Co-option (If You Can't Beat 'Em...) - The Art of the Prank

May 20, 2013December 15, 2023

Ain’t We Cool? Delusional Advertising Campaigns

Trying to Be Hip and Edgy, Ads Become Offensive
by Stuart Elliott and Tanzina Vega
New York Times
May 10, 2013

MntnDewAd Some of the biggest names in marketing, including Ford Motor, General Motors, Hyundai Motor, Reebok and PepsiCo, have been forced recently to apologize to consumers who mounted loud public outcries against ads that hinged on subjects like race, rape and suicide.

PepsiCo found itself meeting this week with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the family of Emmet Till “” the teenager whose death in Mississippi in 1955 helped energize the civil rights movement “” to try to quell multiple controversies involving its Mountain Dew brand.

“It”s like the Wild West,” said Paul Malmstrom, a founding partner of the New York office of the Mother ad agency.

Advertising experts offer a long list of reasons for the increasing frequency of such incidents, but the primary reason they keep happening, they say, is the growing anxiety on Madison Avenue to create ads that will be noticed and break through the clutter. Continue reading “Ain’t We Cool? Delusional Advertising Campaigns”

January 11, 2010December 15, 2023

Improv Everywhere: No Pants Subway Ride 2010

From Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere:

nopants2010-200 The 9th Annual No Pants Subway Ride went off without a hitch today in New York. It”s tough to count, but we”re guessing we had around 3,000 participants. Riders met at meeting points spread out all over the city and converged on Union Square. The high was 28 degrees. For more photos and videos as they are submitted, visit here.

Video from the Daily News:
http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?width=425&embedCode=tuOXk0MTo7GAlPvFn-t9f0QlmqrALRC9&height=238

How to Unmask Shadowy Grassroots Groups

Editor’s Note: The manipulative, deceitful and very effective tactics I have used over the past 40+ years as an artist, activist and culture jammer to shed light on institutional, corporate and media efforts to mislead the general public have now been fully co-opted by the organizations victimized by them. It’s interesting to see the pendulum swing. Kudos to Ann Landman for this insightful and very useful article aimed at unmasking corporate and political tricksterism that blatantly utilizes disinformation to sway public opinion. One hopes the general public becomes more aware and is willing to fight against this insidious hype, hypocrisy, propaganda, and disinformation. JS

Attack of the Living Front Groups: PR Watch Offers Help to Unmask Corporate Tricksters
by Anne Landman
PRWatch.org / Center for Media and Democracy
August 28, 2009

zombies2-200 Fake “grassroots” groups have started springing up like toadstools after a rain, and this time they’re coming at us from every angle: they’re on TV, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube: “Americans for Prosperity,” “FACES of Coal, “The “Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights,” “Americans Against Food Taxes,” the “60 Plus Association,” “Citizens for Better Medicare,” “Patients First” … It’s making our heads spin! Issues affecting some of the country’s biggest industries, like health insurance reform, a proposal to tax sodas and sugary drinks, and the FDA’s possible reconsideration of the plastic additive Bisphenol A, have boosted corporate astroturfing up to a dizzying pace. With all these corporate fronts coming out of the woodwork, how can citizens tell true grassroots organizations from corporate fronts operated by highly-paid PR and lobbying firms? Here are some tips to help readers spot this kind of big-business hanky-panky.

What is a “front group,” really? Continue reading “How to Unmask Shadowy Grassroots Groups”

May 6, 2009December 15, 2023

Facebook Boob Prank [English & Italian]

Submitted by Stefano Cicconardi about the story of Valeria and Antonio and his betrayal of her on Facebook:

The Italian Boobs are Fake!

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The story about Valeria, the furious Italian fiancee who cancelled her wedding after discovering her future bridegroom Antonio’s betrayal on Facebook, made lots of buzz in the Italian and international press. Out of revenge, she stuck up hundreds of posters around Rome with sexy snaps taken from Antonio’s Facebook profile that show him nestling his head between a girl’s naked breasts.

The betrayal, reported by many international newspapers and websites (The Sun, Metro, 20minutes, Fox 10 etc.) was actually a marketing operation planned and executed by Stefano Cicconardi and Marco Diotallevi to launch the movie Feisbum (English title: Faceboom). In fact, Valeria’s story is part of one episode of Feisbum (Maledetto tag), a comedy about love online, including fear, revenge and Italy’s most popular social network. Continue reading “Facebook Boob Prank [English & Italian]”

April 3, 2009December 15, 2023

Astroturfing the Spinternet

Propaganda.com
by Evgeny Morozov
The New York Times Op Ed
March 29, 2009

censorship-200 This year”s report on “enemies of the Internet” prepared by Reporters Without Borders, the international press advocacy group, paints a very gloomy picture for the freedom of expression on the Web. It finds that many governments have stepped up their attacks on the Internet, harassing bloggers and making it harder to express dissenting opinions online.

These are very disturbing trends. But identifying “Internet enemies” only on the basis of censorship and intimidation, as Reporters Without Borders has done, obfuscates the fact that these are only two components of a more comprehensive and multi-pronged approach that authoritarian governments have developed to diffuse the subversive potential of online communications.

Many of these governments have honed their Internet strategies beyond censorship and are employing more subtle (and harder to detect) ways of controlling dissent, often by planting their own messages on the Web and presenting them as independent opinion.

Their actions are often informed by the art of online “astroturfing,” a technique also popular with modern corporations and PR firms. While companies use it to engineer buzz around products and events, governments are using it to create the appearance of broad popular support for their ideology.

Their ultimate ambition may be to transform the Internet into a “spinternet,” the vast and mostly anonymous areas of cyberspace under indirect government jurisdiction. The spinternet strategy could be more effective than censorship “” while there are a plenty of ways to access blocked Web sites, we do not yet have the means to distinguish spin from independent comment. Continue reading “Astroturfing the Spinternet”