From this book:
Introduction (Josh MacPhee)
There is no doubt that advertising is a form of pollution and corporations are shitting in our heads. It is one of the main social forces that convince us that the status quo is both natural and inevitable and that nothing can be done to change it. More than the messaging of any particular billboard, subway poster, or corporate commercial wrapping a city bus, the overarching ideology of advertising is that the best—and increasingly only—use for any form of shared space is as a conveyor belt bringing us from one point of purchase to another. A walk through Times Square in New York City exposes how dystopian this can get. Even the ground and sky are littered with messaging, with advertising cacophony taking over more than two-thirds of what the eye can see, never mind sound, smell, and physical encroachments. It’s not a huge leap to image that as things continue on their current trajectory, much of our world will look and feel like this.
This. It's hard to avoid, even in places where there are so few obvious billboards. It's sneaked into tiny alcoves and the backs of seats; it's plastered on the sides of trams and buses, making it even more difficult to find the doors.
I often use the term “shared” space instead of the more popular “public” because it is time we interrogate our dependence on the binary conception of public vs. private. First, it’s increasingly foggy as to what is public and what is private anymore. Almost all space is privatized to some extent. In addition, what does public actually mean? A public is a group of people with shared beliefs and ideology. But if you attempt to unpack what everyone sharing a common space have in common, it is that they are all subjects of an external sovereign, the state. In the twenty-first century, public space is space managed by the state. And most people on our planet live in contexts where they have little to no control over the state, and the apparatus that administers our lives is increasingly unaccountable to the subjects it supposedly represents. So public no longer means what it is commonly understood to mean. How can public space be public if it is almost wholly constituted by a power beyond our reach and control?
I've also found that I don't like the terminology around 'public' and 'private', especially as it forms a false dichotomy within people's thoughts. You see this in discussions around schooling, where people will hold something that is 'public' (though still managed and dictated by the State) as being better than that which is 'private', even if the goals are the same or shared while the managers appear to be different.
In the early 2000s, street art deftly moved from being an interesting and quirky form of opening up space to think and wonder on the street—What is that pink elephant doing there? How come everywhere I look it says, “You Are Beautiful?”—to just another way of advertising. Whether by artists looking for a shortcut to gallery careers or corporations mimicking and recuperating “street” aesthetics, the need to lead the viewer to a commercial exchange hollows out any other possible interpretation of the work.
This is something that I also noticed when it came to cities hiring 'street artists' to create murals. While it was pleasant to see that these artists who had so much talent were being asked to create for the places they lived in, it should've started prompting questions: What messages are they sending? What messages are in their work? What is the city going to allow in this space? What is going to be "acceptable" street art?
I love street art, and I love murals. But it's increasingly common for them to be beautiful co-opted artworks rather than the subversive elements they once were.
Subvertising is no different. We are so trained by years of looking at our commercialized landscape, that it’s likely most people read hacked ads as the real thing, and fail to fully process any detournement. This is especially true for hacks that mimic the design, aesthetic, and logotypes of the original. When a company like McDonald’s has invested billions of dollars over a seventy-year stretch to ensure that their golden arches mean very specific things, it seems woefully naive to think that a comparative handful of “McMurder” subvertising exploits could ever affect the dominant reading. More likely viewers of a McMurder or Murder King T-shirt simply get a subconscious urge to eat French fries.
I'm glad that this is something that is going to be dealt with straight away because, while I love subvertised things, it does have the opposite impact because we're so trained into seeing these things as they originally were. We see the shapes, we see the colours, we lose the message.
Although extremely simple in form and seemingly contentless, his refusal to replace the advertisements with other direct messaging—be it called art or not—may ultimately say more than any didactic ad hack can.
This is something that I've noticed as being an interesting way of saying something and nothing at the same time. Even if the space is blank or filled with shapes, you can still make it aesthetically pleasing enough that people don't miss what was there; it definitely does a bit more than replacing something with something similar.
Overnight they [StopPub] completely defaced and destroyed advertisements throughout the [Paris Metro] system, obliterating corporate messaging from many stations all together. Unlike Seiler’s more genteel and nuanced critique, there was no possibility of confusion here: all advertising must be destroyed.
Destruction also sends a very loud and clear message.
Chapter 1: PR-opaganda
(Note: This book needs to play with font casing to make their jokes more clear. I thought it was an accident that there was a hyphen instead of trying to highlight that PR and Propaganda come from the same space and are effectively the same thing.)
Chapter starts with quoting liberally from this post and this website, which I want to read. It also focuses on Edward Bernays and public relations/propaganda.
Indeed, for Bernays, the conspicuous manipulation of the masses by means of propaganda was seen not just as inevitable and benign, but important and necessary. It is a claim that rests on the idea that the mass of people—the public—are dangerous when left to their own devices, but also that certain individuals—and only these individuals—are talented enough to guide the rest. Where subvertising activists posit outdoor advertising as undemocratic (in that there is no collective control over it), Bernays suggests that public relations are vital part of a democratic society.
They go one to show that Bernays had a deeply different understanding of democracy, whether or not it made sense; effectively, he said that in order to have an democratic society, people needed to be manipulated into specific behaviours. Which would indicate that society isn't actually democratic (in common understanding of the term) if people are being manipulated into making decisions, which eliminates the freedom they have.
For Bernays, a smoothly functioning society was one marshaled around consumption; he viewed the American way of life and the capitalist system of production as completely entwined. Though he occasionally uses examples of other ways that propaganda can be used, Bernays has a special place for propaganda that promotes what he claims to be the civilising influence of capitalism. He also argues that good advertising is not simply propaganda for an individual product, or even for an individual company, but for the entire system of consumption.
This should, then, be worrisome for a lot of us in how advertising influences our decisions. And honestly, it should be part of the consideration when radical organisations participate in the same strategies and systems. Even if they aren't inherently good or bad, even if they are innately neutral, we should at least still be thinking about how we use those tools and whether or not we're building a way for people to break out of them.
It’s not that propaganda, public relations, outdoor advertising, or the intersections of all three are inherently evil. It’s just that the system of production they have been so adept at promoting throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is responsible for economic crises, resource wars, widening inequality, and, perhaps most alarmingly, environmental destruction on a global scale.
Chapter 2: Advertising Shits in Your Head
Chapter starts off discussing this article and Special Patrol Group's Ad Hack Manifesto. It also mentions this interview with Darren Cullen.
Perhaps one reason a comparison with pollution is apt is the way that advertising can accumulate in the environment—a sort of commercial clutter. And it is as background environmental accumulation that advertising can be most harmful.
If this happens in a visual medium, which often tends to be more passive in the day-to-day (unless something catches our attention and we focus on it)... Then what about other somewhat passive media? Listening? Sometimes browsing the internet and reading email? Twitter? How does it fit there?
More names mentioned: JK Galbraith (The Affluent Society) and researchers Benedetto Molinari and Francesco Turino.
Advertising may be exceptionally adept at creating needs, but it is singularly bad at meeting them, at making good on its promises. Critics claim that unsatisfied needs are a cause of unhappiness. Furthermore, they posit a new form of cyclical consumerism that follows the “I eat because I’m unhappy” model: the more anxious and depressed we are, the more we must consume; the more we consume, the more anxious and depressed we become.
Chapter ends with a quote from the 'left-leaning' think-tank Compass. (Just by looking at the cover of the report, I'm curious to see how a 'left-leaning' think-tanks wants to "get the balance right" with advertising.)
Chapter 3: Society's Story
Chapter starts with a quote from Louis Wirth from this lecture.
Advertisers like to profess that advertising only reflects existing cultural values, that their ads merely hold a mirror up to the world—any horror we might see was already there anyway. While this is undoubtedly true in one sense, subvertisers argue it’s the emphasis advertisers place on certain of these innate values over others that’s harmful. Again, the advertisers’ assertion to the public that they have no real influence appears to be at odds with the claims they make to their clients.
If advertisers want to make that claim, they're wrong. Anyone should be able to recognise that advertisers can and should interrupt these harmful values, but they choose not to for the sake of continued relationships and profit. Advertising is one of the most lucrative industries. Yet advertisers seem content to let companies get away with any harmful values rather than put a stop to it, when they could.
They are center stage with options that they choose to never use.
Jordan Seiler points out that the stories that are told by those interests are rarely, if ever, some “of our more interesting goals for ourselves as a society, like community, taking care of our children correctly and education.”
The cited location for that quote was unavailable, but I accidentally found this article from 2021 and this one from 2020.
Continues to reference other websites, such as this one. And more accidental finds include this set of interviews (by one of the authors).
This book feels like it's giving me more work to hunt stuff down rather than more information in one place.
Studies have shown that placing greater emphasis on extrinsic values is associated with higher levels of prejudice, less concern about the environment and weak concern about human rights. The values displayed in advertising reflect the values of those creating advertising: the economic elite. It is perhaps not surprising that most advertising is designed to appeal to extrinsic values. As subvertisers point out, that should be of concern to anyone who wants to promote anything other than individualistic consumption, because our values influence our behaviours.
A further cause for concern is that these values work in opposition: if a person has strongly held extrinsic values, this will diminish their regard for intrinsic values and vice-versa. Not only do advertisements place an emphasis on extrinsic values, but by repeatedly emphasising those values, it serves to strengthen them. Again, we don’t even need to be persuaded to buy the product: simply by seeing messages with extrinsic values emphasised, we can subconsciously buy into those values.
I'm curious as to how correct this is or how this kind of study was done. In saying this, it's pertinent to mention that the book also references this study.
Chapter 4: Rights to the City
Chapter starts off quoting from this article.
One member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG) tells a story about one of the first times they went out to do ad takeovers on the London Underground. As they were slotting a subvert over the original ad in an ad space, a commuter interjected and blustered at them: “You want arresting! Why don’t you just pay for your advertising, like everyone else?” It serves to neatly illustrate both the perceived sanctity of the private nature of these public spaces—that anyone interfering with them should be arrested—and also the misconception that these spaces are somehow open to all. The reason the SPG were subvertising is because not everyone can afford to access those spaces.
I don't think people realise how inaccessible and unaffordable those advertising slots are. They are really expensive, and they often require already established relationships to access them (especially the better ones).
Like, putting up posters is illegal in some places, which makes no sense. Why should we not be able to put up posters? Why should we be banned from putting up stickers? How do those make places worse than McDonald's ads?
There is no such thing as a free bench.
Partially taken from here.
Goes on to talk about Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey and the right to the city.
Chapter 5: Bani-shit
In 2015, Grenoble, France, became the first city in Europe to ban outdoor advertising; 326 advertising spaces were replaced with community noticeboards and trees. The mayor’s office stated it was “taking the choice of freeing public space in Grenoble from advertising to develop areas for public expression” (perhaps an explicit reference to a right to the city?).
While helpful, what are the regulations and structures around what can be published on those boards? Are there people or institutions who take control of them? We have "public" boards where I am, but they require express permission of people who have keys. They are routinely graffitied because of how absolutely pointless they are, for they refuse to host anything beyond city publications.
So I have to ask whether or not Grenoble genuinely provides an "explicit reference to a right to the city" in their views, values, and policies. Because not all cities do this, and it's a worry that people should have when the State (or elements of it, such as local and district governments) start making these decisions.
At first glance it may appear that advertising bans are a positive step, but academic Kurt Iveson questions the rationale for them. Though some activists may see their work as anti-authoritarian, he claims the cities that have introduced bans may be doing so in order to reassert the dominance of the state. He suggests a ceremonial normative model of public space, which privileges civic order above private commercial interests, but also views the public as a passive audience for “ceremonial, monumental and architectural displays, which might exercise a civilising influence.” State-led advertising bans are concerned with “the aesthetic integrity of the public realm… rather than its democratic accessibility.”
And there it is. We should be questioning the authoritarianism behind city bans. (This is also one of the softest ways of putting it. Even my mild concern was harder hitting.)
He also questions the motives behind the bans, and points out the ban in São Paulo has only been partial: at the same time as the Clean City Law was introduced, the city signed a contract with JCDecaux to provide advertising-funded bus shelters. By eliminating the haphazard clutter of billboard advertising, it’s entirely possible that the Clean City Law will benefit the companies that hold a monopoly on advertising infrastructure, which is slowly being reintroduced in a “controlled manner.” This effectively eliminates the competition and means that a few big companies are once again allowed to dominate.
And there it is, too. If you ban it, you can reintroduce it in a controlled manner.