This article displays a complete misunderstanding of advertising and an intellectual arrogance that I've come to expect from AdBusters. They are disgusted by the "proletariat" and his need to buy the latest bauble even while claiming to be fighting for him. Maybe, just maybe, the average consumer knows what he wants better than a bunch of pseudo-intellectual hipsters.
Snopes claims Nov 25 is not the biggest shopping day of the year.
When I first moved away to college, I found a copy of Adbusters in a bookstore and I thought it was one of the most amazing things ever. Eventually I decided it was too smug even for me.
The article started off strong, the classic ad content was pretty interesting and made it clear how much thought, consistency, and refinement was put into those classic ads.
I was expecting a call to go back to the basics, a claim that they're an ad agency that will put the same amount of effort into their campaigns that those classic ad agencies did decades ago.
Instead: We're creating a fancy clip-art gallery for company logos to be used by creators. And if you don't like their content, just force them to delete it via a simple DMCA takedown!
One of the reasons I find so many ads annoying: the copy is complete shit. It's usually vapid, kitschy, cringy garbage. Most ads are like a Joss Wheadon show; formulaic, cookie-cutter "clever" that appeals to the simplest minds. Nobody talks like that in the real world.
It also usually feels like the creative process was supervised by a bunch of people who seem to think themselves a superior sort of human.
I was hoping it would be funny and as much as I despise WP it wasn't. Not so sure about tasteless - they are trying to appear edgy to a typical mac hipster creative type who don't have a taste. I'm afraid that ad will actually benefit them since their audience is usually brainless, but what would I know, ignorance is a bliss. So more reasons to advise against them to every living soul.
Hahahaha you’ve never worked in ad creative have you? It’s full of people who have been crushed by their inability to support themselves making pure art.
This ad makes perfect sense from that perspective.
Nonsense. The ad is interesting and faintly amusing, and the advertising strategy from which it is drawn is worthy of discussion. I think you are vastly overreacting to say it is "goofball lowbrow crap", or that it "makes us into Microsoft's tools": YCers are more than capable of viewing an ad without being brainwashed, I think.
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