I decided not to buy products by Benetton several year ago because I thought that their advertising campaigns insult our intelligence. This was in 1991 when they plastered posters of a new born baby covered in blood all over London. Firstly, this was not something I wanted to see before breakfast, and secondly this was a wonderful personal moment, crassly exploited to sell jumpers.
Since then hyper-commercialisation has become acceptable and politicians and artists have no shame about selling their kudos and integrity to flog stuff. Tony Blair works for massive banks and Madonna was sponsored by a Vodka company. Fair enough but when they take the money they also surrender any credibility or right to have their opinions taken seriously. They forgo leadership for the role of a hired hand.
Commercialisation is now built into the DNA of the Anglo-Saxon world and, while it may have made us richer, it has also eroded our self respect and sense of community.
I recall hearing a younger friend discussing the renovation work going on at London’s St. Pancras station and he said: “..and that’s before the shops go in…” Before the shops go in! It has now become normal that every department in every organisation everywhere in the UK must be a profit centre and sell stuff to the public all the time. Forget punctuality sell ‘em another coffee.
I saw some bloke on Dragon’s Den a few months ago trying to flog his invention. He had invented a modification to the little pole and rope barriers used to encourage queuing at cinemas, airports and stations. His idea was that advertising should be hung beneath the ropes – ugh! In a hundred years time every inch of “public” space will have been sold off for advertising. The walls, the floors and the ceilings will all be showing video advertising 24 X 7. Forget freedom or speech it will be freedom of though that we need to worry about.
I placed a comment in a similar vein to this on The Huffington post and received a reply that enterprise was the way of the Western world and that using catchy, funny and positive ideas to sell products was good.
Leaving aside whether this tripe is catchy, funny and positive I don’t deny the right of organisations and individuals to advertise their products and services. I do object to the ubiquity of advertising especially when the vast majority of it is controlled by a handful of corporations. I also despair at our press who collude in this fake controversy because it is a cheap and easy story to cover.
Many people consider that we should not object to this sort of thing because that would lead to social engineering. This is perverse. We have social engineering. The marketeers who work for corporations to create these campaigns are social engineers. That is their job.
BBC Radio 4 has a series of programs recently in what it terms its Brain Season. One example of psychological research is something known as anchoring. The idea is that you show a couple of numbers to experimental subjects and then ask them a question such as “what percentage of countries in the UN come from Africa?”. It terms out that their answers will be significantly weighed toward the numbers shown.
Interesting stuff. But who do you think is using this? Are you using it in your every day life? Are your mates at the gym or down the pub using it? No, the people who use this stuff are marketeers working for large multinationals who are trying to lure you into buying more and more useless stuff. They have even developed an Orwellian term for it: Behavioural Economics. This is what’s behind BP changing it’s corporate colours to green or Shell changing the name of their petrol to “FuelSave Regular Unleaded”. While they talk green they act mean.
So now the marketing execs at the jumper company are at it again. They claim they are promoting peace by displaying pictures of famous people snogging but we all know that their real goal is to pick away at a bunch of people who, rightly or wrongly, will take offence. The company are hypocrites because their goal is not the promotion of peace. Their goal is controversy. They want the Catholic church to take offence.
Whether you like their campaign or you loath it you are being used to promote a bunch of fucking jumpers. In 1962 controversy meant socialism or democracy. Fifty years later it means a contrived argument about kissing in adverts for a jumper company. I can only imply that the vacuity of the advertising campaign reflects the vacuity of the company and its owners.
In Western democracies in the 21st century the individual has very little power. One of the few powers we still have is to refuse to buy stuff.
If you like this companies shenanigans then by all means buy their jumpers. If you don’t then for God sake have some self respect and resolve not to buy their products in future.







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Long Notes & Grayson Perry
Tags: Alan Measles, AM1, book shops, british museum, British town centres, Charring Cross Road, Dalston, Denmark Street, Grayson Perry, Greek Street, Head Of A Fallen Giant, kenilworth am1, Map Of Truths And Beliefs, Riddley Road Market, sharks and butterflies, skull, The Long Notes, The Outsiders, The Shadow Of Stromboli, The Tomb O The Unknown Craftsman, The Underworld, The World's End, Tottenham Court Road
Up in London on Friday night to see The Long Notes at The Underworld. The Underworld is an old venue below The World’s End pub in Camden. I hadn’t been to the World’s End in year but it felt much the same. After a couple of support acts The Long Notes came on and played a selection of celtic tunes from their new album The Shadow Of Stromboli. Good stuff!
Claire de Rouen Books
The next day I headed for The British Museum to see the Grayson Perry exhibition The Tomb Of The Unknown Craftsman. As I meandered my way toward my destination I stopped to look in a little gallery named The Outsiders on Greek Street. It held some interesting work based mainly around sharks and butterflies. The viscous and the delicate. Further along on Charing Cross Road I browsed in the windows at the various book displays. Amidst the noise of the buses and the random strangers passing by I mused that, as technology and commercialism advance, these simple delights of the metropolis will be lost. As we all move to electronic books, the bookshops will close down and be replaced by a Charing Cross Road book shop exhibition. It has started already as the variety of human existence is gradually being erased from British town centres. The area around Tottenham Court Road tube station is still under development. No doubt it wil be necessary to build a lot of identikit shops on top of it and I wondered what future lay in store for Denmark Street with it’s historic shops selling musical instruments. Further along a hint lay in store for me in the form of a map along with some blurb promoting it as Tin Pan Alley. Ordinary people naturally create fascinating and culturally significant monuments in our cities. Riddley Road Market perhaps or Denmark Street. As commercialism swirls around them, these monuments become caricatures of themselves. I fully expect that in years to come, when Dalston is inhabited by 99% white bankers, Riddley Road Market will be covered over by a dome, sponsored by Sainsbury’s and awful watered down Caribbean music will be played over a sound system. It’s already being called Riddley Road “shopping village”. I expect Denmark street will go the same way. It’s sad but everything has it’s season. The kids will create something new.
Head Of A Fallen Giant
And on the subject of something new this exactly what Mr. Perry has on display at The British Museum. He has very cleverly picked out various items from the museum’s extensive collection of ancient artefacts and displayed them alongside new works of his own. The effect is to place contemporary art in context. Yes, Mr. Perry’s art may be in vogue and may be worth millions and all the rest of it but at it’s basic level these are artefacts. They are creations of mankind in the 21st century and they reflect the society of which they are a part.
I particularly liked Head Of A Fallen Giant, an, apparently, metal skull studded with symbols of Britishness and likened by Mr. Perry to an old sea mine left washing around in the sea for years. The large tapestry entitled Map Of Truths And Beliefs was a wonder and it struck me that Mr. Perry appears to be using symbolism in the same way as classicist painters. Mr. Perry is amazingly prolific and has produces numerous works in all kinds of mediums from tapestry to cast metal to engineering as in his Kenilworth AM1 motorbike. The exhibition is a definitive must see.
Another one of Grayson's