How vandalism became brandalism
In 'Unmarketable,' Anne Elizabeth Moore explains how new strains of guerilla marketing threaten creative industries
By Arianna Stern
Published: January 2nd, 2008 | 2:37pm
In Punk Planet’s heyday, editor Anne Elizabeth Moore exposed radical, innovative work to an audience sympathetic to the politics behind the art. Punk Planet folded in 2007, forcing its network of creative types even further underground. And as Moore notes in Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity
For example, Moore describes the co-optation of graffiti by Sony, which used graffiti to advertise the PSP in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood. Though Sony may have been able to pay off fines for doing an illegal activity, the commissioned graffiti artist probably couldn’t have. The artist must have spent several hours on the ad, vulnerable to arrest. Moore argues that while hiring a graffiti artist to do risky work for pay may seem generous to the artist, it doesn’t match the pay given to employees of the larger company, which amounts to exploitation.
Moore also mentions parody and culture jamming, or the reworking of ads in order to mock, rather than promote, a company. In No Logo, Naomi Klein treats culture jamming as an anti-corporate asylum in a hyper-corporate world. Not so, asserts Moore. Making an example of “Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping,” which hypocritically pushes product itself, Moore reminds us that all publicity is good publicity for big corporations. People creating and consuming anti-Starbucks, culture-jammed ads still spend an awful lot of time thinking about Starbucks. Given the similar themes of both books (how advertising sells us all out), Moore often uses No Logo as a point of departure. But sometimes, Unmarketable shows so little departure from the ideas Klein already argued that you wonder why she bothered to go over the same point.
Personally, I found myself frustrated with the absolutist perspective of this book. Moore makes some concessions, like stating that the union of advertising and art can sometimes be mutually beneficial, but those concessions come few and far between. While Tylenol’s Ouch! campaign or others like it may brand the work of independent comic book artists — an inarguably lame and shill-y move — they also may afford the artists the money to produce independent, radical art with the relatively but not empirically large amount of compensation they receive. In the cases of graffiti sponsorship, censorship, and advertising disguised as entertainment, large corporations probably do more harm than good. But when artists work under transparent terms and their work doesn’t completely change meaning because of censorship, I think it’s possible that a corporation does more good for the artist than harm. Advertising and art: it sucks, but it’s practical. Sometimes I think the practical advantages outweigh the suck. It’s a point on which Moore and I seem to disagree, which made it hard to wholeheartedly support the claims in this book.
Unmarketable takes a look at a familiar problem in new ways, which makes it a useful read for people frustrated with advertising’s ubiquity. Those who don’t already have a strong anti-corporate stance would probably benefit from doing a little research on the Internet or reading No Logo, then picking up this book. But those looking for nuance, unfortunately, won’t find it here.
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity
By Anne Elizabeth Moore
262 pages
List Price: $15.95
Issue #32
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