I noticed the "match-looking" snow board and the smoke in the background. I admit that I was looking for it because of the topic of this thread. Would I have seen it otherwise? I dont know.

This is a fascinating topic. I just spent about a half hour reading and studying the pictures.

Thanks for bringing it up, Art. I will be watching to see where the discussion goes....

BTW, I did some research on google about the book cover art....

http://caag.state.ca.us/tobacco/pdf/1pm_bkc.pdf

The above article, in Adobe format (so I cant copy and paste it), talks about how Marlboro agreed to remove all of the bookcovers from schools in California.

Interesting.

tj2001cobra, thanks for going the extra mile
(for a camel) :)
.............................................................................................

"Just why we are no longer content to leave our experiences in the subliminal state and why many people have begun to get very conscious about the unconscious, is a question well worth investigating."
-Marshall Mcluhan

what gets me is...if we know of the subliminal messages,why do we try so hard to figure them out.

if we were to take a quick flip through a magazine or newspaper,why would you want to dig deeper into what "might" be there?

i myself don't watch tv very often,i find no need for the b.s. that is floating around.i feel i can entertain my self or mind by doing things that i can feel or touch,rather than have someone tell me how i feel.or by sittin' in front of a tv.

it would be nice if there wasn't any advertisers suckin' people into whatever it is they are selling,but then again,that's what the media is all about right?


i'm aware of my surroundings and hope i'm in control of what my life is and what it will be.i figure i'm on the right path.

great thread Art.thanx for the wake up call.

flyman, thanks,
Well, thing is our minds are figuring-things-out machines.
On their own, they look for patterns, meaning, what's up - all the time. It's their job. Our minds read things forward, backwards, and sideways trying to figure out what the hell is coming around the next corner.

This sort of thing helps us survive but we can be fooled. Our senses can be fooled very easily. And we can only pay attention to one view of things at a time.

Either we try to be conscious about it or we get snookered every time we turn around. Knowing the dealer has a card up his sleeve makes you watch him like a hawk - we've got a lot at stake in these games.

Some subliminals are right in front of you. Ever walk thru your house and notice how many product logos you look at hundreds of times a day? Do you hate the forced commercials at movies? Billboards? Telemarketers? Spam?


You can't look anywhere to get away from them. You pull into a parking space in some places, the space has an ad. You walk in the door and you're inundated with ads and sales from several companies. You get a cart, it's got an ad in the basket. You look at the floor, where you've already walked on several ads. You get what you need and get into your car that makes sure you know it's a Dodge by having the logo on at least 3 places on the wheel and dash. You get out into traffic and stop at the red light, only to see the billboards perfectly placed for you to see while you're stuck in traffic. Captive advertising strikes again. You turn on the radio to get a little music, and you find ads again. Of course you aren't "forced" to look at or listen to the ads except for the movies, but you can't avoid looking at them either.

So you get home and put away your Oscar Meyer in your Frigidaire. You start a load of clothes in your Kenmore washer. You go upstairs and flip on your Daewoo television to watch a movie. You grab your Microsoft mouse and turn up your Panasonic stereo. You navigate to find the film you dled on your Philips monitor. It's a little hot so you turn on the Lasko fan. Why is this important? It illustrates how many times we are subjected to brand logos in a 5 minute period in our own home.

The key ingredient to brainwashing is repetition. It isn't necessary to have the logo on the front of appliances and other household items. All info such as make and model could easily be priinted on the back or bottom of each consumer appliance. No, they are there for the sole reason of free advertising! You see their logo 1000's of times in the usage of their product, whether consciously or subconsciously.

When will it end? I understand the need of ads to promote products and whatnot, but it's going way too far. After realizing the effect of seeing those things I went thru my house and removed as many logos from my things as pobbile. My mouse's logo has been filed off, as has my stereo, monitor, car, TV etc etc. I don't need to have these brands drilled into my head to insure future purchases subliminally. May seem extreme to some but I don't need the name of a company in my face ever svery second. The only clothes I buy with a logo are my shoes.



I also get disgusted at the use of sex in any commercial that isn't selling a sex related product...taking advantage of my animal sex drive offends me as a person and the idea behind it that reduces me to a blubbering idiot with his cock in his hand going to buy the thing that showed the girl in the shower screaming "YES YES!!!" during her "totally organic experience". It's an insult to all our intelligence, and I turn away from many products by the way they're marketed. It's the only way to fight it... don't support it.

>>Ultimately, I think mass media just gives the masses what they want, rather than controlling them..

Mass media TELLS the consumers what they NEED and that they are inadequate if they do not have it. It is more obvious in the electronics industry and I sometimes catch myself buying into the nonsense. Sometimes I DON'T catch myself until it is too late.

More and more sensory input is devoted to keeping us distracted from what really goes on. Buy this, buy that, watch this, watch that, did you see this, did you see that... it goes on and on and keeps us occupied and distracted from more important things. No one can stand up for our rights or institute change while sitting on their asses watching Survivor or playing with the newest gadgets and games. Does that seem coincidental?

I am extremely interested in subliminal advertising and I don't immediately see the clear messages in the previous pictures. I can see odd bits but can't put them together. hmmm.

http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi...t/glassup2.jpg



we perceive things all at once - upside down as well as right side up.
we also selectively focus on things



http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi...GlassDown2.jpg

some new scientific evidence for all of this
 

I raise these issues for several reasons.
First - Existing in an environment supersaturated by media as we do, it is crucial we comprehend its nature, including how and why it is created and sustained.
Second - Asking questions is the most consciousness-raising thing I can think of doing. This topic is an important one to be thinking about.
Third - It's all much bigger than anyone can imagine. I'm looking to expand the discussion beyond the dissection of individual ads and campaigns to a broader one - one in which the implications are global, in terms of both geography and consciousness.

With this in mind, here's a story from "Nature" magazine.

http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi...busystreet.jpg

Subliminal sights educate brain

Paying attention isn't the only way to learn.

Today's busy world could overwhelm our ever-learning brains.

You must pay attention to learn, teachers say. Not necessarily, US psychologists now argue: sights we are unaware of can have a lasting impact on our brains.

Subliminal training can improve our ability to see moving dots, Takeo Watanabe and his co-workers at Boston University, Massachusetts, have found. "Without noticing, we are unconsciously learning," Watanabe says. Repeated exposure to objects we are oblivious to "could have a tremendous effect on our brains", he says.

The findings show that for basic visual processes "the brain is never resting", says Robert Stickgold, who studies consciousness at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Psychologists must now ask whether we can learn more complex tasks without paying attention, says Stickgold. Although for students looking to skip school he cautions that "No one's going to learn a foreign language without going to lessons."

Live and learn

We are learning automatically as we walk around, explains Ken Nakayama, who studies vision at Harvard. "Patterns pass us all the time," he says, like cars and people on the street.

Subconscious learning may be an efficient way to absorb these sideline features without trying. "You can't pay attention to everything," he says. "The less the world we're living in is like the one we evolved in, the more the mechanism is inappropriate," says Stickgold.

Such a learning strategy may have evolved to help us incorporate recurrent, and therefore important, information about our environment into our memory, thinks Watanabe. Animal movements are a good example. The results also suggest we cannot screen out irrelevant, unwanted information. This is worrying, given that today we are bombarded with moving images from TVs, neon signs and even mobile phone displays.


Join the dots

Watanabe's team asked subjects to look at letters on a screen. Surrounding the letters were dots moving randomly, like the background fuzz after TV programmes have ended for the night. The participants did not realise that 5% of the dots were moving consistently in one direction.

After 25 days of subliminal training, people were tested on their ability to see a detectable level (10%) of dots moving in one direction. They were 20% better than normal at seeing the movement orientation they had previously been exposed to1.Certain features of an object, such as movement or colour, make nerve cells in the brain fire. Subliminal training may fine-tune these cells, making them especially sensitive to a particular direction of motion, the team thinks.

References
1. Watanabe, T., Nanez, J.E. & Sasaki, Y. Perceptual learning without perception. Nature, 413, 844 - 848, (2001).

.................................................................................

Think about this and "connect the dots," for yourself...

<img src="http://www.chud.com/chudvd/reviews/images3/TheyLive10.jpg">
can't believe this wasn't posted
(it's from the John Carpenter film They Live)

"Manufacturing Desire"
 

A look at the reasons behind the mass media mind control:

http://adbusters.org/magazine/28/desire/1.html

Text:

Manufacturing Desire
By Harry Flood
Photography by Mark Gilbert and Robert Kenney

Welcome to the factory floor. The product? Things that are not essential, but hard to live without. What's being supplied here is demand. Want. Craving. All you could desire. All you can imagine. Maybe more than you can handle.

"Why is this child smiling?" asks a recent print ad of a cute tot blissfully snoozing. "Because he has lived his whole life in the biggest bull market in history." Cue the smug nods, the flush of pride. For here, swaddled in Baby Gap and lying in a Morigeau crib, is the immaculate American kid, born in the best damn place and time there has ever been. A child wanting for nothing.

He will soon learn, of course, to want everything.

Americans are beyond apologizing for their lifestyle of scorched-earth consumerism. To the strange little cabal of moralists -- Robert Frank, Jedediah Purdy et al. -- who have recently questioned the official program, the response has mostly been to crank up the volume and drown the doubt out. Global consumer culture? Supersize it, baby. Pile on the wattage, horsepower, silicone, cholesterol and RAM until the lights flicker, the smoke-alarms shriek and the cardiac paddles lurch to life. Give us marbled steaks and sport-utes, please, and put it all on our tab -- we're good for it. Because we are working dogs. And we have worked out the formula for millennial prosperity: keep your head down and your wallet open, and watch the economy roll. Enjoy the rollicking good times while building "the America we deserve."

Time was, decadence on this scale was something to fear. If one group of people was gobbling up resources out of all proportion to its needs, consuming at thirty times the rate of other groups of people, at everyone's expense, well . . . that was bad karma, to say the least. Their society was surely soft, cancerous and doomed.

But somehow, the First World has managed to give it all a happy spin. We have decided not to avoid decadence but to embrace it. Crave it. Buy it. Sell it. What's decadent? Ice cream with the density of plutonium, a bubblebath with a barley-flour chaser, that great new Gucci scent called "Envy." Decadence is just the celebration of universal human appetites, fully expressed -- and any premium wiener who'd object to that idea must already be half-dead.

There's no mistaking contemporary America for Versailles-era France or Rome in the time of the Caesars. Decadence has grown up, grown cool, grown systematic in its excess. It's an indoor trout stream in the tasteful lakeside mansion of a software magnate. It's leasing, rather than owning, a fine German automobile so you can exchange it for a new one in ten months. You don't see the new deci-billionnaires of Silicon Valley splashing their wealth around wantonly, like the '80s Wall Street crowd. What you see is specific, laser-guided generosity -- like cutting friends and relatives into the IPO, or buying a tax-deductible painting by your boss' kid. Keeping the money in the family. The woman most recently canonized by the American media was a personal shopper, by trade. (It was said Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, whose job was to purchase things for other people too wealthy or time-pressed to purchase things for themselves, personified elegance, refinement and understatement.) The new design aesthetic, as seen in Wallpaper magazine, is sexily minimalist, with high design and hyperattention to every detail. Labor-intensive and expensive as hell, but worth it.

See how much we've grown up? Can you understand now why the rest of the world has its nose to the glass, wanting a piece of this?

Perhaps decadence isn't a thing but a behavior -- some gesture just arrogant and shameless enough to be Bad (read, good). An American golf fan, swept up by jingoism, spits on a rival golfer's wife at a prestigious international tournament. A real-estate mogul erects a great middle-finger of an apartment building shadowing the United Nations. The most powerful man in the world proves he is pathologically unable to apologize.

Or maybe decadence goes deeper than a behavior, as deep as the emotion that hatched it. The Motion Picture Association of America fixes an R rating on films that include profanity, nudity, sex, violence or "decadent situations." So understanding decadence may simply involve renting a few saucy blockbuster action pictures and monitoring the responses they provoke. As the beloved stars appear on the screen, predictable thoughts materialize in the primitive hindbrain of the viewer: I want your hair. I want your money. I want to see you naked on the Internet.

Not every American lives a decadent life, of course. But decadence, as the marketers say, has great penetration. Those who aren't themselves trashing hotel rooms or being photographed in their swimming pools for InStyle magazine, end up thinking a lot about those who are -- because the culture of celebrity (or the culture of "ornament," as Susan Faludi calls it) is the water we're all swimming in. Refracted through the glass of the tank, the contours of the world outside tend to distort.

A Canadian newspaper recently quoted a Toronto woman who had taken a leave from her law practice to stay home with the baby. She was grumbling that the family was now forced to get by on her husband's $37,000 salary. "I love to live in poverty," she said, sardonically. "It's my favorite thing in life." The story was supposed to be about the social trend of professional women making domestic choices. But it was really about a different social trend altogether: the hyper-inflation of the concept of "enough."

To borrow journalist Robert Kaplan's metaphor, the First World is driving a Cadillac through Harlem. The passengers are hermetically protected. The air-conditioner is on, Wynton Marsalis is issuing from the stereo, beers chill in the minibar. It's hard to make much out through the tinted windows, but no matter. Nothing that's happening outside has any bearing on what's happening inside. At least, that's our willful illusion. It's an illusion that seems indefinitely sustainable, though it isn't.

Decadence is self-delusion on a massive scale. Like the motto of the new gadget-packed magalog Sony Style -- "things that are not essential, yet hard to live without" -- it's about convincing ourselves of the value of this lifestyle, because to question it would force choices we're not prepared to make.

'How much do I deserve?' we all ask ourselves, if only implicitly. 'Not just money, but adventure, sex, fizzy water, educational opportunities, time on the beach, peace of mind -- the package. How much do I deserve?'

A thoughtful answer might be, 'I don't deserve anything. The notion that some people are just naturally more entitled than others is for Calvinists, Monarchists and Donald Trump. It simply doesn't feel right to claim more than a modest reasonable allotment. If I've happened to stake a claim on a rich crook of the river, that's my good luck. The guy upstream has worked just as hard as I have. So I share.'

But that view now seems downright un-American. 'How much do I deserve? All I can cram in my mouth, brain, glove-box and daytimer,' says the hard-charging capitalist. 'I've earned it. And you haven't earned the right to tell me differently.' That's why, when the Australian ethicist Peter Singer wonders, "What is our charitable burden?" it strikes so many Americans as unusual, controversial, bizarre. For a lot of folks, the calculation of an acceptable level of personal sacrifice is easy: It's zero. No other answer computes. I think that partly explains the extreme responses Singer evokes. He touches people in a place they don't like to be touched.

Are Americans today intrinsically more base and self-centered than other folks, past and present? Hard to make that argument fly. It's just that never before in history have so few barriers been placed in front of the expression of a National id. No opponents challenge us. No authority figures monitor us. No threat of consequence or reprisal encourages civility, modesty, fairness or grace. The "life of struggle" that Schopenhauer identified as essential to man isn't obvious in the contemporary US. The struggle against want has been won; all foes have been conquered but one. That one is boredom, the opposite of suffering.

Not long ago, the actor Charlie Sheen, an Angels baseball fan, bought up all the tickets in a left-field section of Anaheim stadium and sat out there by himself, pounding his mitt, hoping to catch a fly ball. (None came his way.) Why did he do that? Because he could. America is decadent because nothing prevents it from being so. "Because I can" is the ironic successor to the more earnest, Kantian, "Because I should." When there's no other rationale for a behavior, and none seems to be required, that's decadence -- no less so for the smirky tagline.

Decadence is what happens when the energy of a whole society gets channeled into the trivial or the mercenary. In the age of the supercharged Dow, everything reduces to an "opportunity," at an incalculable (though unacknowledged) cost.

As hurricane Floyd blew through Florida, day-traders jumped into the commodities markets looking to cash in on tragedy. Orange juice and cotton futures shot up. Lumber futures rose because homes smashed to flinders would presumably need to be rebuilt. Then the hurricane moved northward, and traders eased off, waiting to see if there would be, as one trader put it, "any real damage." "I don't think morality has anything to do with the way markets work, that's what this is telling you," a labor economist reached for comment summarized. What does it tell you when the most powerful engine of the country, a chief driver of its culture, functions independent of human morality?

I pondered that question recently while sitting on the throne in the bathroom of the office where I work. Often there are magazines to read in there, but on the last few occasions there haven't been -- only catalogues. Another sign of the times. In the most private of the day's moments, where we used to relax and be told a story, now we gaze at pictures of a car or a computer or a coffeemaker. Consumer lust loosens the sphincter and in an almost orgasmic spasm, we let go. (Of maybe the last thing we're willing to let go.)

It's tempting to think of decadence as a personal act with personal consequences (namely, to the soul.). If that were true, it would all come down to a matter of taste, and we could agree to live and let live with our own strange preoccupations. But decadence is really a political act. Americans aren't living large in a vacuum; they're living large at the expense of things and people: the growing underclass, the stability of the economy, the texture of mental environment, the planet itself. Every mile we log alone in the car, every sweat-shop-made sneaker we buy, every porn site we visit, every tobacco stock we day-trade in, is a brick in wall of the new world we're creating. Not everyone got a vote in this process; yet everyone pays the price. Eventually, everyone pays an incredible price.

"In a new way, America's decadence has made it vulnerable," a friend offers. Today, all is well, so keep your eye on today. Ten years ago the average personal savings rate in North America was about ten percent. Now it's zero. "If the Dow tumbles, people literally will not be able to tolerate a diminishment in their lifestyle. You'll see consumer rage, deeper and deeper debt problems as consumption patterns hold constant but income falls." Because, the thing is, the desire doesn't go away. The manufacture of desire won't slow down, even if the manufacture of everything else does.

-------

Again, I ask: is there any way out? How can we compete against a system that takes subversion and commodifies it? Here's another article about the branding of anti-brand aesthetics:

http://adbusters.org/magazine/49/art...rand_cool.html

Adbusters always makes me think, but always makes me feel so powerless. It's like saying "yup, you have cancer" without then discussing any of the treatment options or prognosis.

Tough choices will be required, but which choices?

If I stop and take a look at a global pic.
edit...babeled on sorry.

The US does have something to monitor the airwaves, the FCC.

The FCC regularly monitors broadcasts for content. Howard Stern would get fined regularly in the 90's.

Not only do they check the normal commnications channels, but also all radio frequencies including pirate radio stations. It may not happen immediately but they will eventually find someone who transmits regularly.

Yes. But the idea of nudging the barriers is one which we should pursue. The pernicious kind of "evolution" that occurs with these messages is unchecked by any sort of regulation and there is a definite loosening of the bounds of acceptability.

Thanks for all the great comments here. It's going to take a while to sort all your ideas out...
I'm pleased that we are thinking about this stuff.
It is what sets us free - or at least on the path toward liberation.
Ultimately, of course, it's a personal issue, isn't it?

the twins thing
 

http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi..._billboard.jpg
(Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski and their Coors Light billboard)

Do you have this billboard in your town?
We do.
It sits along a heavily traveled highway up there on its pedestal like drive-by cinema.
You know. It’s the Coors beer twins.

How about the double entendre’.
I recall a particular season on MTV’s “Real World” where one of the girls constantly referred to her breasts as “the twins”.
It’s a fairly common expression and is pretty universally understood.

Well here they are on display.
Not only that, they’re touching – tit for tat, as it were.

This is also a fairly common ploy.
Here’s another example:

http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi...subs/bras1.jpg

I came across a pretty interesting analysis of these Coors girls in Salon magazine.
Here it is:
…………

The twins thing

Coors beer ads have created a fantasy scenario with an incestuous twist that communicates brilliantly with the pig-like male brain.

By Shari Waxman

May 30, 2003 | The sexual exploitation of women in beer ads supports the misperception that women exist for men's pleasure alone; as well, it creates a standard of beauty that is impossible for the average woman to achieve, often resulting in feelings of inadequacy and blah, blah, blah, blah. Does anyone even care anymore?

That said, there is something uniquely off-color about Coors' latest advertising campaign. The commercial spots, which first aired during the 2002-03 NFL season, are responsible for Coors' highest-ever ad ratings, predicted increases in product sales, and a newfound relevance with 21- to 25-year-old male consumers. Though the musical odes to stuff guys love -- "two-hand touch," "short skirts," "burritos at 4 a.m." -- played during the commercials are clever, credit for the campaign's success goes to Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski. Besides being just plain hot, the aesthetically gifted 26-year-old blondes featured in the campaign are twin sisters. Twin sisters whose four blue eyes seem always to be saying, "Hey boys, anyone up for a three-way?" Sisters in a three-way? Gross.

With the Barbie twins busy working toward an eating disorders-free world and the Olsen twins still just this side of nubile, Diane and Elaine have secured the No. 1 spot in the twins category. Their Coors fame has since led the model/actor/singer sisters to appearances in "Star Trek: Enterprise," a new Peter Gabriel video, J.Lo and Ben's upcoming film "Jersey Girl," and the November 2002 issue of Maxim; ventures in music (their self-titled debut pop album, "Klone," is available online), fashion (their lingerie line is called "Zipper Girl") and television (they are now developing the reality series "No Chicks Allowed").

Diane and Elaine are knockouts, no question, relatively not super skanky, and entrepreneurially spirited. But is their combined T&A factor that much greater than that of two equally hot but unrelated models? And, if so, why?

Coors is not breaking any ground with the "two girls is better than one" concept. That bandwagon has been teeming for years with advertisers (Guess Jeans, Jose Cuervo, Skyy Vodka and Abercrombie & Fitch, to name only a few), many of whom beat around the bush far less than Coors. For instance, in a currently airing alcoholic-beverage commercial, a duo of gorgeous women, pressed together in the cleavage-to-cleavage confines of a phone booth, manage to squeeze in Joe That-Could-Totally-Be-Me when they notice he comes bearing alcohol.

Foote, Cone & Belding, the agency responsible for the "Here's to Twins" ads, is not alone in knowing that every guy with blood in his veins has fantasized about being the roast beef in a hot woman sandwich. But they are alone in creating a ménage à trois fantasy scenario with an implicitly incestuous twist. Incest -- even between sisters, and even if only by association -- conjures images of drunk, portly uncles, birth defects, low I.Q.s, and missing teeth. This stuff usually doesn't make people thirsty for an ice-cold Coors. And it's stuff, you'd think, advertisers would want to stay away from.

Our instinct to avoid sexual relations with close relatives is less about producing messed-up offspring than people think. Prohibitions against such behavior, for blood and non-blood relations alike, were established prior to knowledge of genetics and continue despite effective and accessible birth control. A supplemental theory proposed by anthropologists and sociologists is that incestuous relationships lead to role conflicts within families, create ambiguous boundaries, and disturb normal psychological and social development. This is applicable to sexual relations in which procreation is not a possibility, for instance, sister-on-sister action.

The incest taboo has been a tough cookie to crack, but then, who's trying? Hooking up (voluntarily) with one's own parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, or cousins is not topping most people's sexual wish lists. Sure, it happens on occasion, and that bastard Freud insists we think about it, but moderately well-adjusted people seem to maintain their distaste for such behavior. So why has Coors risked millions of dollars on ads hinting at the one taboo that makes even the most sexually liberal among us squirm?

I looked to my male friends for insight into the matter. Their lack of it spoke volumes.

Greg, a 30-year-old business school student, went dumb when I asked him how he felt about the incestuous connotations in the "Here's to Twins" Coors ads. The look of incredulous annoyance on his face -- it read, "What the hell is your problem?" -- was one I would come to know well. I would also come to know that explaining I have no problem, but am simply wondering why it is that the implicit sexual relationship between twin sisters sits just fine with him, and in fact strikes him as fucking awesome, was not only futile but cruel. I had no idea that asking men to analyze the biological relationship between Diane and Elaine Klimaszewski would be like asking a 7-year-old to analyze the time frame for Santa's worldwide toy delivery schedule.

Greg wasn't going to let me ruin his fantasy. He delivered his sociological analysis of the phenomenon -- "I have no idea" -- with a heavy sigh before turning away. Bob, a 36-year-old reporter, only infuriated me further by saying what men always say when things get complicated: "You are thinking way too much about this." Such a cop-out. Only in this case he may have been right.

"It's not like they're really twins." Pause, eyes look to ceiling, mouth falls open. "Oh, you mean they're really twins?"
It was astonishing how many times I heard this from men who had read and/or heard the word "twins" while looking at the two physically identical women and still hadn't put 2 and 2 together. Even men who knew that Diane and Elaine are real twins were dumbfounded when I pointed out their blood relationship. They had never thought about it that way; they had never thought about it any way.

From my research I learned that men find real-life relationships are hard enough. All those post-coital responsibilities -- holding, talking, breakfast, phone calls, talking, commitments, talking, anniversaries and valentines, plus all that talking -- can really stress a guy out. So the less they have to act like decent human beings in their fantasies, the better. Even the most universal of male fantasies -- having two women at once -- turns nightmarish when interrupted by thoughts of emotional obligations. (Does this mean I have to call both of them the next day?) Their fantasies are about what could happen in a world free from the rules of wives and girlfriends (and, obviously, the rules of attraction) and from the reality that two identical women are biological twins. Even if they are really, really hot.

This is why Diane and Elaine are such a bargain. At least for fantasy purposes, men seem to perceive the pair as essentially one woman, with the bonus of two bodies. Two bodies servicing his body. Four boobs for the price of two.

Rest assured, most men still find incest gross. Oddly, some of the men I spoke with were offended by my mention of the issue in relation to Diane and Elaine. In their ironic innocence they had managed to enjoy the twins' physical sameness without processing the reality of their monozygotic relationship. As Scott, a 32-year-old magazine editor, so eloquently put it: "There are two of them and they are the same and I can have sex with them at the same time and did I mention that they're the same?" In other words, the twins are more than just two women -- they are two of one woman.

Despite their claims, I'm not convinced men are even into three-ways, or lesbians, for that matter. What they are into is two women working together in a joint effort to bring them pleasure. It is a scenario that deems the sexual relationship between the two women irrelevant; hence, the acceptability of the sister-sister-guy fantasy. The three-way scenario is that much more heavenly when the two women are indistinguishable from one another, their lack of identity being the ultimate in low-maintenance.

Scott had warned me from the beginning: "Men really are pigs, stupid pigs. You should be thankful that you don't understand this part of our psychology." Now that I know, I kind of wish I could go back to being thankful.

Another sexy subliminal switcheroo
 

I came across another example of the old switcheroo by Palmolive.

You'll recall this one:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...934#post263934

...where the set up tricks us - for a moment - into seeing the arm as the woman's own appendage, but on closer inspection is revealed to be a dude sharing her intimate space!

Well, here's the same trick...seems they know a good subby when they create one:

http://www.artelevision.com/artelevi...molivehand.jpg

ART- This is the first time I've stopped in on this thread, I read the whole thing and I am quite amazed.

We're bombarded by these 24/7. I wouldnt be suprised if all those TV and radio waves boucing around the earth didnt screw with our brains somehow.....without even turning on the radio or the TV.

Oh well. I need some Palmolive.

Yzerman, cool.
Thanks for checkin' it out.
yeah, we all need a bath after we get our brains washed with manipulative nonsense.

Probably didn't realize this but.. you can actualy see her right arm go between her legs, its like they made it so you can see the arm through the leg..

SUBLIMINAL CITIZENS!
 

You've heard of "Viral Marketing"?
*Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. *

Well, here's a twist on that theme. You know that citizen standing next to you? He may be a walking, talking, breathing, ad!

..................................................................................................

Ordinary Citizens Recruited as Ad Spies

Paid Advertising Mercenaries Clandestinely Spread Word of Mouth Advertising

MIAMI, FL -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/21/2003 -- They're everywhere. And when they find you, they're going to get you to buy something you may have never intended to buy.

They're Ad Spies -- strategically placed, "ordinary" people who infiltrate crowds and deliver word-of-mouth advertising cloaked in everyday conversation. At bus stops, on commuter trains, at ballparks and even at work, unwitting captive audiences are being subjected to subliminal advertising messages that appear on the surface to be casual social banter. Paid advertising mercenaries, Ad Spies could be your friends, next door neighbors or co-workers … anyone, anywhere is suspect.

The brainchild of Miami, Florida-based TMR Advertising, Ad Spies was inspired by the success of America's special forces in Iraq. TMR executives reasoned that stealth-oriented, clandestinely conducted advertising would have greater impact than traditional, in-your-face advertising.

The Ad Spies methodology is simple, yet subtle. For example, on the commute home onboard the train someone may mention in passing that he's starved and can't wait to get his hands on a Big Mac. Or, while waiting for a bus a co-commuter might share the fact that this is his last bus commute because he just got a great deal on a new car at a local dealer. Anywhere, anytime ... wherever there's a crowd there's likely to be an Ad Spy.

Ad Spies also are being actively recruited by national political campaigns to garner support for this year's crowded Democratic field.

"The Ad Spies concept is custom tailored for political campaigns," said TMR Advertising Vice President, Margaret Kessler. "We can affect the voting patterns of thousands of constituents with only a handful of strategically placed Ad Spies."

Ad Spies are recruited, or cast, based on product/service target markets. If, for example, the target market is women 25-54 of a certain ethnic/racial and/or cultural demographic, an appropriate Ad Spy would be recruited who fits those demographic criteria.

As for those critics who ask where do you draw the line when it comes to clandestine advertising, Kessler has a definitive answer.

"It's all about blurring lines, not drawing them," said Kessler. "Sometimes it's not so much the message, but the messenger. And we've got the best messengers in the business."

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...lease_id=58917

Sorry to go back to this but flashing lights, and repatition thing that Art mentioned with the camp fire thing, and well isn't that the path to hyptnoism ? hyptnoism / trance and wouldn't that be the greatest result of all, for any advertiser, a trance caused by what you see and the message planted by whomever can afford the network time ?

A prime example of mass media mind control, and a prime example of why I refuse to ever look upon a diamond as anything more special than any other gem (along with the fact that I think gems with color are more beautiful).....

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/82feb/8202diamond1

perhaps the most successful ad campaign in history in my opinion. You should find it interesting.

Anyone who has an interest in just exactly how deeply our minds, our culture, and our very personal lives can be influenced by hucksters - to put it mildly- ought to take the time to read this very good report. Thanks, SecretMethod, for posting it.

Yeah, right in there in the bonding, love, and marriage ritual. It pretty much guarantees an endless line of docile accepting customers. Too bad we allow things like "love" to be commodified into baubles, mere tokens of love.

Mass Media Mind Control Mistakes
 

This thread proceeds along at a nice pace. People tell me it has opened their eyes a bit to the nature of the cultural environment we inhabit. It's serious in some ways, but it's also funny in some ways.

Here are examples of the fine art of manipulating us marketing-wise that have gone awry.


Ten Marketing Flops

http://www.lang-plus.com/news/flops/flop_names.html

Products that Bomb

http://www.lang-plus.com/news/flops/index.htm


Seeing how mass media mind control can fail miserably is another way of seeing through it, I think.

there is alot of interesting things on this site......


http://www.infowars.com/


great thread Art.........thanks for the eye opener




:D

THEY LIVE!
 

Fascinating stuff there, flyman. Thanks.

If you want to check out a super excellent flick that has a lot to do with all this plus is kick-ass entertaining, check out:

THEY LIVE (link)

It's an early John Carpenter film in which all is revealed !
...heh heh...

that is a good movie.

i think i just might go grab that tonight to watch........and with different eyes too.

once again ........great thread.

Phbbbt. Who want's to be like them? They don't seem very happy to me. I mean, I could be wrong.

SEDUCED by my dang hippocampus again!
 

This story appeared today on internet.com. It's obviously intended as a smart strategy piece for, in this case, web/internet marketers.

It says a lot about the gloss put on advertising by advertisers and those who study and promote and it also reveals how blithely ignorant they are of how it makes them sound to everyone else.

The talk about seducing and snaring potential customers by hitting them where they live and penetrating the deep recesses of the brain is the sort of thing tossed around all the time by these guys.

I think I'll check out this book...

.........................

Seducing the Hippocampus

November 17, 2003

Body of Truth

By Dan Hill
267pp. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. $29.95.

There's to be a perennial discussion in marketing over whether to appeal to consumers' intelligence or emotions. While the simple answer may be 'both,' it proves difficult in practice. Marketers have instead adopted an approach based on the product. Purchases that demand a high level of consumer involvement generally receive in-depth treatment, while impulse sales get emotional bells and whistles.

Starting with a scientific discussion of the brain, psychologist and marketer Dan Hill argues in Body of Truth that all good marketing should push the emotional buttons. Long copy and rational appeals may be of interest to a select few, but the average consumer reacts better to less subtlety. The key to all this, Hill argues, is the part of the brain that creates a "sensory-emotive connection with consumers."

"The hippocampus is vital," Hill writes. "It's the screen door to a person's psyche. It lets in what it deems to be shocking, novel, emotionally significant, or networked to the familiar. Therefore, successful marketing seduces the hippocampus." That's all well and good, the marketer may say, but how exactly do we go about targeting that lump of gray matter?

The value of emotional advertising is hardly novel in marketing. The old saw that kids-and-dogs will appeal to any consumer is time-honored. Some may remember soda commercial of years back that combined a toddler and a pack of puppies. Heart warming and memorable, to be sure. But did it move the product?

Hill spares no effort detailing the steps required to engage in what he calls "emotional positioning." Entire chapters are devoted to discussions of images and colors that will best snare typical buyers. At times, Body of Truth reads more like a psychology textbook than a marketing manual. It begs the question, what small business marketer is likely to absorb all this interesting advice?

To be sure, Hill makes a valuable point. In an increasingly cluttered marketplace, it takes more than a celebrity and a smile to create effective advertising. Whether or not marketers can consistently penetrate deep recesses of the brain in the manner Hill advocates remains to be seen, but it's worth the attempt.

....

here's another very interesting site ART.

mind control is everywhere.

what do "they" want?

http://davidicke.com/

sorry to go a little off of topic,but,i thought you'd be interested.

Well flyman, I'd say there's a sucker born every minute.
We are very conditioned to believe the unbelievable, especially when it is packaged and marketed to us and looks like every other marketed and packaged useless commodity in our lives...

Keep up the good work, Guys. This is without a doubt my favorite thread on the boards. For years, I have been facinated by the continual bombardment on our senses to Buy, Buy, Buy anything and everything without giving much thought to the motivations behind them.

People who are continually obsessed with buying the latest and greatest gadgets and keeping up with the 'Jones' don't really have time to notice that their rights and freedoms are systematically being taken away. It is a lot easier to manipulate people when their attentions are focused on other things.

Oh well, as long as it doesn't affect me... America's new anthem

Watching you and Tracking you - another useful feature of our products!
 

November 14, 2003

Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble Collaborate in Spying on Consumers
P&G, Wal-Mart store did secret test of RFID (11/9/03 - Chicago Sun-Times)

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Shoppers in a suburban Tulsa, Okla., Wal-Mart were unwitting guinea pigs earlier this year in a secret study that two of America's largest corporations never expected you'd know about.
In the study, uncovered by the Chicago Sun-Times, shelves in a Wal-Mart in Broken Arrow, Okla., were equipped with hidden electronics to track the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick containers stacked on them. The shelves and Webcam images were viewed 750 miles away by Procter & Gamble researchers in Cincinnati who could tell when lipsticks were removed from the shelves and could even watch consumers in action.

The study involved a new technology, known as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), that enables retailers to use radio signals to electronically track products in warehouses and on store shelves, a technology critics fear ultimately could be used to track people once they leave the store.

Manufacturers and retailers are looking at ultimately putting the tiny chips into everything from soda cans and cereal boxes to shoes, clothing and car tires.

This worries privacy-rights advocates who envision tags in shoes and other personal items being linked to credit-card information so that retailers and government agencies could spy on the public.

Experts on RFID said the four-month study in Broken Arrow, Okla., was the first of its kind in the United States. Up to now, industry leaders have denied such testing had been conducted in this country.

The Sun-Times learned of the trial from a disgruntled Procter & Gamble executive and also from the firm that designed the "smart shelf" system. Researchers concealed "readers" in contact paper placed under the shelves and embedded RFID antenna chips in Lipfinity packaging.

Kevin Ashton, executive director of the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, downplayed the trial. "I think that the idea that someone's privacy is at stake because there are a few RFID tags in a few lipsticks in one store is silly," Ashton said.

The Auto-ID Center was founded in 1999 to develop RFID technology.

But Katherine Albrecht, founder of CASPIAN [Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering], a privacy rights group, said, "On the surface, the Broken Arrow trial may seem harmless. But the truth is that the businesses involved pushed forward with this technology in secret, knowing full well that consumers are overwhelmingly opposed to it. This is why we have called for mandatory labeling of products containing RFID chips."

Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Jeannie Tharrington reluctantly confirmed the Broken Arrow test.

She said there was a sign at the Lipfinity display that "alerted customers that closed-circuit televisions and electronic merchandise security systems are in place in the store."

She said there were no specific warnings about RFID tags in the lipstick packages.

Tharrington said the tags had a short read range -- about a half inch. That meant that once the packages left the shelves, researchers could not track them or the people carrying them.

Albrecht said: "Customers do not go into a Wal-Mart expecting to be used as research subjects. And they certainly don't expect these companies to slip tiny tracking devices into the products they buy."

Tom Williams, spokesman for Wal-Mart, initially denied that the study had been done, only to call back the next day to say he found that indeed the test had been conducted from late March until mid-July.


According to the Sun-Times Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has required that its top 100 suppliers tag their products with RFIDs by 2005.
........................

We are so defined by the products we associate with, it's not funny. In many ways we are the sum total of what is marketed to us and what we have purchased...

This is one of the better questions, guthmund. I think the two work in harmony. The sad fact is, the majority of the "viewing public" is easily bought. We all want things quickly and succinctly, even when it is at a cost, which in most cases means lacking of quality or factual information. A good example of how we've been "bought" is Madonna. Listen to her first couple of albums. She is no Rosemary Clooney or Kiri Te Kanawa for sure. She has reinvented herself to appeal to whichever demographic has the most money to spend. Consequently, this woman of, in my opinion, very little musical talent and many brains has had the last laugh. I personally don't care for her music, but I admire her wherewithal and her moxie.

This is truly one of the best threads I've come across. Its filled with great discussion and a plethora of information. Nice work to all of you who contributed.

Although I am a victim of US public schooling, from an early age I had some great teachers. As early as fifth grade we were trained to see these images and be aware of what they were trying to drive into our minds. We even had a project in which we had to come up with a product and market it using these subliminal techniques.

One of the more ridiculous recent ones I noticed the other day was the slogan "every kiss begins with Kay". I laugh my ass off every time I see that ad. Jewelry ads are famous for appealing to your romantic side. I spent about six months recently shielding myself from television. When I started watching tv again I burst out laughing at every advertisement I saw. My roommates constantly asked what I was laughing about. This is a fun experiment to try. Obviously television is hardly the only source for advertising, but it can be one of the most intense.

I find that I am particularly attracted to products that don't seem to have any brand at all. This could be their cute ploy of advertising though. It appeals to the sense that you think you are above advertising messages, so you will buy this generic-looking thing.

Great thread guys, thank you for all the interesting material to add to the discussion.

I'm one of those people that pulls off the insignias on things. My car, refrigerator, stereo, etc. I get a lot of compliments and questions from people about it. Where did you buy that? What brand is that? Irony...it kills me.

This is an interesting thread, but so far (unless I missed something) we're focusing on the techniques and not the results. Advertisers can put "sex" all over their ads, but if it doesn't effect people, then so what?

The example with the snowboarding don't smoke controversy struck me. The article said the snowboard looks like a lit match (well, and it also looks like a snowboard), the clouds look like smoke (don't clouds almost ALWAYS look like smoke of one sort or another? Those clouds don't look like cig. smoke to me), and the mountains look like mounds of tobacco at an auction. It's that last allegation that irritated me the most. OK, so let's say they do. Exactly how many students - much less people - do you think know what a mound of tobacco at an auction looks like? I certainly don't, and I'm almost 30.

So if the majority of students aren't going to know what the stuff looks like, then how can a picture that's supposedly mounds of tobacco in disguise possibly influence them?

Let's look at the sex-in-the-ice-cubes picture in the gin advertisement. OK, so they wrote sex in the ice cubes. What evidence do we have that the technique worked? If people saw the ad and bought more gin, how do we KNOW it's because of the word "sex" and not because the gin in the picture looked really tasty?

I'm not saying subliminal advertising doesn't happen - it does, and there's lots of documentation to back that up. Where the documentation falls short, however, is whether or not the technique is effective. In short, is it really something to get up in arms about?

For me, it isn't really about the specific instances.
They are posted as signs of something, indicators to the larger issues involving the total and overall effect the mediated and thoroughly saturated cultural environment may be having on us.

The real intention behind this for me is for us to examine ourselves individually in the interest of answering your questions. How much of an effect does the type of world we are living in have on us - our thinking and our behavior?

My personal opinion is that we vastly underestimate, even deny the most obvious things...

Forgive the length, but here is a perfect example of attempting to utilize marketing for society's betterment:

The New York Times
November 23, 2003
When Nations Need a Little Marketing
By JIM RENDON

IMON ANHOLT, a British branding expert, spent a career developing international campaigns for Coca-Cola and Nestlé. Now he is trying to put his image-making skills to work for a very different kind of client: countries with struggling economies, like Croatia and Slovenia.

"I was getting bored with spending my life making already rich companies a little bit richer," said Mr. Anholt, who is 43 and based in London. So, earlier this year, he opened his own agency, Placebrands, with one clear goal: to help countries develop themselves as brands, with a carefully managed international identity, as recognizable as any consumer product. He has worked with Germany, Britain and New Zealand, in addition to Croatia and Slovenia, and is now in negotiations with Mongolia.

"When it comes to economic development, everyone talks about transportation, technology and civil service," Mr. Anholt said. "No one talks about marketing, which is bizarre. Marketing is at the heart of what makes rich countries rich."

Mr. Anholt said he believed that helping countries develop and communicate strong brand identities could help speed up development by attracting foreign investors and tourists. That, in turn, could increase political influence and help a country's corporations grow.

Mr. Anholt is not alone in seeing the possibilities in nation branding. The idea has been generating more interest in recent years as countries including the United States, Germany, France, Portugal, Estonia and Poland have brought in experts to help them tinker with their identities.

Next year, Finland will start a campaign to enhance its image as a center of high-tech innovation, with the hope of helping its technology companies fare better in the United States. Branding is also seen as crucial to many Central European countries that have realized that their timelines for acceptance into the European Union, and their ability to compete against their neighbors for investment, depend in part on how they are perceived by more developed European countries like France and Germany.

Changing the image of a country is no easier than changing the image of a company or an individual. While branding may be able to help a country improve its communication with the world, it won't work if the country sends out lies or hype, said Erich Joachimsthaler, chief executive of Vivaldi Partners, a four-year-old agency that specializes in branding. Mr. Joachimsthaler said that when working with Germany, he had run into a perception gap that is common in such work. His German clients wanted to portray themselves as a passionate, emotional, flexible people, an image that he said was "a whole bunch of baloney."

Charlotte Beers, the former chief executive of the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, served for a year and a half as President Bush's under secretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs - and part of the job was the task of selling America to the Middle East.

Jennifer L. Aaker, an associate professor of marketing at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, said that task was almost impossible. "One of the reasons that effort failed was because of the underlying product - our policies were not perceived as pro-Middle East. We failed to understand the media, the culture, even the language in that region. It is difficult to garner favorable perceptions of the American brand in that context."

While most countries have complicated identities, Croatia, one of Mr. Anholt's clients, is a particularly vexing case. To the extent that people in Western Europe think of the country at all, they associate it with Nazi complicity in World War II, Mr. Anholt said, or with the bloody conflicts in the 1990's between the Serbs and the Croats. Stjepo Martinovic, editor of Croatia's national heritage magazine, Matica, and a former adviser to the Croatian government on European integration, said that because Croatia is scheduled to join the European Union as early as 2007, it was particularly important that the country project a positive image.

"We are trying to present Croatia as a normal country, a market economy, a democratic society, a Mediterranean country," Mr. Martinovic said. He argues that Croatia can be made attractive to the rest of the world by letting people know about its inexpensive work force, its livable cities and its schools that offer classes in English - as well as its ballet, theater and contemporary artists.

Mr. Anholt's job is to assess these qualities, understand what outsiders may think about the country and then work to coordinate the messages from various ministries, private industry, cultural institutions and even sports teams. But Croatia cannot focus only on its assets and pretend that there are no negative associations, Mr. Anholt said. He is in the early stages of his work for Croatia but has come up with a one-liner for the country: "We're trying hard and developing quickly."

Slovenia, another country that Mr. Anholt has advised, presents a different set of problems. The country is small, largely unknown and often confused with Slovakia.

"We're a country that recently got its independence,'' said Rok Klancnik, the former director of communications for Slovenia's tourism board and now the director of communications at the World Tourism Organization in Madrid. "We're striving to reach higher levels of economic, social and cultural development. Branding is not only useful, it's necessary."

For Slovenia, sending musicians and artists abroad is one way to communicate. If someone enjoys a performance of the Ljubljana Symphony Orchestra in, say, Chicago, that will reflect well on Slovenia, Mr. Anholt said, and may encourage people to visit it or buy its products.

Because he regards branding as something that can take 10 or 20 years to achieve, Mr. Anholt does not recommend advertising as a solution. In the case of Slovenia, he argues that schools there should teach English, Italian and German. In 15 years, when some of those students are working in hotels and can greet visitors in their native languages, those visitors will be more likely to leave with a positive impression of the country.

Wally Olins, a visiting fellow at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University and a founder of the branding firm Wolff-Olins, said a country's brand involved messages from dozens of agencies and private companies. Everything from its Web site design and trade show materials to its stance on complex issues like international trade agreements can give clues about a country's identity.

For example, Mexico's decision to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement did more to signal its readiness for foreign investment than any other single event could have, according to Robert Z. Lawrence, a professor of international trade and investment at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Similarly, Mr. Anholt said, Slovenia's generosity in foreign aid - it is a donor to countries in its region - sends the message that the country is both stable and economically prosperous.

WORKING with countries can be exasperating. Corporations have top-down structures that require employees to get behind new projects and often have chief executives with long tenures. Nations have political factions, sudden leadership changes and vast bureaucracies. Branding programs may be seen as superfluous. Advertising firms and corporations may have different goals than government agencies.

Mr. Anholt said he had started and stopped work with Slovenia many times. "Every time I get involved, I make friends, create a good impression, some of my advice is taken, some is not, and then I have to start all over again," he said.

Whether branding is as useful as Mr. Anholt believes, however, is the subject of some debate, at least if the goal is to help a country's corporations expand internationally.

Many branding experts point to the success of Japan and Japanese corporations as an example of how national and corporate identities can benefit each other. After World War II, Japan became associated with poor-quality products, but in the 1980's, with the emergence of successful Japanese corporations like Toyota and Sony and Honda, the name Japan became synonymous with quality and technology.

But to think that Mr. Anholt's branding efforts can do the same for Slovenia's companies may be wishful thinking, said Desmond Lachman, an economist and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization. Japan had high regulatory standards and a relatively large domestic market that helped its corporations develop, Mr. Lachman said. Slovenia, on the other hand, has a tiny domestic market. It will not become another Japan no matter how it is branded, he said.

The most efficient way for Eastern European countries with emerging economies to promote growth is to pursue policies that encourage investment from companies in France, Germany and other European Union countries to help develop a manufacturing base, Mr. Lachman said.

Although Mr. Anholt says a better international image can have long-term international benefits, he does not argue that it's the right thing for every country. "Money should not be taken away from essential nation-building activity to do branding," he said. "If the roads need fixing, they are probably better off using their money to fix the roads."

txlovely, wonderful!

that's the reason why people flock to USA. They heard that the streets were paved in gold, etc. etc. When I travel I always ask what people think of the US, and it's subtly marketed via simple influences of Movies, TV, Music....

Thanks, Cynthetiq. :)

Intersting to think of branding in terms of a country, isn't it? I do wish the US wasn't so closely tied to Terminator, Rocky and Dallas reruns. Maybe we need a branding campaign ourselves...

nice, i've spent ages reading through this stuff and just thought i'd give this a bump. Unfortunatley i don't have anything profound at the moment as i am still absorbing and digesting.

cheers, great thread!

Thanks, Sleepyjack.

I do regular searches for this stuff. Your bump moved me to update the thread with two items from The Australian , Austrailia's National Daily Newspaper:

Here's the first:

........................

Endless game of Where's Wally

For TV and movie viewers alike, spotting product placement can be like an almighty game of Where's Wally.

Product can find itself on screen for any number of reasons: from the standard product placement model where a company has paid for its brand to be featured, to deals where the production company is supplied with free product in exchange for its appearance – a model often used where cars are concerned – to incidental placement where no money changes hands and a brand just happens to make it on screen.

Fans of reality shows in Australia will be in little doubt about many of the sponsors of recent hits. Australian Idol leveraged its need for a make-up room and L'Oreal brand Maybelline came to the party, with t-shirt-adorned stylists getting contestants ready for their moment in the spotlight. McDonald's found its brand emblazoned outside the Sydney Opera House for show's finale.

On The Block, Black & Decker tools were always handy for the contestants as they drilled and hammered their way to stardom. Sharing the limelight were Panasonic, Masterfoods and the Commonwealth Bank, all of which were generously identified during the show and their products used by the contestants.

Stick around and watch the credits of an episode of the Seven Network's All Saints and you might spy the names OPSM, Sarah Jane or Roses Only headlined with the statement "Products and/or services provided under commercial arrangement". Over on an episode of Stingers on Nine, the producers give "thanks" to Siemens and Coffex Coffee.

But when it comes to product placement, TV is small beer – it is in Hollywood where the real deals are done. In the 1990s Mike Myers used his movie Wayne's World to lampoon just how big and blatant product placement had become, but even he could not have envisaged the master of the medium, super-spy James Bond.

From the moment he penned his first Bond book, Ian Fleming made sure brands had a prominent role to play, believing that the inclusion of real brands gave his books an air of reality. When producers committed Bond to film, they too cottoned on that a well branded Bond was a bankable commodity.

In the most recent Bond bonanza, Die Another Day, Ford handed over Aston Martins (after three movies featuring BMW placement), Jaguars and Land Rovers. Bond sipped Finlandia vodka and 7-Up, while a dozen other products vied for attention.

Simon Canning

........................

More on the same there:



The subliminal sell
By Simon Canning
11dec03

Production of the 2004 television season of blockbuster reality shows is well under way and the networks are casting for talent. Over at Network Ten, still swooning from the success of Australian Idol, executives are looking for dozens of contenders to decorate the small screen in its latest series, The Resort. Those who make the casting cut are almost guaranteed stardom and riches. But it is not just actors and contestants the network is hunting for, it's products. Products to perform for the camera and products to help underwrite the rising costs of giving Australians their daily dose of reality TV. Ten wants soft-drink makers, brewers, spirit companies, airlines and travel agents to sign up and get their brands on screen. This time, Ten even wants viewers to book their holidays at the Fiji resort while the series is being filmed. Welcome to the world of product placement, brand insertion or brand integration in the new millennium where advertising is fighting to break free from the 30-second TV commercial, and the networks are only too willing to help.

Product placement has been around in one fashion or another since the days of the radio soaps – so named because they were funded by the soap companies. In radio and the early days of TV it was a simple concept. The company funded the production of the show and was allowed to append its brand directly to the title, BP Pick-A-Box is perhaps the most famous example, but other shows to grace the TV screens in the 1950s and '60s included The Frigidaire Show, The Tarax Show and The Mobil Show. As the '70s arrived such overt branding fell from favour, but product placement remained alive and well in the movie business in the US.

Steven Spielberg is largely credited with ushering in the new era of product placement when he convinced Reeses Pieces to pay for a place in his hit ET. In the wake of the film, sales of the confectionery shot up 65 per cent and the future of product placement was assured. Today estimates from the US suggest the product placement industry in movies alone is worth $US360 million ($488 million) a year.

Now the advertiser-financed insertion of a brand into a TV show has turned into a burgeoning industry in its own right in Australia. All three TV networks have created dedicated divisions to look for opportunities to get advertisers into shows. Each idea for a show that crosses the desks of network programming executives is analysed for the opportunity to earn revenue through the inclusion of paid-for advertising within the show's content. A small industry of companies brokering product placement is also emerging.

If you have recently watched All Saints, The Block, Australian Idol, Big Brother, CrashBurn or any one of an innumerable collection of shows, you may have been aware of product placement. But then again, you may not have – and this is where critics are becoming increasingly concerned about the networks' desire to expand advertising revenue opportunities beyond the 13 minutes per hour now allowed by the Australian Broadcasting Authority.
Now some observers fear the Australian advertising industry is heading for a cash-for-comment-like crisis as advertisers meld more and more advertising into programming.

Charles Britton, technology officer with the Australian Consumers' Association, questions just how savvy to embedded messages consumers really are. "Do people know they are being promoted to?" Britton asks. "It's coming in under the threshold. I think in the 1960s there was a big debate about subliminal advertising. It was sort of like invasion of the body snatchers. If people don't know they are being sold to, then they don't have their own street wisdom up and running." Britton also questions how the Trade Practices Act applies when products are used within the confines of programming as a result of payment to the network or program producers by the advertisers. "There is the Trade Practices Act and the notion that representations need to somehow cohere with what the offering actually is. When you get to these alternative channels where is your guarantee that, in fact, the way it is being promoted is in any way related to what it actually delivers? And then if not, how do you get redress?"

In the US, the issue of product placement has reached boiling point after a consumer action group, Commercial Alert, which numbers consumer advocate and political activist Ralph Nader among its patrons, lodged a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. The complaint has accused the principal networks, including ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX, of failing to comply with sponsorship identification requirements. "It is a basic principal of law and common morality that advertisers must be honest with their viewers," the complaint says. "Advertisers can puff and tout and use all the many tricks of their trade. But they must not pretend that their ads are something else."

Gary Ruskin, executive director of Commercial Alert, says that in the US rules are no longer keeping pace with the scale of brand insertion in TV programs. "During the last four years the scope, sophistication and intensity of televised product placement has increased dramatically. It has emerged as a kind of parallel industry to conventional advertising," Ruskin says. "The rules in the US as they are written are not adequate to the new challenges posed by embedded advertising, such as product placement, product integration and plot integration. In essence some programs now resemble program-length ads. Allowing broadcasters to identify the sponsors only once during an entire program, if at all, is wholly insufficient to match the subtle and complex efforts to persuade viewers to buy products via product placement."

Consumer advocates might be wary of product placement and the manner in which it is growing, but from the networks' perspective, they have discovered a small yet substantial seam of gold, which they are mining for all it's worth. One network that has been at the forefront is Ten, which was a leader in linking the content of shows with ad breaks from the early '90s.

Brian Gallagher, strategy and development manager, network sales, at Ten, is in charge of helping sponsors make the move from the commercial breaks into the shows and says it is a time-consuming process few advertisers are actually willing to embrace. He says three key factors need to be in alignment before an advertiser can successfully migrate into the environment of a TV show – the concept, consumer interest in the program and the product, and its connection with the consumer. "If we can actually find products that align those three things then we know we are going to have a successful campaign," Gallagher says. "With all of that, only a small percentage of the advertisers we work with give us enough time and scope to be able to address their marketing issues in an integrated manner."

Gallagher also warns that relevance is a key factor to successfully embedding a brand within a show. "We can formulate an idea to work brands into our format in a relevant way. Because if it's not relevant to the content that we're producing, it will certainly not be relevant to the consumer and the consumer won't recognise it as a valued part of the program."

With The Resort, where teams of couples will vie to win the right to run a tropical holiday destination, Ten is hoping to take the integration of advertisers into a show further than ever before, Gallagher says. "We needed to find people to help us fly people into Fiji," he says. "We need to find people to help us market the holidays, and in this case the resort is a business where we will be selling those holidays through retail channels." Such is the level of brand integration the show aspires to that a sponsored bar will be built in the resort. "The bar has the naming rights of a spirit company and they will be involved in setting it up. They will own the bar and will be able to run consumer promotions with a trip to the resort as a prize. We will give them two shooting days to make a commercial, which in itself will form part of the program."

Product placement can work in curious ways. Rice cracker company Sakata is rumoured to have spent a substantial part of its marketing budget simply to buy into Australian Idol. Ten then pitched in, getting the show's contestants to shoot a short ad singing the brand's monotonous tune.

A recent survey by advertising agency George Patterson Partners revealed that 78 per cent of people claim to have noticed product placement in programs. Further, 55 per cent said they did not like the idea of product placement, while the remaining 45 per cent said they did like product placement. Brands identified by those surveyed as taking part in product placement in programs included Coca-Cola, which boasted an unprompted recall of 33 per cent. Pepsi achieved a recall of 12 per cent, with respondents saying they had seen the brands in various shows. Mars and Pizza Hut's association with Big Brother paid dividends, as did Optus's inclusion in the latest series of the reality show. By comparison, sponsors of the Nine Network series The Block achieved recall of between 1 and 2 per cent. Those surveyed identified Black & Decker, Freedom, Dolmio and Masterfoods as having a role within the show. The figures might seem low, but marketers say the impact of such strategic placement of brands is worth far more than the initial investment.

The Block has been one of the most overt examples of product placement seen on Australian TV this year. The network partnership with Freedom furniture and Toyota has been hailed by both as a significant success. Freedom committed 30 per cent of its annual budget to the show as the main sponsors, while numerous others also jumped on the bandwagon.

Toyota was one company that was so happy with the impact its presence on the show had on branding and sales, it wasted no time signing up for the second season. Toyota's Nick Sadlier says the way the brand was integrated into the show was a vital ingredient. "I think the key thing for us was not just going beyond advertising into integration, but real relevant, targeted integration," Sadlier says. "The fact (is) that The Block was based in Bondi, the couples were all in the range of the target audience, and the uses of the car were actually in a competitive environment so the benefits of the vehicle could actually be communicated through the show without it seeming unnatural."

But while Sadlier is delighted with the outcome of The Block, he is unsure that the car maker will take every opportunity on offer to integrate its brand. "I'm sure we will be seeing a lot of this over the next 12 to 18 months," he says. "We get a lot of proposals, but I think The Block was unique in terms of the opportunity to integrate – we were much more involved in the production and that was the key to making it work." GETTING brands into TV shows can be half the challenge and product placement broker James Grant Hay says the Australian product placement industry is embryonic in comparison to the US. "We saw a niche opportunity in the Australian marketplace following the American example," Grant Hay says. "The product placement processes in America are well and truly 10 to 15 years ahead of Australia. The shift has come about due to media fragmentation, and from where we are standing the consumer or the viewer is more or less in the driver's seat. You have an incredible number of different forms of competing media out there and really it's no longer a case of interruption to the viewer, it's about engagement and that's what is driving product integration and branded entertainment."

But are viewers going to turn against the concept of product placement and the idea that advertising is no longer restricted to the advertising breaks? Grant Hay thinks not. "There is no end to its limit," he says. "However, it must be done in subtle form if the viewer or consumer is to respond favourably to it. That is why we are choosing to not participate in this style of, as I call it, blatant product placement which is somewhat intrusive."

Even so, he says that even blatant product placement has a high rate of acceptance with viewers at this stage in its life.
"I believe they will continue to accept that this is the way that programming is headed. Let's just look at the ratings for something like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, which is the American model, but there will be an Australian version of that, and that has been incredibly well received."

Australian TV has learned many of its tricks from the father of product placement, the US movie studio – as ET demonstrated. Movies and product placement are an economy in themselves and the vast number of American movies coming into the Australian market means movie-goers are subjected to a form of cultural imperialism. One of the expected hits of the summer season is expected to be the movie adaptation of Dr Seuss's The Cat in the Hat. While there are no products placed within the movie itself, critics in the US have railed at the number of endorsements producers have attracted. In all, more than 40 different brands belonging to 12 companies have tie-ins with the movie. They range from Kellogg's to Burger King and Nabisco. Experts describe the film as having the highest level of promotional support ever seen in Hollywood.

From an advertiser's standpoint, product placement can provide an opportunity for branding and product demonstration, but the risks are high. Networks and producers need to bring advertisers in at the beginning of the process and the long lead time means it can be months before the results are seen. And if the show is not a hit, there is no way to recoup the investment.

Ten's drama CrashBurn was given substantial support by spirit brand Bailey's Irish Cream. The advertiser bought air time in the ad breaks, and when scenes in the show were filmed in some bars, the Bailey's logo was often prominent. But the show failed to set the ratings on fire and Bailey's distributor Diageo is said to be disappointed with the numbers the drama attracted.

The networks are also aware of the storm brewing in the US about levels of product placement and how such deals are identified. An amendment to Australia's Commercial Television Code of Practice now under review requires for the first time the disclosure of commercial arrangements in factual programs, but gives the networks the chance to consider each case individually. The code will not relate to entertainment programming such as Big Brother, but will apply to shows where people could be induced into buying a product featured, such as The Block. Disclosure can be by way of on-screen sub-titles or appear in the end credits. The code is expected to be adopted early in the new year.

But what is product placement in Australian TV worth? The reality is, no one knows. Last week in the US, ratings provider Nielsen announced it would be adopting a system of measuring product placement for the first time as networks and advertisers demand to know what the real impact of their investment is. The system could be up and running in Australia within a year.

James Parkinson, investment and development director with media buyer Carat – which was responsible for Freedom's investment in The Block – says Nielsen's move recognises the importance of product placement in today's TV environment. "At the moment it is incremental and you don't change a $2 billion industry by buying a few incremental placements. But it's not about bludgeoning commercials into shows. There has to be value for the advertisers and the viewers."

.............................

To reiterate my basic theme in these posts:

We tend to want to believe we are not manipulated. We need to feel we are free agents acting with rational decisionmaking skills. We have a vested interest in denying the extent to which we are mindless pawns in multi-billion-dollar marketing strategies.

This doesn't help us much. In my opinion, we are like fish who are unaware of the water in which they are swimming and who do not question the wholly circumscribed nature of their existence within its container.

Art, what'sgreat about the product placement stuff is that sometimes producers and directors forget about these crucial tie ins to keep their budgets in check or to even make them go into the black.

When I was working at the VH1 Studios we had a show where there was a computer on set. I had to make the monitor appear to be connected to the computer, but I also had to make sure that the engineering could be able to do what the director wanted to appear on the screen.

I convinced them to talk to Compaq to get them to "give" a computer system and a back up system for on set shooting, in exchange for prominient displaying of their logo, and a end credit, of "Computers provided by Compaq"

While they do this for the wardrobe department in making sure that the VJs and hosts look great and exchange clothes, they forget that they can do the same for furniture, computers, and other props.

Thanks, Cynthetiq.
It's always important to hear first-hand behind-the-scenes reports from the ranks of the mega-media corporate giants.

jingles
 

I was just thinking about the masses and how we're hearing only mass produced music instead of jingles.

Jingles of course can be hit or miss, but I do recall that there was a time where the jingle was at least a familiar song but with changed lyrics, ala "I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair" became "I'm gonna wash that grey right outta my hairt" and the like

Recently we've been seeing EBAY commercials with songs as MY WAY, AMORE, and I forgot the middle commercial.

IMHO I find these more interesting than just using the Beatles, Revolution or Pink's Get the Party Started.

Reading this thread and thinking about my reaction to media reminds be of the Infinity G45 "The muscle car with brains"

The slogan immediately appealed to me because it directly related to the image I associate myself with and portray to the public. The body of the car also has a blend of luxury/class with extended lean side panel as well as muscle car bravado with the bulked front end and accented hood.

By the end of the day when this ad first ran I had the G45 as the background on my computer at work and had all of the stats memorized. What eventually negated this ads effect on me was fiscal responsibility. Television and radio only exist because of advertising. Whatever show you like is only packaging for attempts to get your money. The effect of media is negated by fiscal responsibility.

Effective media identifies the aspects of your psyche closest to your ideal then positions itself as indispensable to that image. But all it takes to combat these images are fiscal responsibility and independent thought. We may be exposed to these images on a regular basis but even if the media is successful at making me desire an Infinity G45 they can't make me buy it.

The human brain has the potential to actively process so much information but the majority of us of intellectual bums. We are so mentally lazy that our brains rapidly fall into disrepair. It is because everything is spoon-fed to us. Our media is so infantile that we often know the result of a movie before its even halfway over. Our sitcoms are the same shows over and over again often with the same punch lines. Even our jobs are often designed to be as routine as possible. There are standard operating procedures whenever possible. Very little original thought or detailed attention is required on a daily basis. We spend the VAST majority of our lives “going through the motions.” Most of us even read passively. Instead of pausing in the middle of reading to digest what we have read or mentally play with the story line and consider alternate developments or analyzing the writing style of the author we just allow ourselves to be lead, entertained or inundated with the authors interpretation of information or just his/her opinion. Even in intellectual conversation such as those on TFP most of just regurgitate the same opinions that we’ve held previously without even stopping to fully consider the point of others. I am guilty of all of these things. Most of our "knowledge" is reduced to the mindless repetition of what others have told us or what we decided long ago when we had less information or access to information. It is because we have allowed our brains to be so dummied down that we are so easily influenced by media.

The solution is to train ourselves to have a warriors mind. Pay attention to everything and maintain a constant focus. Next time you pump gas, analyze every motion. Cut down all unnecessary motions and make the process as fluid as possible. Pay attention to the mundane details in everything. When you are walking, remain completely aware of your body posture and notice everything that happens around you. Train your brain to constantly process every bit of information you encounter. Teach yourself to be sharp and analytical. Use your brain as much as possible. Seek perfection and focus in everything you do. Act, don’t react. Don’t go through the motions. Don't allow society to dummy you down and make you a good little consumer citizen.

This is a good thread!! I've always been facinated with the subliminal.

It's only lately that I've really begun to understand that the real weakness is emotion. When we become emotionally engaged in something, we unleash a hidden powerhouse of passion. That's why some people do exceptionally well at jobs and others don't. Some fall into the perfect role and become emotionally engaged in what they are doing while others struggle to get up each morning.

Every purchase you make is done so with an emotional motivation. You want to look good, feel good or gain an advantage. And if you consider this fact, sex is one of the most powerful emotional connections. The only one possibly more powerful - because human nature is most responsive to avoidance of pain - is the avoidance of the negative. But if you want to lead people, toss out that positive emotional connection and people will follow - with serious buy-in of their own. And that is the perfect environment for motivation.

So I go back to my original point: the weakness is our need to fullfill an emotion.

keeping up with your joneses
 

It's always worthwhile to think about the millions of bucks that are weighting the choices we make in the marketplace - especially some of the choices we hold near and dear. Our very self-images are involved - and we take those very seriously indeed:

...........

Ford, Toyota set sights on hip hop crowd
GM steers clear: Ford concept 'has a lot of downtown Detroit in it'

Robert Thompson
Financial Post


Wednesday, January 07, 2004

TOYOTA'S SCION XB: The new model used guerrilla marketing and has created its own magazine about "a look at life at the intersection."


DETROIT - With a pumping sound system kicking out the latest beats and flashy models dressed totally in black, it is almost possible to overlook the European-looking cars spinning in the middle of the room.

But unlike many of the cars at the other booths at the Detroit auto show, Toyota Motor Corp.'s new Scion isn't being marketed to middle-aged men.

While its sporty features, European styling and ability to be customized makes it stand out from other cars at the crowded North American International Auto Show, the Scion is also unique as being one of the first automobiles in recent memory to be targeted at younger car buyers utilizing an urban marketing style.

From jeans to soft drinks, savvy marketers are borrowing from American urban culture to sell their wares to those in their early 20s. According to Business Week magazine, one-quarter of all discretionary spending in the U.S. today is influenced by hip-hop music.

Toyota is only the latest company to try and capitalize on the trend. As part of its campaign, Scion has used non-traditional marketing to try to attract a younger crowd. The company has rented night clubs and hired disc jockeys in order to entice potential buyers.

And while most car manufacturers hand out glitzy brochures with glamorous photos of their cars, Scion used guerrilla marketing and created its own magazine about "a look at life at the intersection."

While the car is not available in Canada, Toyota has sold 10,000 of the cars in California since they were first launched in June, 2003. "The product evokes a higher degree of emotion than other cars," says Brian Bolain, national marketing and promotions manager for Scion. "And we've been very successful in allowing personalization. We don't define the car -- we let you do that."

Part of the move by carmakers toward the hip-hop/urban market has happened organically, as celebrities found themselves drawn to certain vehicles. For example, Los Angeles Lakers' star Shaquille O'Neal can be found driving a Cadillac's Escalade with its 24-inch designer wheels, while Big Boi, of rap duo Outkast, prefers an even larger Hummer H2.

At the auto show yesterday, the biggest indicators of the trend toward urban culture could be seen in the so-called "tuners" exhibits where manufacturers displayed accessories that could be used to enhance the performance and look of many cars.

North American carmakers are still trying to find a way to hook into the urban crowd. J Mays, vice-president of design for Ford Motor Co., says that while his company has not created cars specifically for the hip hop crowd, the gritty urban feel inherent in many of Ford's cars means they have been a hit with those on the cutting edge. Mr. Mays points to Ford's 427 Concept, debuted at last year's auto show, as an example of a car that grew out of an urban setting. "It had a lot of downtown Detroit in it," he says. "You could imagine that hip hop crowd driving that car through downtown with smoke coming out of manhole covers or Joe Pesci driving the car with a body in the trunk. Is that actually going to happen? No, but it is a very appealing fantasy."

While General Motors Corp. has seen its Cadillacs and Escalade SUVs take off in California, Bob Lutz, the company's vice-chairman of design, says: "There is no point in creating youth cars because even if the car costs US$16,000, 18-year-old kids can't afford that," he says. "And 18-year-old kids don't want really goofy looking cars that say I'm young so I buy something crazy looking."

He says teenagers and those in their early 20s buy used cars because they are more affordable. With that in mind, Mr. Lutz says it makes little sense to use hip hop culture to market automobiles to the over-40 set.

"They are not going to go buy some crazy thing that is advertised with hip hop stuff," he says. Mr. Lutz points out that Honda Motor Co.'s Element, which was aimed at the twenty-something crowd, has actually largely been sold to traditional car buyers who are in their 40s.

"It is also so fast changing. By the time a trend finds its way into suburban culture, it has already moved on," says Mr. Lutz. "I don't think you can market your way into the cool culture. As we imagine from our teens, our most embarrassing moments were when we had our friends over and our parents tried to sound real cool."

Mr. Mays agrees, saying that design authenticity will create the sort of viral marketing that sells cars to a younger generation.

"I'm not suggesting we are going to start hanging out with hip hoppers and saying, 'Hey guys, we want to be part of your lives,'" he explained.

"I'm saying there is a certain urban toughness in the vehicles that we do that appeals to those people. I'm saying some of the values that are inherent in our vehicles -- like the Mustang -- will appeal to that crowd."

Great Thread, Love it. When you control the "NORMS" of society you can manipulate the way people think and feal and in doing so you have a herd of sheeple that are cought in the head lights of a on coming CNN.

Pretty involved subjects here, interesting thread.

In my own efforts to comprehend, I'll share some of my thoughts. Im not saying I'm right or wrong, just emoting. Incidentally, I believe a lot of what Freud had to say about human behavior, in particular, that we are driven by unconscious motives. Not that we can't identify what these motives are, just that these things are what characterizes our behavior.

Ok, so you've got lots of people living together on the same piece of real estate. What to do about that? Should some of them live? How are they going to live? What are they going to wear? Will they be cold? Are they just going to scrape by on the bare minimum needed to sustain them? Will they be a little warm, barely warm, or very comfortably warm? They have to eat, too. So what do they eat? Do they feed themselves or are they fed? How do we feed all these people?

I guess what I'm saying is, how do we run a society? All these people with all these needs, what do we do with them? In this part of the world, its Democracy. We, this great mass of people living together and amongst eachother, first decide that out of this mass we need a little law and order. If we don't have law and order, we have lawlessness and disorder (this is where Freud comes in, for me anyway). Are you going to smash all your neighbors, horde all the food for yourself, enslave and rape the women you choose to, take a dump in the middle of the street like a beast (I've tried this in college once btw...)? Kill or torture those that anger you? Steal the food that your neighbor worked hard to get and feed to his family? Ok, so there's your reason for order.

Order. I think thats the long and the short of it. How to control, how to MANAGE (less sinister) a huge group of intelligent, bipedal mammals, homo sapiens.

The first thing you don't do is piss them off. You piss them off, and we've got a bloodbath. We've all seen what we are capable of doing to one another when we get pissed off. So, keep the order, keep things calm, orderly, make some rules that if they don't follow, they will somehow be punished for.

As far as what the media's role is in this, well I think it's a very, very powerful one. First of all, its mankind's most powerful bullhorn, so to speak. Its the way the message is communicated to the group. Ever see those wildlife movies where they show a large group of, say, zebras. They cover the savannah to the horizon. Here comes a lion or 10. Suddenly, one or two of the zebras spots the lion, and bolts, which triggers the rest of the group to do the same. The zebra method of mass communication. Our method of mass communication is the media.

And the media is not only concerned with promoting base survival. Once that is taken care of, it spreads out like the fingers of a river. Its like that one dude's hierarchy of needs chart. Once you can stop worrying about surviving, you have the luxury of thinking about satisfying the 'other things' that make up Freud's homo sapien. How you wanna 'be livin'. You wanna appear appealling to the opposite sex? Do you want to look fierce to the competition? Do you want comfy socks on your feet? Do you want your hair to shine? Do you want to travel to point A, way over there!!, as fast as possible? Comfortably? Stylishly? Maybe in a vehicle that would be able to crush anyone who got in the way? What are you going to eat? Hell, its being served to you, you might as well have a choice. Its not like its limited to only what you can catch yourself. So the media gives us our choices, communicates to us what is available to satisfy all our secondary needs, which are now 'wants', 'luxuries', etc..

So, in my opinion, you can call it 'media mind control', but that seems too ominous; I wouldn't give the media that much power, that much credit. As omnipresent as advertising is, its just a suggestion after all. Its like, "hey bud, i just got this thing in (whatever the advertising people are putting on tv)...you interested in it?" You can choose to ignore it. As fucking banal and useless the media can be, I try to see it as something perfectly natural, and in order with things. Naturally curious? (Freud says yes). Check out this bit of news! Check out whats happening OVER HERE!! You'll like it and come back for more, even!

Sorry so long...and again just sharing my POV. Great thread...

Thanks to both of you for your thoughtful comments.

powerclown, I'd say we have a very deep need to believe we have the strength of will necessary to resist the most powerfully persuasive technology ever imposed upon the human mind. We can not accept we're nearly powerless against it.

I pretty much see this as our endless capacity for denial.

...but ART..........if WE see this.....why don't more people try to stimey the fact that this is going on.

i see it .....you see it..........quite a few people in this thread see it........

why does it have to be a problem if we ignore it?

if we go about our lives as if "IT" weren't there....then things should eventually right themselves....no?


i'm not one to think that ignorance is bliss but,...........why even worry about it ,if it doesn't affect us,and we are aware of it,...... then........no need to let it be a concern right?

flyman - my opinion is that it affects us so deeply that we are virtually powerless against it. I do not trust our protestations to the contrary because they are suspiciously self-serving.

well said ART... and i agree... i however, wish i had your more positive, hopeful outlook on the situation...

I don't know that admitting our powerlessness is a negative, hopless outlook (reverse engineering your statement above).

I guess I'd like to finesse the word "powerless" a bit. I'm not sure we're powerless; but I do think the power of "IT" (as ART calls IT - reminds me of the villain from A Wrinkle in Time - very fitting) is pervasive and there's no way to opt out. You could run away and be a hermit but your identity has still been formed within the system. You might be able to re-shape yourself over time and with absence from society, but what fun is that, isolating yourself for the sake of (purported) complete self-definition?

I think a more hopeful outlook starts with being aware of IT, and then asking how we can operate most powerfully within the parameters defined by IT's influence. The frustrating part is that there's no real "outside" of these parameters - for the most part, IT absorbs and co-opts any attempts to operate outside IT, and that, IMHO, is the only influence we have - shifting the discourse by making the system so uncomfortable that it has to expand itself or change directions in order to accommodate opposition.

I'd like to hear your explanation of the "virtually" (as in virtually powerless, but not completely, I'm assuming) in your sentence, ART.

http://searchlores.org/realicra/sublimi.htm http://www.subliminalworld.org/full1.htm Here are a couple of links you might like.

lurkette,
yes.
1 : almost entirely : NEARLY
2 : for all practical purposes

What's apparent to me is we do have an ability to be aware of it. It's not clear to me that it is possible for a human being to actually overcome his or her cultural context.
As "social beings" our identities are, in very essential ways, social constructs.

dinkmun, thanks.
they are also on this list I put together:

mass media mind control

I just got out of a meeting that the adsales manager told us that Honda had pulled all of it's advertising at the start of the Iraqi war. The only recently started advertising again on our channels.

male-on-femal, white-on-black sex assault chic
 

This classic and historic moment of big-buck depravity brought to you by the usual degenerate suspects...

http://www.tfproject.org/~stuph/arte...ssault_mtv.jpg

Art,

i'm trying to find out about the behind the scenes for this supposed media stunt.

Right, Cynthetiq. I see your continuing reports in the topic-specific thread.
Perhaps a cross link when it's nailed (pierced) down and fully covered (exposed), etc...
Thanks.

Interesting new angle...

I apologize for any redundancy to previous entries, but I I have a feeling that I'm wording myself differently than everyone else... so I'm allowing myself to speak off the cusp.

I feel like I've just stepped into Jean Baudrillard's office.

There's an interesting thing about media... our lives are truly mediated to us. Before the age where media was a totality the method that one perceived reality was by direct experience more often than otherwise. This has been wildly reversed to the point where the vast majority of information we receive is interpreted for us, and culminated from simulacra (that is loosely defined as copies without an origins). There are many weird twists that I think about a lot that I'll innumerate:

1) Reality TV is the best example of a simulacrum. A completely fabricated situation that we know is fabricated, and yet somehow perceive as real simultaneously. On one level this wouldn't be so threatening, except that this is our collective experience as a culture. We share in these experiences and have discussions about these things, and eventually, we adopt a new reality from these simulacra. Eventually, "original reality" is removed so far by this process that we have moved beyond a point of knowing what it means to naturally be human.

2) News is turning more and more abstract on a seemingly daily basis. We are given more and more scripted commentary about events with less and less contextual footage of events, or incomplete footage (all footage is incomplete as it only provides a narrow scope of perception - we only experience a narrow visual field and sounds that reach the microphone that aren't edited out... the other senses, which are sadly given less attention that they should, are completely absent).

On a note of this, the idea of a democracy or a republic has always been couple with the concept of a responsible citizenry (see Machiavelli The Discourses, Jean-Jaques Rousseau The Social Contract). For a representative government to work it relies on the active participation of the citizens to educate themselves on the issues and make deliberated decisions. Since mediated reality has reached the totality that it has, so many are overwhelmed with information of all sorts of types of different qualities that coming to a reasoned, deliberated decision is exceedingly difficult because knowing what is real is so difficult. In fact, reality cannot be defined as what is true and factual now, reality is simply what you perceive and what you use to make decisions from. The post-modern terminology for reality is hyperreality, for obvious reasons.

3) Television dramas, particularly sit-coms, are other examples of simulacra. The interesting thing about these shows is that they tend to be accompanied by encapsulated moral messages as well as implied values in society. These shows mimic reality, and then place judgments on society, and give direction to society. As much as critical skeptic can try to bring all of these messages into check by considering all that is transmitted through these shows, it ends up invariably having an indeleble effect on all of us (whether we watch television or not, because once these values spread through macro-culture they are embedded in day-to-day interactions between everyone).

I could go much further in depth, but I think my 3 points illustrate the answer to the question, How much of an effect does the type of world we are living in have on us - our thinking and our behavior? - a nearly absolute effect.

But the real question, that I have been stumbling over for years, remains - what is left for the individual?

what meaning is left for us to create and what value does it have?

Thanks for your deep, penetrating, and incisive words, wilbjammin.

IMO, it is the best we can do to simply be aware of the actual situation.

Most of us are in deep denial.
That, to me, seems both pathetic and ignorant - something like a submissive slave cluelessly and happily licking the boots of an unworthy and cynical master. Or more precisely - it is like lambs being led to the slaughter...

yes... so let's not forget that many are lambs... young (whether it be in actual age, or spiritually) and yes, ingnorant...

to label them as pathetic ... to me... defeats the humanity we are perhaps trying to find in the face of the "media assault" and all that it brings.

i very much like what wil says here:


that is something i think many question on a daily basis... and how to balance a quality of life, and humanity... despite what we see and experience happening around us...
and of course we are all on a different leg of the journey... so our awarenesses will differ.
we can all learn from each other... even those who perceive themselves as "further down the road to enlightenment" than others...

perhaps that is precisely where the value is.

~sr, our vernacular has been affected by our problematic cultural context as well - pathos is a noble state:

from m-w.com

One entry found for pathos.


Main Entry: pa·thos
Pronunciation: 'pA-"thäs, -"thos, -"thOs also 'pa-
Function: noun

Etymology: Greek, suffering, experience, emotion, from paschein (aorist pathein) to experience, suffer; perhaps akin to Lithuanian kesti to suffer
1 : an element in experience or in artistic representation evoking pity or compassion
2 : an emotion of sympathetic pity

I agree. Now, more than ever, what is required is vigilance. I do not mean that we must latch onto every pivotal political and social issue and champion them. But we must pay attention to how knowledge is created and keep that in mind on all empirical and subjective matters.

My newest challenge to this situation is affirming the "forgotten senses". Touch, taste, and smell the world. Embrace the connection between the mind and the body, in fact, reject the seperation entirely - we have embodied minds. We have categorically reduced ourselves for too long, and we've gone way too far.

There are some days when I see something that is so obvious to me, that no one makes any mention of as though it is simply a given that we should all take for granted when I practically lose my mind. Like lambs being led to the slaughter? Yes... and in strange darkness.

Absolutely - the best antidote to culture is...nature!

The concept of enlightenment and a kind of perfection achieved from knowledge is something that I cannot believe in. What is created is an understanding of suffering, absurdity, and another kind of powerlessness. As for the value of this kind of understanding...???

This kind of metaphorical lingo - "journey", "further down the road" implies not only progression, but an end (I understand that you may not be think of the journey of road metaphor leading to a specific "place", but neither of those things tend not to lead to nowhere). I think we've gone beyond the age of ends (ironically, at a time when we talk of ends incessantly).

Awarenesses differ, but what is the value or meaning of this? I know that I would rather be more aware than less. But this era has removed us from judgement. There is nothing inherently right or wrong; there are circumstances and choices.

I don't even know how to define humanity anymore. However, I feel a burning passion somewhere within me, and somehow I feel certain that this, above all else, is indicative of humanity.


And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for the seke
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.


Are we in need of this pilgrimage? Maybe, but in the end no one is "saved". I would much rather live in defiance than in ignorance, however.

yep - it's better to be aware than unaware.

that's worth living for, IMO...

in another thread, Shakran lists some well-known Academy Award winners:

"
Kevin Spacey won best actor for American Beauty in which he played a pedophilliac, unfaithful husband who's main goal in life is to masturbate in the shower.

Anthony Hopkins won it for Silence of the Lambs in which he played a cannibalistic serial killer.

Michael Douglas won it for Wall Street in which he played a crooked stock trader who thought nothing of committing crimes and of destroying the lives of hundreds of workers so he could make a few bucks.

F. Murray Abraham won it for Amadeus in which he played a psychopathic musician who's sole goal in life was to kill Mozart.

Louise Fletcher won it for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in which she played a twisted nurse who's driving ambition was to psychologically torture the mental patients in her ward.

Marlon Brando won it for The Godfather in which he played the head of a massive crime family.

Liza Minelli won it for Cabaret in which she played a girlie club floozy who'd sleep with anyone to get what she wanted.

Joanne Woodward won it for The Three Faces of Eve, in which she played a mental patient.
"

I think this list points to something about the glorification of sociopathology that has a powerful hold on our consumer culture.
The brief list is another entry point for those interested in delving into how we are being exploited by the types of material we are continually exposed to...under the deceptively misleading banner of "entertainment."

A hallmark of post-modernism is the draw to the spectacular and extremities. These are just more examples of how easily we embrace that which is spectacular and extreme. The neverending battle between deciding if media is symptomatic of the society, or if the society is symptomatic of what the media shows us is irrelevent. Both build on each other, the real world is more and more fascinated with the extreme world. The real world gets more extreme. The boundaries keep stretching.

An interesting thing about these characters is that they are strongly human and yet exceedingly eccentric and bizarre. Like The Heart of Darkness by Conrad, we are fascinated by the darker side of humanity. The unfortunate limitation of Hollywood film is that it tends to do a terrible job of achieving balance with these complex philosophical and literary issues. It tends much more to lean on the dark side, and to reduce it so that it doesn't have it's full philosophical weight (though even if it could, is pop media an appropriate forum for that?). To continue with The Heart of Darkness theme, Apocalypse Now is a great example of this phenomenon. A more aware person would see the Freudian allusions and the duality. Someone less interested in the philosophical or psychological issues would view the violence in an entirely different way. Truthfully though, where our imagination and introspective inclinations go when reading are not tapped in nearly the same way as watching a movie.

In any event...

The Horror, The Horror...

As I have said elsewhere what is needed and needed now is education.

As children are taught to read books in school so should they be taught to read the media.

At present our populace is illequipped to understand what they are seeing. Many have no interpretive tools whatsoever.

This needs to happen today.

One would think teachers would be speaking up about what they contend with every day in terms of the cultural nonsense that controls the mindsets of their students and prevents actual education from displacing media mind control.

In my former career as a teacher, it was more evident than the noses on my students' faces that their minds were not their own - from their pretend self-images to their consumerized and peer-pressured shallow rebel personalities.

I know there are political/union reasons why teachers affiliate themselves with so-called liberal causes - such as freedom of expression for wealthy Hollywood-based causes...

Well, that's probably it. According to old-style sixties' liberalism one doesn't criticize what pretends to be socially rebellious - instead one forms classic liberal alliances with it...

In any event, as you know, I'm a niche-content producer who presents a lot of erotic and iconoclastic content. I do my bit for social responsibility by taking no action toward mass-marketing or distribution. I know my place, you might say - and it is not in mainstream media. Unfortunately, most of my creative friends and colleagues have no such restraint.

So conventional categories do not do us well in this move toward realignment for the sake of global sanity. What we are contending with at the moment is a great deal of predictable obfuscation by those who either refuse to focus on the complexities of the issue or simply choose not to because they are either in denial or believe we are threatening their "guilty pleasures."

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There is just no reason at all why our guilty pleasures need to be broadcast to millions of people who do not desire them in their faces - and who don't want them used to sell every product under the sun...

Teachers are in an uncomfortable position of being able to only challenge their students so much in the face of school boards, state education regulation committees, and, of course, high stakes tests that dictate curriculum. Curriculum activism worries me also though, standards seem to have their place (I'm reminded of my high school teacher years ago that told me that a gay pride parade was filled with disgusting, horrible acts and people and everyone around me was nodding their heads like it was a fact)... In any event, education is a profession of conflict if done it right.

True.
I do think however that Charlatan's plea for Media Literacy education is a must-implement solution toward improving things.

ARTelevision , you remind me of my senior english teacher. He has similar views concering mass media and modern advertising. As an aside, my classmates and I were recently visited by one William Lutz, a "expert" on the book 1984 and double speak. Lutz told my peers and myself about the prevalance of doublespeak in our society and how to understand what is being said. Interestingly enough, this Lutz character has worked for corporation after corporation creating double speak en mass. This man had some serious personal issues, in one moment he is telling students how to avoid the perils(sp?) of modern speech and, in the next moment creating such speech. I think its quite a telling example of the state of our nation, that a man can be a complete hippocrate and be commended for it. (Lutz has been given numerous public service awards and is viewed as a fighter for clear language)

*Doublespeak is language deliberately constructed to disguise its actual meaning.

Arbiestsheft04, one problem is that most of the human persuasion and psychological manipulation research is in the hands of private companies. These are closely guarded corporate secrets - the results of highly funded private enterprise research into the exact messages, sounds, colors, images, methodologies, and stimuli that render us susceptible to unwitting consumption.

Only a former "insider" would have had any significant access to any aspect of this research. Of course, to have been an insider renders one suspect. It's too late for purity in this effort. We have all been compromised in some way. You can see this in all of us. It doesn't necessarily mean there's no one that can be trusted.

In any event, The real way to proceed is for each of us to move forward at our own velocity. Everything we need to reveal is already right before our eyes. All that remains is to see it for what it is...

This Lutz character has worked with private companies giving the same basic speech to both sides. On my end he is supposedly informing me, while on the other end he is teaching the corporate sector how to use doublespeak effectivly, all while taking in a nice profit.

In any event, you are correct, we all have been effected. I, for one, am outraged. The trouble is not many people are aware, and not too many care to be. I have hope for the future but the present is looking pretty dim.

to give you all an idea as to how much research goes into this...an email that went out...NAN is shorthand for Nick At Night.

-----Original Message-----
From: Wendt, Laura
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2004 5:36 PM
To: M_MTVN_NY
Subject: CTAM RESEARCH AWARD

Last week, the Cable & Telecommunications Association of Marketing awarded the 2004 CTAM Research Conference Case Study to our very own Tanya Giles, Vice President, TV Land/Nick @ Nite Research for her outstanding study: The Emotional Anatomy of the Nighttime TV Viewer. This study is proving to have tremendous 'legs' as it provides insight and inspiration to NAN Creative, Programming, Ad Sales, Marketing, Press and is now the winner of a national research award. The study delivers insight into the motivations and rituals of late night TV viewing, and reveals that NAN late night viewers aren't vampires or couch potatoes, but younger (under 40), urban professionals with hectic lives that use TV -- and NAN as a release, with predictable, familiar programming that gives them a sense of control and escape.

So Cheers! to Tanya for this great piece of innovative research.


Laura E. Wendt
Senior Vice President, Research
Nickelodeon Networks

Right. Thanks for the inside info - always appreciated!

We are the most comprehensively analyzed humans that ever lived. The corporations whose products we consume know us far better than we know ourselves. And they know us far better than governments know us. Corporate psychological research is more all-enveloping and more vast than the subset of academic and psychological health systems - and its aim is not benevolent.

There are some tips of the marketing psychology iceburg evident in our midst that do bear some scrutiny. Just to get the topic moving forward, here's a very simple and obvious example:

http://www.intelliseek.com/marketingi.asp

It's always illuminating to see how they promote their methodologies...check the products listing.

for those of you who have no idea as to what the holdings are of the media companies... here's a great link from the Columbia Journalism Review

http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/

The timeline for the Big 3 are on the side bar and quite interesting because they go back so many years.

I had placed this in it's own thread, but i think that it needs to be added this to this conversation:

Well, I just think it's too huge.
We have some local groups I like to hear.
I'm go to some local locations to pick up a few of their otherwise unavailable disks. Sometimes they're on local radio for a guest spot. I like it because it's often based on regional geography, dialect, and lore.

I don't really see a need for big music.
Music is made all over the place by local musicians.
Heck, you can even make it yourself.

The mass-media-mind-control part comes in when we all have to have the same songs in our heads at the same time.

We're very far from seeing why that is unnecessary and problematic in itself.

more consolidation of products
 

In response to the music article:

What bothers me isn't so much that the mass media isn't giving people access to good music, but that they're manufacturing musical groups as products. This trend has been growing since New Kids on the Block, and now the majority of what you would see on MTV, CMT, etc (they're all the same company now, so what difference does it make anyway?) is simply performance aimed at certain audiences. Artists typically don't write their own music, or only a small part of the songs. The music industry is forcing a "dumbing down" of music. Creativity and ingenuity isn't embraced, the visual product is often more important than the audio product, and lyrically most songs are simply not very creative. There is more to life than love (relationships), sex, and violence - but you wouldn't know it if you watched TRL for an hour.

I sort of have to agree with Art here. I also love good music though, and I am a musician. So, I struggle with it. It is typically a big struggle in the indie scenes. When small bands start to make it big a lot of people feel betrayed, that their band has "sold out". Music and art have been incorporated into social movements (such as the "No Mas" movement) and I think there is a lot of potential power in these mediums to address society. The problem is that the main outlets are in tight control by a few corporations. I'm very frustrated with what Michael Powell has let happen, and I really wonder where the near future is going to take us with this.

the consolidations happend because of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Mr. Powell did not become FCC chairman until November 3, 1997.

While he does have the power to undo the mergers, like when CBS had to divest Viacom in the early 70's, it's not likely.

Yes, well, like with any policy that has obviously not had a positive effect on its industry, it is his responsibility to change the policy. Since that act passed, he has sat by as one merger after another has happened without raising a finger to stop it. He has been in many hearings discussing the negative effects of the Act and specific mergers, and he could care less.

Caution: This media experience can result in death
 

'Passion' draws crowds, results in one death


The Associated Press
Feb. 26, 2004 06:50 AM


The opening of "The Passion of the Christ" drew everyone from conservative churchgoers to confrontational New Yorkers more than willing to roll out their soapboxes as screenings got under way.

But the gore _ and in some cases, church rules _ kept even the most devout Christians away.

In Salt Lake City, curiosity about the film among many Mormons was outweighed by church teachings that discourage viewing R-rated movies.

"I don't think our Lord would want me to see an R-rated film about his son," said 20-year-old Shawn Watts, a Mormon missionary.

Watts said he was intrigued but would need permission from his bishop, since missionaries are not allowed to watch films or television under church protocol. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stresses family values and frowns upon members seeing R-rated films.

Despite concerns about violence and accusations that Mel Gibson's film fuels anti-Semitism, "The Passion" made a bundle on its Ash Wednesday opening.

The movie took in an estimated $15 million to $20 million after just one day of release, remarkable for a religious-themed movie. It opened in more than 3,000 theaters _ an unusually large release for a religious film with English subtitles to translate the Latin and Aramaic its characters speak.

Among the legions that saw "The Passion," many streamed out of movie theaters feeling as if they themselves had been through a flogging.

"It sort of felt like you were coming to watch an execution," said Peter Hitchins, whose wife, Amy, wiped away tears as they left a movie theater in Charlotte, N.C.

"It's a little bit more brutal than you would think," said a sobbing Kim Galbreath, 29, in the Dallas suburb of Plano. "I mean, there were times when you felt like it was too much. But I dare anybody not to believe after watching it."

A woman in Wichita, Kan., collapsed during the film's final, bloody crucifixion scene. While people were helping the woman, identified as 57-year-old Peggy Law Scott, the lights were turned on and moviegoers were ushered out. She later died at a hospital. No cause of death was immediately given.

Directed, produced and co-written by Gibson, the film has received mixed reviews from critics. Some have praised Gibson's commitment to his subject. Others see it as excessively bloody, obsessed with cruelty and unfair in its portrayal of Jews.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League who saw "The Passion" before opening day, said he was still worried about reactions to the film when it comes out in places like Argentina and Europe, where there's been less debate about its content.

"We know the power of images, and we know the power of a star with a reputation around the world, and this concerns us," Foxman said.

In New York, famous for its love of raucous debate, members of the New Black Panther Party gathered outside a West Side theater, saying the film's biggest problem is obvious: Jesus wasn't white.

"We call this the greatest story never told," said Divine Allah, a youth minister in the group's Trenton, N.J., chapter, citing a biblical verse that describes Jesus with wooly hair and brown skin.

Even People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sounded off in the Big Apple _ but this time, it was in support of the film, which they said underscored the brutality of violence.

"It points out our belief in the unacceptability of violence and how animals suffer the same pain humans do," said Corinne Ferraro, 29, of Hoboken, N.J.

It wasn't theological or moral concerns that kept 77-year-old Pat Curry away from "The Passion."

The Ocean City, N.J. resident had been intending to see the movie but changed her mind after getting some bad news at the doctor's office. She opted for the comedy "Welcome to Mooseport" instead.

"I need a laugh," she said. ___
................................

I figure this mess of a bloodfest in the name of something will go down in the annals of filmdom as a classic "splatter" flick. I can see it being a death-goth drink-and-drug party favorite - and spawning a cult following of adolescent gore-lovers and torture afficionados.

If there's one thing one can be sure of regarding mass media, it's that what is produced is quickly drained of meaning in favor of appearance. It's always image over substance. Mel Gibson is a lightweight. His recent interviews, the promotional campaign, and the film-related-product marketing attest to the silly seriousness surrounding all this. The fact that religious zealots will be bringing their kids to this fleshgrinder is a new and fascinating twist on the absurdity of our cultural landscape and the inanity involved in our consumption of it.

Anyway, just wait for the spin-off movies that come from this. The skin-ripped, boiled-in-oil, drawn-and-quartered, eyeball-gouged lives of the saints and martyrs can be predicted to fuel a whole new genre of "meaningful" and "spiritual" horror.

New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
MTV goes right back
to its bad sex habits
By RICHARD HUFF
DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR
Thursday, February 26th, 2004

Just a few weeks after promising to clean up its act during daytime hours because of Janet Jackson's Super Bowl bra-ha-ha, MTV is baring all again.
Britney Spears' graphic sex romp "Toxic" is back in heavy rotation around the clock.

So are controversial videos from Blink 182 (although edited a bit) and Maroon 5.

MTV officials, under heavy criticism for producing the R-rated Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 1, had vowed afterward to do the "responsible" thing and pull such explicit music videos from daytime viewing.

Instead, the music channel said it would air them only late at night - when fewer young people and families would be watching.

So what happened?

An MTV spokeswoman explained the network's backflip this way:

"We decided to take a temperature check, we listened to the audience, we wanted to make sure we still felt good about the images on MTV."

Now that some of the initial shock of the Jackson nip slip is over, she said: "The audience ... decided they wanted to see these artists."

"Toxic" has been on again at all hours for about 10 days, showing voluptuous Britney writhing on the floor, wearing a mesh outfit, and carrying on with all sorts of guys.

Blink 182's "I Miss You" was replaced by a European version of the video, without the offending material. MTV said it never asked for the alternate version, but it was supplied by the record company after "I Miss You" was limited to late-night showings.

Another controversial video, "Splash Waterfalls" by Ludacris, is still banished to the hours between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

MTV's initial move to take the sexually explicit videos off the air during the day came amid the furor over the Super Bowl halftime show.

The network's leaders - as well as Mel Karmazin, president of parent company CBS Viacom - received a torrent of criticism over Jackson's breast-baring dirty dance with Justin Timberlake.

Karmazin vowed to clean up the airwaves, and NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue pointed the finger of blame at MTV.

Spears' "Toxic" video had originally started airing on MTV Jan. 15. Even though it was off the daytime hours for a short time after the Super Bowl, it remained a popular video on the network's highlight show "Total Request Live."

http://www.mediachannel.org/images/m...s-1200X849.jpg

since most people don't know about who owns what here's a good one page synopsis.


Who owns what

Over the last few months of trolling through this discussion, I have learned a great deal about the mind control that is so completely ingrained in our daily lives.

This information has prompted me to cancel my newspaper subscription and limit my TV exposure in order to see what effect media exposure has had on my daily behavior. The results of the last three months have been more interesting than I initially believed they would be.

Here is what I have found so far:

1. (and most surprising) I have lost 18 lbs and my blood pressure has dropped by about 10 points (from 140/90 to 128/80).

2. I have saved over $900.00 over my normal savings because I never see the sale papers or ads for the various electronic gadgets that I sometimes obsess with.

3. I have spent more quality time with my kids (playing games, etc.) than ever before.

These are just the most noticeable changes that I have seen. I am sure that there are many more things that have slipped below the radar as well.

I know that becoming a media hermit is a drastic step, but it has been an informative test. I am curious to hear if anyone else has noticed a change in their buying/eating/planning behavior based on what they learn or have learned form this forum.

Absolutely!

I've done this from time to time. And your experiment is laudable. More than that, it's the best news I've seen in this entire thread!
Thanks much!

absolutely! that's one of the reasons how I figured out that I was being manipulated and turned into a zombie consumer. When I was younger I figured out that limiting my media intake of advertsing and understanding the cultural side effects of movies and TV shows helped remove the need to "keep up with the joneses"

While I work for a media company and that's where my bread is buttered, I pay even more attention to see how the manipulation is being created. It's not a vast conspiracy, but an ever tiring chase of the dollar bills.

Even though I gave it 5 minutes of my expensive time, I couldn't think of a more unimportant, useless, waste-of-time-and-effort piece of news than this. I mean the whole concept of "fashion" is where this whole thread inevitably leads. Let's take a silly romp down a whole bunch of mixed-up agendas, messages, allusions, and associations that are dredged up from the detritus of our media-induced self-images and resurrect a few of them - while adding some new gee gaws - and parade them around on some people who don't look like people.
............

Chanel mixes tomboy chic with sleek elegance

March 5, 2004

AP
A model wears an outfit designed by German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel's fall-winter 2004-2005 ready-to-wear collection, presented in Paris Friday, March 5, 2004.
PARIS - Chanel turned tomboy in Friday's ready-to-wear show for the fall-winter collection.

Versatile designer Karl Lagerfeld dipped into his Coco Chanel memories and found a look she started in the 20s, putting the trademark tweedy touch on man-tailored jackets.

Lagerfeld explained in the show's program that he would not describe the collection as androgynous or unisex. But occasionally the two sexes can dress the same, as he showed by parading out a male and female model wearing matching bright blue pants and dark leather jackets.

The clothes created a woman who was both strong and faintly fragile, who never looked droopy or as if she were really wearing a man's jacket.

Wearing cute plaid or herringbone newsboys' or engineers' caps, the girls came out in slim pants with some wonderful jacquard knit jackets or coats and pullovers in lovely check plaids and herringbones.

It looked warm and easy, fine for town or country, though the knits occasionally looked a bit heavy.

But short or long white cashmere blend coats were sleek and outstanding.


Edging into feminine evening wear, Lagerfeld showed a fine blue outfit - a blue-plaid topper and a long to the ankle stiffened lacy skirt edged in plaid to match the pullover.

A couple of shiny gold-blue quilted strapless dresses in a synthetic fabric looked OK for a rich debutante. But more interesting for the sophisticate is the strict, long black tweed sheath, or a smashing Little Lord Fauntleroy suit a la Coco.

This collection was not a blockbuster, like some of Lagerfeld's creations for Chanel. But there was lots to admire, and the usual admirers will find plenty to choose from.

http://www.tfproject.org/~stuph/arte...omboy_chic.jpg

cute, eh?

Great post!
I still can't find the word in the flower picture on the first page. Anyone care to point it out?

Hint: Its all you, or I, or mostly anybody else ever thinks about. At least that's what we are supposed to think we think about all the time. :)

Yes. It is what sells...