corporate culture

I'm starting a new weekly column at the Anti-Advertising Agency. I'll be ferreting out advertising's presence and impact on culture, and presenting resistance strategies. I'll be posting on Fridays.

My first column went up yesterday, with exciting news! The Great Facebook Ad Debate of November 2007's been resolved! Lookery, the company behind the legal sticky-wicket, racked up its billionth impression weeks early. It seems they've failed to monetize social networks after all. But that doesn't mean they ain't still breakin' the law . . .

Read it here: www.antiadvertisingagency.com and bookmark the column here: http://antiadvertisingagency.com/author/anne.

Hey all,

Rob Walker did an interview with me and it's up at: http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=867.

I'm really excited about the interview, but I rather thought people here might find the ensuing discussion a little more interesting. I have to wonder what you-all would say in response if the debate was taking place, say, here.

In my NAMAC panel this weekend, which as I have already mentioned was insanely fun, there was a question asked that stuck in my craw. Not because it wasn’t a good question: it was. It was just that the question was so much more meaningful than we gave it weight at the time, and so much more interesting than any potential answer.

The question—rather, more of an assertion—was this: when discussing potential modes of communication and media-making, we should be careful not to dismiss corporate-created popular culture completely, for fear of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

While those of us that truly believe in independent culture may not give a shit, the New York Times is reporting today that Madonna's going to leave Warner Music for the Clear Channel spinoff Live Nation which, up until this announcement, has been involved only in live music promotion, not the recorded kind.

So what? Well, what is that they're paying $100 million for Madonna's next three albums, which is a big-ass chunk of change and which clearly signals that they're going to be moving into the record label market as well. And thus a new major label--one with ties to a huge radio monopoly and a massive concert venue holding to boot. Meet the new model.

That free stuff you got from Nissan in Japan last week may be shiny and pretty and bold, but it may also give you serious lead poisoning.

"NEW YORK -- Last month, Japanese car shoppers who test drove a Nissan vehicle were given a free logoed coffee mug for their time as a thank you. At least one consumer probably wished he had said, "No, thank you."

According to reports, after drinking from the China-made freebie, he felt ill. It was later discovered that the mug contained excessive amounts of lead. More than 140,000 mugs were subsequently recalled. Nissan could not be reached for comment.

I've always been a little mystified by how a member-owned cooperative the size of Ace Hardware can function, although admittedly my experience is based entirely on Fred's Fabulous Fare, the IL State Fair all-meat, all-the-time cooperative food stand where I worked among co-op livin' vegans who changed their names regularly for a few years. But it looks like I won't have to wonder anymore:

“We believe that becoming a traditional corporation is the best path for our retailers and the company,” the Ace President and CEO Ray Griffith says.

But, says one Chicago store owner: “This has huge ramifications for the dealer base. . . "This clearly is a corporate takeover.”

Probably little else needs to be said about this Crain's article describing comedy troupe's intermingling with advertising except that, umm, when you join a theater company, isn't that what you do? Attempt to rely on butts in seats and then work real hard as a waiter to actually pay off the bills?

Also, that I have been reading S. J. Perelman lately. And on the topic of those persons whom, for wont of another way to pay off their hotell bills, don costumes and parade about town in an effort to expand sales of, say, peanuts, or chicken sausage, or motor oil, he had this to say (albeit in the satirized voice of one such practitioner):

From a press release.

(Sorry for those of you reading this blog from the link on my site. Surely the constantly rotating news of new corporate censorship is bumming you out! Well, me too.)
--
One day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement that ExxonMobil
plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new
fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service
provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut
off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose
source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also