Journal 6 - Part B: Coolness, Anti-Ads & Culture Jamming
The Marketing of Coolness
The marketing of coolness, which began in the 1960s, defines a social shift in which advertisers and marketers attempt to attach the ever-elusive quality of coolness to an array of consumer products. The attribute of “cool” is usually seen as unique, distinct, and uninfluenced by the marketplace. Ironically, there are many paradoxes in this shift: the selling of products through values that appear to reject consumer culture; the attachment of youth culture to a range of brands that is marketed to a range of consumers, not just young consumers; the selling of brands through ads that pretend not to be ads; the social embrace of consumerism as a means to project the idea that we are all above consumerist values; and the selling of coolness, an attribute that is supposed to be genuine and difficult to reproduce.
The selling of brands through ads that pretend not to be ads reminds me of product placement. Here in the TV show "Two and a Half Men," this scene becomes an ad for all of the companies/products on the laptop. These brands are being advertised in an "ad" pretending not to be an ad. It is a subtle way of promoting the brand to the audience. Society now-a-days is so used to advertisements that many people just look away from them, but with the advertisement being hidden and subtle in the way of product placement on a TV show, people will see it. This type of advertising works in a way of almost tricking people into seeing advertisements, which in todays popular culture many people seem to think is a necessary way. Advertisements are getting more and more interesting and to catch peoples attention advertisements need to be very eye-catching, or placed in a "pretend ad."
Anti-Ads and Culture Jamming
Artists used advertisements to critique the popular culture and advertising. Remaking ads to intervene at the level of daily life to counter the passivity and alienation of modern life and spectacle is referred to as “culture jamming” and borrows from the Situationist group of artists and writers in France in the 1960s. Culture jamming interrupts the passive viewing of an ad by “détournement”—rerouting a message to create new meaning.
Today, most of society is overweight. The typical man and woman are not stick thin like we see in magazines and on other advertisements. The most common look for today is sadly chunky to obese. This culture jammed advertisement goes off of the Calvin Klein advertisements. Many of the Calvin Klein advertisements show buff and muscular men or skinny women on them. They portray a people that does not exist in reality (with the majority of people). With this advertisement it is showing what that typical male looks like and relates to more men this way. In today's society, this is the look.
