วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 30 สิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2550

Buy Nothing Day from Wikipedia

Buy Nothing Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine. Participants boycott purchasing anything for 24 hours in a concentrated display of anti-consumerism. The event is intended to raise awareness of what some see as the wasteful consumption habits of First World countries. Activists may also participate in culture jamming activities like the Whirl-Mart and other forms of radical expression. It is also used to protest materialism and bandwagon appeals.

Link to wikipedia

วันศุกร์ที่ 17 สิงหาคม พ.ศ. 2550

The Brand America Project


From Adbusters #50, Nov-Dec 2003

The brandmasters sound nervous. More than two years into the Brand America Project, the campaign is in disarray and the triple-whammy tagline — opportunity! democracy! freedom! — is in freefall. The target market isn’t just refusing to buy into the brand, it’s actively boycotting the product. And the target market is five-and-a-half billion people.

Writing in Advertising Age, marketing poobahs like DDB Worldwide chairman Keith Reinhard and Saatchi & Saatchi vice chairman Tim Love grope for answers everywhere from “sensitivity and communications training” to “new mind-sets.” The tone is one of surrender. “It’s hardly a secret that respect for ‘Brand America’ has plummeted to new lows outside the US,” writes Reinhard, while Love comes hard on his heels with the admission that “Favorability ratings for America in most countries of the world have declined significantly.”

Even more remarkably, there are hints of acknowledgement that Brand America’s problems may not be reparable with a quickie image makeover. Terms like “root causes” and “cultural imperialism” and “gross insensitivity” — dismissed as the language of terrorist appeasement in the months following the September 11 attack — are now rolling off the tongues of ceos at America-as-Brand seminars and globalization conferences.

All the fuss, of course, is just the sound of corporate honchos covering ass. America’s cluster of brand associations — its values, products, policies, memes, logos and ideas — is changing as rapidly as at any time in its history. The marketing gurus are sending mixed signals. (New York consultants RoperASW report that America’s corporate brand power is stalled or slipping; their peers at Interbrand counter that US brands still dominate the global top-10.) But what’s really hurting the brandmasters is the oldest measure of all: gut instinct. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that a large part of the appeal of Levi’s, Coke and ibm is a premium dose of American cool. So what happens when America loses it?

There are signs of desperation at the top. The White House “public diplomacy” push in the Middle East now includes the pop-propaganda of Radio Sawa and the lifestyle magazine Hi, which will be joined later this year by the $62-million launch of the Middle East Television Network. There is still the dream that Justin Timberlake will catch on as the rebel leader of Mideast youth, just as some East Germans remember smuggled Phil Collins albums as their music of liberation.

US corporations aren’t so sure. This summer, McCann-Erikson WorldGroup, an “integrated brand communications” company operating in more than 130 countries, cautioned its US clients not to “wrap their brands” in the American flag. The new strategy, at least for the moment, is to distance your product from George Bush’s Brand America. Roperasw warns that 38 percent of the world’s consumers say social issues and causes are “very important” to their choice of brands, and even Interbrand, with its stay-the-course view of American brand power, admits that American corporations may only be succeeding to the extent that consumers can separate US government policy from American brand identity.

Still, all the navel-gazing and painful introspection continue to spiral back to the same old conclusion: just keep rebranding the product. The rest of the world associates Brand America with exploitation, corruption, arrogance and hyper-materialism? It must be time for a new “brand platform,” some charity work, a media campaign and organized, unified, “private-sector diplomacy.” The blue-skying quickly turns ludicrous — among the solutions suggested by Tim Love over at Saatchi & Saatchi are these two quick ’n’ easy adjustments: “make capitalism inclusive” and “improve life.”

Jesus, what an unreality gap. On the one side, America has embarked on a political mission of violence and empire, of divide-and-conquer diplomacy and manufactured loyalty, with occupation abroad and isolation at home. On the other, the global culture is responding, as Harvard Business School dean John Quelch has said, with “the emergence of a consumer lifestyle with broad international appeal that is grounded in a rejection of American capitalism.” In the middle, the brandmasters build their castles in the air.

James MacKinnon

Growth of Capitalist identity


From Adbusters #54, July-Aug 2004


http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/54/Growth_of_Capitalist_identity.html

Ten Years of Activism Pays Dividends

From Adbusters #65, May-June 2006

Waistlines everywhere are expanding as Western fast food culture extends its reach to the Third World, where dining on burgers ’n fries is often considered a barometer of fiscal achievement. And because poor eating habits generally begin in childhood, the World Health Organization is urging governments to clamp down on ads for “sugar-rich items” aimed at impressionable youngsters and to consider slapping heavy taxes on such foods.

Going up against food corporations that are intentionally endangering the health of children is no easy task, but a decade of battling is starting to pay off. Here are some of the latest developments from the frontlines.

In the United States

The Good News: In the face of federal inaction, some of the larger and more progressive states are taking matters into their own hands. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently signed legislation to ban soft drinks and other junk food from high schools in an attempt to “terminate obesity in California once and for all.” The new laws extend a ban already in place at primary schools. New York, which has the largest state-school system in the US, has followed suit with similar legislation taking effect next September.

The Bad News: Nearly half of American children will be overweight by 2010. According to the US Surgeon General, the long-term health problems posed by its progressively pudgier populace “will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist attempt.” Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission decided last year that the food industry should simply police itself rather than have the federal government create new laws regarding selling or marketing crap to kids.


In France

The Good News: A new law requires food marketers to either add a health message to ads for any manufactured product or pay a tax equivalent to 1.5 percent of their annual ad budget to a national institute promoting healthier living.

The Bad News: While the country’s large Muslim population has traditionally eschewed Western fast food, those days may be numbered after the successful launch of the first “Beurger King Muslim” restaurant (the name plays on the French word “Beur,” meaning a second-generation North African immigrant) in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. While the burgers are halal – made with meat slaughtered according to Islamic dietary laws – the menu is standard unhealthy fast food fare.

In the United Kingdom

The Good News: The British government’s Education Secretary, Ruth Kelly, recently announced that “from next September no schools will be able to have vending machines selling crisps, chocolate and fizzy drinks” and promised £220 million to improve school food.

The Bad News: The School Food Trust created to make the changes doesn’t have a single nutritionist on board and is made up almost entirely of the very organizations previously responsible for serving up food condemned as “a scandal” by Kelly herself. And the recommended changes are estimated to cost £486 million, over twice the allocated budget. Currently one in seven British children is considered obese and over half suffer from tooth decay.

Andrew Fleming


Breaking the Consumer Habit: Living the Buy Nothing Life

From Adbusters #71, May-Jun 2007

San Francisco, 1951.

A living room fills with warm laughter and the aroma of fresh-baked goodies. Suburban housewives walk around the room exchanging smiles, telling stories. It’s like any other casual gathering, except for one twist: this is a Tupperware party, everyone is here to shop.

Painting over gray decades of war and depression with bright pastels, products like Tupperware ushered in a new era of prosperity, renewal and superabundance. Consumer goods like the television set and the Cadillac became more than just necessities for life: for millions of consumers, they were the essence of life itself.

Fast forward to 2005. A group of friends in the San Francisco Bay Area are meeting over a potluck dinner. Disillusioned by the endless consumer rat race, they are here to discuss how to not shop, to put an end to needless consumption. Taking the concept of Buy Nothing Day to the extreme, they have decided to attempt a full year without buying new products. Dubbing themselves “The Compact” after the Mayflower pledge at Plymouth Rock, the group vowed to limit their shopping to food, medicine and basic hygiene products, buying used wherever they could. Since the local news began covering them, their story has exploded, appearing everywhere from the Today Show to The Times of London. Today, with 8,000 new members and 55 subgroups worldwide – from regions as varied as Singapore and Iceland – the Compact are finding themselves at the forefront of the turning tide against consumer culture.

What the Compacters are doing is neither radical nor revolutionary; millions of people around the world live this way, and have lived this way for generations. Yet the Compact threatens and challenges everything that people have come to believe about “the good life” in the industrialized world. Reactions to the movement have been passionate, ranging from applause to outrage. Compact members have been accused of being “self-congratulatory braggarts” who are “destroying America’s economy.” One Compacter in Chilliwack, Canada, recalls friends reacting as if she had joined a Satanic cult. Love it or hate it, the Compact has made people question and the real motives behind their daily purchases.

“I used to shop to entertain myself,” confesses Lori Wyndham Jolly, an American expat and Compacter living in Berkshire, UK. “I’d go into a record store and buy a whole load of discount CDs, or into a chemist and get a lot of cheap cosmetics . . . I didn’t do this because I needed any of that stuff, but just to fill the emptiness. I read a throwaway line in paperback once, but it’s stuck with me: People shop because they’re lonely.”

“We’re constantly on the drive to consume more stuff,” says Rachel Kesel, a Bay Area Compacter who keeps a closely followed blog about her experiences. “It becomes a habit and not necessity.”

The reasons why people join the Compact are varied. Some join to cut back on spending, others to reduce waste, still others to escape materialism and focus on spiritual values. One thing they all recognize is that shopping is not the solution to their problems – in fact, it may very well be the cause to many of them.

“Money and debts seem to be ruling our life,” observes Rúna Björg Gartharsdóttir, a Compacter in Iceland. She explains to Adbusters that she joined the Compact to escape what she calls the “vicious cycle” of consumerism – the chronic overwork to be able to spend more; the social disintegration resulting from overwork; the environmental damage caused by consumer waste; conflict over resources to supply consumer demand. In other words, a myriad of problems loosely bound by the innocent desire for an iPod or a luxury car collection.

It is no coincidence that the emergence of the Compact coincides with the rising popularity of the down-shifting and environmental movements. People throughout the developed world have realized that, unlike our psychological desires – which are infinite – our physiology and environmental resources have limits. Our body can’t handle 80-hour workweeks on a 6,000-calorie-per-day diet, no more than our earth can handle cities like New York producing 12,000 tons of solid waste every single day, or the hundreds of millions of discarded cell phones that release cancer-causing toxins into the air. Something, someday, will have to give.

For now, most Compacters defensively state that their choice is a strictly “personal” one and that they have no political agenda. Yet they continue to stir up discontent by turning their back on a sacred ideal, the belief shared by billions around the world that “more” is better than “just enough.” Marketers are hoping this is a fringe movement. The signs point elsewhere. According to recent surveys by sociologist Juliet Schor, 81 percent of Americans believe their country is too focused on shopping, while nearly 90 percent believe it is too materialistic. Newspapers such as USA Today received record reader responses when columnist Craig Wilson swore off shopping for a full year. Radical anti-consumers such as the Freegans (people who survive on discarded food and products) are proving that people can survive off the waste of affluent consumers.

Gartharsdóttir, for her part, speaks with some pride when people tell her that her refusal to shop will shake her country’s economy. “It shows clearly the strong influence the marketing forces currently have on the nation,” she says. “We should rule our lives and decide what comes first.”

_Jenny Uechi