labor day weekend is nearly upon us and, for those of us in the pnw, it means one thing: the rain is coming. of course, it also signals the approach of a little music & arts festival that we call bumpershoot.
for 40 years, bumpershoot has showcased "the best in music, film, comedy, spoken word, dance, theatre, performance, and visual arts" as "north america’s largest urban arts festival". among the many shows & performances, though, is the one thing that we here get the most excited about: flatstock.
presented by the american poster institute, flatstock is a travelling exhibition of the best in gig poster art & the artists who create it. in an era of digital design & publishing tools, it’s refreshing to still see some breathtaking & beautiful examples of what can be done by hand.
we’ve taken the opportunity to peruse some of the participating artists & design firms, & have chosen some of the ones that we like for display here.
if you live in, or will happen to be in, the seattle area this coming labor day weekend, we invite you check out our local little festival & see some of the above designers’ work in person. if you’re not around here, don’t fret; flatstock is a feature at many music & arts festivals around the globe.
It’s tempting to imagine that [you] could be forceful and self-confident without being arrogant or jerky, but that’s a false hope, because it’s other people who get to decide when they think you’re a jerk, and trying to stay under that threshold means giving those people veto power over your actions. To put yourself forward as someone good enough to do interesting things is, by definition, to expose yourself to all kinds of negative judgments, and as far as I can tell, the fact that other people get to decide what they think of your behavior leaves only two strategies for not suffering from those judgments: not doing anything, or not caring about the reaction.
Not caring works surprisingly well."
above is a quote from a clay shirky blog post in which he admittedly rants about the differences in professional risk taking between the genders. over the ensuing months since it was first posted, we’ve seen this particular quote applied to everything from one’s internet presence to one’s style of dress.
the elequence with which he states his idea is breathtaking, and reminds us of how, in a business such as marketing or design where what others think can mean everything, it’s still the risk takers that come out ahead. how better to differentiate one’s self or one’s product than to risk the very judgement that one is trying to avoid?
we can think of a few examples of marketing campaigns that changed things. the long running absolut art campaign, created in the early 1980′s by advertising agency tbwa, features the distictive shape of the absolut vodka bottle as depicted by myriad artists over the years. while there has long been an art aesthetic in advertising, this series of ads crossed the line into advertising as art.
apple ran a groundbreaking commercial for the macintosh computer during the 1984 superbowl that didn’t feature an image of the product at all, instead depicting a scene reminiscent of George Orwell’s book 1984. this commerical has been spoofed many times since then, including a politcal ad ran during the 2008 presidential campaign showing hilary rodham clinton as the big brother character.
more recently, in a 2007 guerilla ad campaign for the cartoon network show aqua teen hunger force, light boxes depicting several of the show’s characters were placed in inconspicuous outdoor areas in citys around the country. officials in boston, unaware of the campaign, reacted to the light boxes as if they were part of an apparent attack, calling in bomb squads, closing streets and bridges, and ultimately arresting two of the individuals responsible for placing the light boxes in the first place. while the resulting publicity was likely unintended, it was publicity nonetheless. and we know what they say about bad publicity.
while these examples hardly scratch the surface of the development of modern advertising, they do show that, while abandoning the traditional format or media for advertising a product can be risky, the payoff can certainly be worth that risk.
we were pointed to this story by david thorne via our ever handy twitter feed.
while testifying during his trial over hacking a certain former veep candidate’s email, 4chan founder Christopher “Moot” Poole was asked to define some of the terms the court had run across on 4chan’s boards.
we’re still laughing at the idea of explaining “rickrolling” to a bemused courtroom.
we were stunned by the image shown above, a photo taken of an 18 afghan woman mutilated by the taliban that recently graced the cover of time magazine. while we had already heard the story, we read about an interesting point made in this post by dave pell at tweetage w@steland. in this modern age of short, rapid fire bursts of new information, are we unwittingly censoring ourselves from what we simply do not want to think about or, in this case, see?
according to pell:
this is in part a statement on the significance (or lack thereof) of magazine covers in today’s media. but it’s also a statement on the way we can collectively repress the data we don’t want to think about. even though we are immersed in shared words and images, it’s still pretty easy to miss the big picture."
pell referred to this concept as "mass avoidance through social media". a quick stroll through our own personal social media feeds showed us exactly what we think he was writing about. while our live feed was chuck full of "relevant" information, it was only through delving down into the actual posters’ pages themselves that we saw what it was that we were missing. social media is about what’s happening "right now", and comes at the price what’s happening over time. good point, dave.
fear, after all, is our real enemy. fear is taking over our world. fear is being used as a tool of manipulation in our society. it’s how politicians peddle policy and how madison avenue sells us things that we don’t need." – a single man
the emotional component of the sales process is strong and, often, not very well understood. at our very first sales training we were given a copy of the one minute sales person, from which we gleaned the sales mantra that we continue to use to this day:
people don’t like to be sold, but people like to buy. therefore, it’s the sales person’s job to help people feel good about buying."
we at jetspace are doubly involved in the sales process, you see. not only are we attempted to help you feel good about buying our services, we’re attempting to help your audience feel good about buying yours. let’s face it; everyone is selling something these days. you sell thinga-mabobs or doo-dads and you need a business card, poster, banner ad or website to help you do so. we sell those things to you.
one thing we cannot abide by, however, is the manipulation of emotion through the manipulation of truth. in other words, make sure your ad doesn’t tell a lie. if you have a bad, harmful or defective product, don’t get a better marketing program. get a better product.
one group that seems to share this ideal with us, a group that we sort of fancy as the "robin hood" of the ad world, are the billboard liberation front. Through the simple manipulation of letters and/or words on a given billboard, the BLF turns the intended marketing message into a more ironic, if not truthful one. Several examples of their work can be viewed on their website, as can their manifesto, from which we take the follwing quote:
And so we see, the Ad defines our world, creating both the focus on image and the culture of consumption that ultimately attract and inspire all individuals desirous of communicating to their fellow man in a profound fashion."
while somewhat tongue in cheek, the above quote speaks directly to our point about the use of emotion in advertising. emotion is a powerful motivator in the the decision of whether or not to buy.
