Adbusters

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Adbusters Media Foundation
Formation	1989
Type	not for profit, anti-consumerist
Website	http://adbusters.org/

Adbusters Media Foundation (called Adbusters or the Media Foundation) is a not-for-profit, anti-consumerist organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They 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."^[1]

The foundation publishes Adbusters (ISSN 0847-9097), a 120,000-circulation, reader-supported activist magazine, devoted to numerous political and social causes, many of which are anti-consumerist in nature. Adbusters has also launched numerous international social marketing campaigns,^[2] including Buy Nothing Day^[3]^[4] and TV Turnoff Week^[5] and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements.^[6]^[7]

Adbusters has affiliation with sister organizations such as Résistance à l'Aggression Publicitaire^[8] and Casseurs de Pub^[9] in France, Adbusters Norge in Norway, Adbusters Sverige in Sweden and Culture Jammers in Japan.^[10]^[11]

"Advertisers have taken over everything, and there is a belief that the $450bn-a-year advertising industry may have peaked. It's time for the backlash, and that backlash is the clean mental environment." said founder Kalle Lasn.^[12]

1 Blackspot campaign
2 Issues
- 2.1 Media Carta
- 2.2 Culture jamming
3 Criticisms
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Blackspot campaign

In 2004, the organization began selling shoes which were designed to resemble the Nike-owned Chuck Taylor All-Stars.^[13] The name and logo are "open-source";^[14] in other words, unencumbered by trademarks.^[15] The campaign has been called hypocritical as AdBusters is using the same marketing technique which it denounces other companies for using.^[13]

The shoes are made primarily from organic hemp and recycled car tires. After an extensive search for anti-sweatshop manufacturers around the world, Adbusters found a small union shop in Portugal.^[16] The successful sale of more than twenty-five thousand pairs^[17] through an indie distribution network – despite the much higher than average production costs – is intended to demonstrate the hollowness of claims that business necessity sometimes requires the use of sweatshops.^[18]

The campaign is an ongoing experiment in alternative branding.

[edit] Issues

[edit] Media Carta

New York City billboard

On September 13, 2004, Adbusters filed a lawsuit against six major Canadian television broadcasters (including CanWest Global, Bell Globemedia, CHUM Ltd., and the CBC) for refusing to air Adbusters videos in the television commercial spots that Adbusters attempted to purchase. Most broadcasters refused the commercials for reasons based on business principles. The lawsuit claims that Adbusters' freedom of expression was unjustly limited by the refusals.^[19] There has been talk that if Adbusters wins in Canadian court, they will file similar lawsuits against major U.S. broadcasters that also refused the advertisements.^[20]

[edit] Culture jamming

Adbusters has been described as "the flagship publication of the culture jamming movement".^[21] Adbusters is particularly well-known for their culture jamming campaigns,^[22] and the magazine often features photographs of politically-motivated billboard or advertisement vandalism sent in by readers. A "culture jammer" is a person who "disrupts the status quo of corporate influence."^[7] It takes the form of clever billboard modifications, google bombing, flash mobs and fake parking tickets for SUVs. The aim of culture jamming is to create a large contrast between the corporate image and the real consequences of corporate behavior. It is a form of protest, so the culture jammer aims to be as public as possible. Adbusters calls it "trickle up" activism, and encourages its readers to do these activities, and honors culture jamming work in the magazine. In the September/October 2001 "Graphic Anarchy" issue, Adbusters were culture jammed themselves in a manner of speaking: they hailed the work of Swiss graphic designer Ernst Bettler as "one of the greatest design interventions on record", unaware that Bettler's story was an elaborate hoax.

Adbusters' 'brand' of culture jamming has its roots in the activities of the situationists and in particular their concept of detournement. This means the "turning around" of received messages so that they communicate meanings at variance with their original intention. In the 'culture jamming' purview this means taking symbols, logos and slogans that are considered to be the vehicles upon which the "dominant discourse" of "late capitalism" is communicated and changing them - frequently in significant but minor ways - to subvert the "monologue of the ruling order" [Debord].

[edit] Criticisms

Commercial Style

Adbusters has been criticized for having a style and form that are similar to the media and commercial product which it attacks, more specifically that its high gloss design makes the magazine too expensive and that a style over substance approach is used to mask sub-par content.^[23] This is said to be true in the case of its Blackspot Shoe campaign, about which it has been said that their existence proves that "no rational person could possibly believe that there is any tension between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' culture."^[21]

Heath and Potter's The Rebel Sell claims that the more alternative or subversive Adbusters feels, the more appealing it will become to the mainstream market. Consumers seek exclusivity and social distinction, which is in contrast to Adbusters' description of the mainstream consumer as a mindless conformist. It is argued that the mainstream market seeks the very same brand of individuality that Adbusters promotes; repression is not a target of the market, thus the Adbusters doctrine is "the true spirit of capitalism."^[21]

Accusations of Anti-Semitism

AdBusters drew accusations of antisemitism after running an article^[24] that identified many supporters of the Iraq War and the Bush Administration as Jewish and questioned why this fact and its potential implications for U.S. Middle East policy was not open to discussion.^[25] A list of fifty prominent neoconservatives was presented, with dots next to the names of those who are Jewish.^[26]