Attn: Gen X Retards

ATTN: GEN X RETARDS
A Brief Look at Anti-Ads

Volkswagen (1959)

The Volkswagen campaign, the first of the new breed, broke ground by positioning VW as "the honest car." As Randall Rothenberg describes it in Where the Suckers Moon, automobile advertising of the '50s was "less `you are what you drive' than `you-are-what-you-fantacize.'" Extravagant, idealized images reflected a fantasy so lofty that most ads shunned using actual photographs for the open-endedness of illustration. The VW campaign was a radical change from that, exaggerating the tininess of the Beetle against a stark, white background. The ads popularized using self-deprecation as a strategy to win trust and to deflect attention away from the rest of the truth (such as the cute little car crushes easily). The no-frills, nuts-and-bolts design symbolized honesty as well, while conveying yet another hallmark of the anti-ad: "simplicity." According to Rothenberg, the VW campaign marked the start of a new culture of advertising.

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Stan Freberg

In 1956 comedian Freberg began a career as a radio adman by singing jingles that poked fun of singing jingles. They were still jingles.

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How to ignore the ad man when you buy a stereo...

Fisher Stereo (1967)

Yeah, don't trust the ad men, except for the ones who tell you not to trust the ad men. This ad, and the one for Booth's (below), are discussed in Tom Frank's The Conquest of Cool.

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Booth's Dry Gin (1965)

An unusually funny take on Madison Avenue conventions here. The text reads: "Tell us your beef against society in 25 words or less and we won't send you this Booth's House of Lords `Protest' tie. Anyone can give you a premium offer. Booth's House of Lords gives you a really fine gin and a chance to shoot off your mouth with absolutely no risk. All comments will be totally ignored. Not a chance of winning anything . . . Do it today. Or next year. It really doesn't matter.

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Izuzu (1986)

Leslie Savan writes about this commercial in The Sponsored Life. The spot starts out with this guy saying, "Hi. I'm Joe Izuzu," as "He's Lying" flashes on screen. In various spots, sales guy promises the car gets 94 miles per gallon, has built-in frozen yogurt machines, etc., before corrective subtitles appear (the car actually gets 34 mpg, sans yogurt). See, you really can trust Izuzu. As Savan writes: "The only people to trust are those who obviously lie. With them, at least we know the truth lies elsewhere."

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Heineken

If advertising doesn't cut it, and if being the best is enough, why waste millions of dollars on advertising? See also, recent Sprite ads--image is everything.

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Sprite (1994-?)

Perhaps the perfect example of an anti-ad campaign, Sprite's "Image is Nothing. Thirst is Everything" ads make fun of everything from detergent to soft drink commercials. Since the campaign's lauch, Sprite has grown into the fourth best-selling soft drink brand in the country, from seventh place. In 1996, Sprite had volume growth of 17.5 percent, more than three times the rate of any other brand. (New York Times, 4/15/97) But if image is nothing and thirst everything, why do none of the ads mention anything about thirst, or anything about Sprite? The Sprite ad on the left makes fun of image advertising and, in so doing, acts as if it were something other than image advertising. Yet it's exactly the sort of advertising it's parodying.

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Miller Geniune Draft (1996)

In the tradition of Volkswagen and Subaru "no-bullshit" car ads, ad agency Wieden & Kennedy's seamy ads with real (i.e. fat, dirty, pierced) people pitches Miller's pisswater as the no-bullshit beer. "No bullshit" = simple, honest, not-ad ads. In fact, the ads are so good at not being ads, that editors at Advertising Age, along with other industry stalwarts, have come out bashing them. The subversives at Wieden & Kennedy take it all in stride. Creative Director Steve Sandoz told Willamette Weekly (7/9/97), "It's a reality from Beer World--you get beer breath. It's something Bud would never say." Adds Jeff Kling, another W&K creative, "Our ads cease to be advertising . . . Advertising is supposed to be a pack of lies. We tell the truth."

Of course, W&K tells the truth only insofar as it will sell beer. And they certainly aren't telling the whole truth. If Kling and his cronies actually cared about truth, they'd start by mentioning that Miller beer tastes like crap, and that they're only suggesting you buy it because they have to. And if they actually wanted their ads to cease to be advertising, they'd close up shop and go work for Sub Pop. (Or, better yet, blow themselves up!)

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Winston Cigarettes (1997)

Why can't jeans ads be this real? For the same reason cigarette ads don't show lung cancer patients and skanky ten-year olds puffing away. . . although who knows, if anti-ad ads keep proliferating at this rate, maybe we'll see some of these in 1998.

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Miller Lite (1996)

In The Image (1962), Daniel Boorstin writes, "Some of the most effective advertising nowadays consists of circumstantial descriptions of how the advertising images were contrived: how tests were devised, how trademarks were designed, and how the corporate cosmetics were applied."

A similar way of debunking ad tricks is--ala Miller's "Dick" campaign--to just make fun of them, flattering the reader for being hip and "with it." The advertiser thus seems to be laying it on the line. ("We can't fool you. We know that you know.") Sidetracked, readers often then take the ad at face value, assume they "get it," and stop thinking critically. Advertising doesn't affect ME! I'm too smart for that! Of course, this is exactly the response marketers want; good--that is, effective--advertising doesn't make the audience aware of its pitch. The authors of Under the Radar compare bad advertising to bad theater. When the actors suck, you're constantly aware of watching a play, whereas with great acting, you suspend disbelief and engage in the drama. Effective advertising, like great acting, doesn't call attention to the form, to the fact that it is advertising. One of the reasons ads about advertising are effective is that in making fun of advertising, they deflect attention away from their own purpose.

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Diesel (1997)

Marking yet another innovation in the genre, Diesel's "Brand O" campaign makes its anti-ad statement solely with images. The campaign contrasts scenes of oppressive daily life in North Korea with the world that advertising portrays. A representative of Diesel's ad agency told Creativity (November 1997), "We want to discuss more important things than just what we're selling. And we want to show that this is a company that is concerned about more than just dollars." Yep, more "honest" advertisers concerned about their profession--not concerned enough to not spend their multimillion dollar ad budget on something other than ads, though.