thoughts of my own on this horrible little situation:

http://without-stars.blogspot.com/2009/07/this-image-is-foreign-and-repulsive.html

Posted by: Fent on July 25, 2009 10:18 AM

A few thoughts of my own on this horrible little situation:

http://without-stars.blogspot.com/2009/07/this-image-is-foreign-and-repulsive.html

Posted by: Fent on July 25, 2009 10:19 AM