subvertising
{{Short description|Parody advertising}}
File:Where is your family - due process.jpg
File:Exxtreme Droughts.jpg logo as subverted by Greenpeace.]]
{{Anti-consumerism|Theories}}
Subvertising (a portmanteau of subvert and advertising) is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements.{{Cite news |first=Alexander |last=Barley |date=May 21, 2001 |title=Battle of the image |work=New Statesman |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/node/153475 |access-date=2010-12-09}} The cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term in 1991.{{Cite journal |last=Dekeyser |first=Thomas |date=2020-08-09 |title=Dismantling the advertising city: Subvertising and the urban commons to come |journal=Environment and Planning D: Society and Space |volume=39 |issue=2 |language=en |pages=309–327 |doi=10.1177/0263775820946755 |issn=0263-7758 |doi-access=free}} Subvertisements are anti-ads that deflect advertising's attempts to turn the people's attention in a given direction.{{Cite book |last=Dery |first=Mark |url=https://www.markdery.com/books/culture-jamming-hacking-slashing-and-sniping-in-the-empire-of-signs-2/ |title=Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of Signs |publisher=Open Media |year=1993 |location=New York}} According to author Naomi Klein, subvertising offers a way of speaking back to advertising, ‘forcing a dialogue where before there was only a declaration.’{{Cite news |last=Klein |first=Naomi |date=8 May 1997 |title=Subvertising: Culture jamming reemerges on the media landscape |work=The Village Voice |url=http://ecumedesjours.com/artjammer.com/jamming_article.html}} They may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner.{{Cite web |last1=Bonner |first1=Matt |last2=Raoul |first2=Vyvian |date=2022-11-28 |title=Subvertising: Sharing a Different Set of Messages |url=https://commonslibrary.org/subvertising-sharing-a-different-set-of-messages/ |access-date=2023-03-02 |website=The Commons Social Change Library |language=en-AU}}
A subvertisement can also be referred to as a meme hack and can be a part of social hacking, billboard hacking or culture jamming.{{Cite news |date=March 4, 2009 |title=Clearing the Mindscape |work=Adbusters |url=http://www.adbusters.org/category/tags/subvertising |url-status=dead |access-date=2010-12-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927050110/http://www.adbusters.org/category/tags/subvertising |archive-date=September 27, 2011}} Although he rarely altered physical ads, American performance artist Joey Skaggs' media interventions function as subvertisements. By parodying authoritative narratives and co-opting mass communication tools, he delivers countercultural messages which align with subvertising's intent to disrupt and critique dominant cultural messages using the very channels that propagate them.{{Cite journal |last=Harold |first=Christine |date=2004-09-01 |title=Pranking rhetoric: “culture jamming” as media activism |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0739318042000212693 |journal=Critical Studies in Media Communication |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=189–211 |doi=10.1080/0739318042000212693 |issn=1529-5036}}
According to Adbusters, a Canadian magazine and a proponent of counter-culture and subvertising, "A well-produced 'subvert' mimics the look and feel of the targeted ad, promoting the classic 'double-take' as viewers suddenly realize they have been duped. Subverts create cognitive dissonance, with the apparent aim of cutting through the 'hype and glitz of our mediated reality' to reveal a 'deeper truth within'.{{Citation needed|date=May 2019}}
Subvertising is a type of advertising hijacking (détournement publicité), where détournement techniques developed in the 1950s by the French Letterist International and later used by the better-known Situationist International have been used as a contemporary critical form to re-route advertising messages.
Notable instances
In 1972, the logo of Richard Nixon's re-election campaign posters was subverted with two x's in Nixon's name (as in the Exxon logo) to suggest the corporate ownership of the Republican Party.{{Cite magazine |date=March 5, 1973 |title=Exxon Victorious |magazine=Time |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903902,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080205043902/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,903902,00.html |archive-date=February 5, 2008}}{{Cite web |title=Sore-Loserman: From political parody to charity's windfall. CNN. 4 Dec. 2000 |url=http://edition.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/04/stickers.election/ |access-date=2014-03-29 |publisher=Archives.cnn.com}}
In Sydney, Australia in October 1979, a group of anti-smoking activists formed a group called B.U.G.A.U.P. and began altering the text on tobacco billboards to subvert the messages of tobacco advertisers, although advertisements for other unhealthy products were also targeted.{{Cite web |title=Civil Disobedience and Tobacco Control: The Case of BUGA UP, Simon Chapman |url=https://www.crossart.com.au/images/pdfs/Buga%20Up-Simon%20Chapman-1996.pdf |access-date=6 December 2019 |publisher=Tobacco Control Vol. 5, No. 3, 1996}}{{Cite web |last=McIntyre |first=Iain |date=2019-04-10 |title=BUGA-UP - Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions |url=https://commonslibrary.org/buga-up/ |access-date=2023-03-02 |website=The Commons Social Change Library |language=en-AU}}
On November 6, 2008, The Yes Men recruited thousands of social activists to hand out 100,000 copies of a spoof New York Times newspaper set six months in the future.{{Cite web |last=Chan |first=Sewell |date=2008-11-12 |title=Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/pranksters-spoof-the-times/ |access-date=2024-01-17 |website=City Room |language=en}} The goal was to utilize a tangible and trusted medium, the New York Times, to argue for a particular future, in that case, one where the Iraq War had ended. Other groups involved with this project included Anti-Advertising Agency, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, May First/People Link, and Improv Everywhere.{{Citation needed|date=April 2019}}
At the 2015 Paris COP21 climate conference, the collective known as Brandalism installed 600 posters that attacked what they perceived as the hypocrisy of corporate sponsors.{{Cite web |date=23 March 2018 |title=The hackers using street ads to protest |url=https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/subvertising-ads-posters-billboards/index.html}}
In 2017, Brandalism and other groups of subvertisers founded the collective Subvertisers International.{{Cite web |first=Kieron |last=Monks |title='Subvertising' hackers are using street ads to protest |url=https://www.cnn.com/style/article/subvertising-ads-posters-billboards/index.html |access-date=2020-08-15 |website=CNN |date=23 March 2018 |language=en}} Using billboard hacking and other forms of subvertising, they promote the idea that advertising creates unhealthy body images, impacts democracy negatively, and sustains a culture of consumerism that takes a heavy toll on the planet.
Around 2018, a group in London called Legally Black changed the race of the characters in Harry Potter posters from white to black.
In 2022, billboards in London, Bristol, Manchester, Sheffield, Brighton, and 11 other European cities, were hijacked to highlight the role of airline emissions in the climate crisis. They highlighted the large carbon footprint of flying, that the majority of flights are taken by a tiny fraction of the total population, and that airlines have missed all but one of the industry’s self-imposed sustainability targets.{{Cite web |date=2022-09-22 |title=Activists subvert poster sites to shame aviation and ad industries |url=https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/22/activists-subvert-poster-sites-aviation-ad-industries-airline-emissions-climate-crisis |access-date=2022-09-23 |website=the Guardian |language=en}}
In January 2025, German police began investigating the distribution of political fliers from the far{{nbhyph}}right Alternative für Deutschland party that closely resembled airline tickets and targeted "illegal immigrants". The fliers were placed in the mailboxes of people living in immigrant areas. Karlsruhe criminal police said they are seeking "persons unknown on suspicion of incitement of racial hatred".
{{cite news
| last1 = Cole | first1 = Deborah
| title = German police investigate AfD flyers resembling plane tickets for immigrants
| date = 14 January 2025
| work = The Guardian
| location = London, United Kingdom
| issn = 0261-3077
| url = https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/14/german-police-investigate-afd-flyers-resembling-plane-tickets-for-immigrants
| access-date = 2025-01-15
}}
See also
{{div col|colwidth=18em}}
- {{annotated link|Steve Lambert}}
- {{annotated link|Brandalism}}
- {{annotated link|Code Pink|CODEPINK}}
- {{annotated link|Criticism of advertising}}
- {{annotated link|Culture jamming}}
- {{annotated link|Iara Lee|Cultures of Resistance}}
- {{annotated link|Czech Dream}}
- {{annotated link|Darren Cullen (cartoonist)}}
- {{annotated link|Doppelgänger brand image}}
- {{annotated link|Hungarian Two Tailed Dog Party}}
- {{annotated link|Improv Everywhere}}
- {{annotated link|May First/People Link}}
- {{annotated link|Meme hack}}
- {{annotated link|United for Peace and Justice}}
- {{annotated link|Wacky Packages}}
{{div col end}}
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{Commons category}}
- [http://www.adbusters.org Adbusters.org]
{{Culture jamming}}
Category:Culture jamming techniques
Category:Guerrilla art and hacking art