[spectre] Announce: CAMPAIGNS / COUNTER-CAMPAIGNS

[emile zile]

> Corporate Hacking & Culture Jams

.. images, from melbourne streets [2001/2] ..

http://cleansurface.org/billboards/boot_offend.jpg

http://cleansurface.org/billboards/dole_nike_percent.jpg

.. the archived site, a parody of nike's web design & url ..

http://www.cleansurface.org/bantheboot.com/

.. from http://bigsys.com.au/, article in DESKTOP magazine ..

--

But companies like Nike are in a real bind. Not only is Nike being jammed
from all directions (who didn't receive the email thread about the Sweatsho=
p
Sneaker?), but also the brand is positioned so that it has to stay cool in
order to maintain its power. A company like IDG can afford to look mean,
petulant or just plain daggy, but if Nike takes the same tack, the value in
the brand takes a dive.

Faced with this damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't impasse, and unable t=
o
persuade the rising tide of public opinion that they are looking after thos=
e
lovely asian people who sew their shoes, Nike choose to pick their battle i=
n
the realm of the imagination, rather than the realm of facts - they tried t=
o
jam their own billboards. Nike put up billboards supposedly advertising
their football boot, which they themselves pasted over with
homegrown-looking slogans from a fictitious group protesting over the unfai=
r
advantage given by Nike football boots. Needless to say, these billboards
became even more attractive to jammers:

Posting on the cleansurface.org bulletin boards back in March, Luther
Blissett wrote that Nike calling their boots 'offensive' and the fake
culture-jamming group 'Football Fans for Fairer Football' "could be seen as
a slap in the face of the Fair Wear campaign, using the words 'offensive'
and 'fair' are aptly chosen by Nike designers=E4(this) obviously shows that
billboard modification and 'image warfare 2001' is a widespread *almost
mainstream* concept - a movement Nike designers are seeing and attempting t=
o
leapfrog/hijack/subsume, using classic techniques of what the situationists
called 'recuperation' - the mainstream embracing the threat, making it safe=
,
and selling it back to the public..."

So where does this leave us?
With enough time or opportunity to wonder whether the sheer size of global
companies actually provides the market with less, rather than more, choice.
Or to contemplate whether Nike's claim to part of the tribal Aussie rules o=
r
Toyota's use of Dame Edna to gain territory in middle-class Australia
matters. Or to have a go at imagining what we really want from our own
culture, how we gain the Australian we want, rather the one we inherit
second-hand.

--

_ ez

`

|                      http://www.bubotic.net
|                      http://www.cleansurface.org