damn good alterations
Canadian Club (”CC”, not Creative Commons) has been running these really offensive & annoying ads aimed, apparently, at a very small demographic: straight white men with masculinity issues and daddy issues.
My partner pointed them out to me — plastered on bus stops in our ethnically diverse and progressive, queer-friendly community — and we enjoyed speculating on how enterprising billboard alteration-ers (certainly not us, I’d like to emphasize) might edit the ads to be more appropriate for our community. (Way to do stupid poorly-targeted advertising, jack-asses.)
For instance, the ad that showed a guy making out with a woman in a lounge, that implied “dad” was cheating on mom — that could easily be edited to make it appear that mom was picking up a stray businessman to fulfill those needs that dad wasn’t capable of satisfying. Again, I repeat, we would never consider doing the alterations ourselves. Pure speculation.
An improved Canadian Club ad.
Anyway, Rebecca Tushnet reports about another woman’s response to the ad campaign. CC ran one of those cheesey “get involved and do it yourself” fake participation schemes so that straight white overcompensating men with daddy issues could put their own daddies into the ads. Michelle Koenig-Schwartz began Project: Canadian Club – Your Mom Had Groupies in response.
The pictures are awesome, and I have to note that these would go over a lot better in Jamaica Plain. Tushnet’s post also contains great analysis, so read the whole thing.
algorithmically similar posts:
» missing-non-white-women meme, 2005-08-08 (score:19)» ferraro and why the media sucks, 2008-03-17 (score:17)
» religious use of copyright, again, 2005-09-15 (score:14)
» Juarez: missing-non-white-women meme, at work?, 2005-08-11 (score:13)
May 14th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Wow. It’s really cool to see this little project of mine making its way around the web. I run past one of those awful ads every day and I too wonder about the placement of this campaign in a predominantly non-white, immigrant neighborhood that also borders on the gay village. Additionally, I’ve read on another blog that the uber-straight “Your Dad Was Not A Metrosexual” ads have shown up in the bathrooms of one of the most popular gay bars in Toronto. It makes me wonder if its even worth protesting these ads if Canadian Club is going to demonstrate enough stupidity to make their bid for a bigger market share backfire without any help at all.
Billboard alteration is something I’ve never considered, of course, but if I had, it would have required money I don’t have at the moment. But if anyone else wanted to print out the ads or make their own and take some photos of their handiwork, well, of course I would never endorse that, but I would sure like to see the results.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:37 am
i was so glad to see your project! yaay talented activist women.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
[...] much admire, and subtle arguments for subversive billboard alterations and culture jamming from Laura Quilter. [...]
May 16th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Laura. I just had to again say thank you for making my “legal” folder in my RSS reader so much more interesting. I love these ads.
Thanks for the post!
May 26th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
[...] 1. After I posted the initial entry there were some responses from the Livejournal community, where the project was also posted, and by fandom related people who probably saw the ad campaign on Trancer’s journal. This got the attention of Rebecca Tushnet , which got the attention of Laura Quilter at Derivative Work. [...]