Listening to Xfm on my phone on the bus on the way home from work on Thursday night and an ad came on that went something like this:
Imagine a world where we all watched one TV channel.
Imagine a world where we all read just one newspaper.
Imagine a world where we all used just one search engine.
Now I don’t know about you, but right now I’m thinking about one search engine, and it’s probably the same one you’re thinking of too.
So the ad continues…
Ask.com… the other search engine.
At this stage I’m momentarily thinking I’d heard “arse dot come” – seriously, that’s what it sounds like.
But I’m also still thinking about one search engine, and it’s not ask.com.
I’d be very interested to know how the agency involved persuaded a company to accept that they’re second best, that they’re other.
I haven’t heard that advertisement, but it actually sounds rather frightening. I think I would like to use the second search engine from now on, but somehow, arse.com really doesn’t attract me!
Don’t get me started!
Having seen the poster campaign, I was curious enough to visit the Information Revolution website. It wears a thin verneer or belonging to an independent/campaign group, trying to fool the foolish into thinking that not using Google is somehow an act of radical defiance. Of course Naomi Klein has already written about the appropriation of radicalism by corporate marketing. But I can’t help thinking that using the .org suffix — supposedly reserved for charities and not-for-profit organisations — by a global corporation is downright dishonest.
I for one will be boycotting arse.com — and joining the campaign for real revolutions!
http://www.information-revolution.org is the scene of the crime.
Imagine a world where products weren’t allowed to pretend to be important.
Imagine a world where second rate search engines and ad agencies closed themselves down.
Imagine a world where arse.com was the best search engine.
What a strange world that would be. Nice though.
Similarly, the stupendously badly named ‘Trident’ chewing gum had some online ads in which the characters projected their god awful ‘Mastication for the nation’ line onto parliament. The type was of course rendered in faux stenciling as if Banksy had somehow been involved. Really pathetic on so many counts I haven’t the time to damn them all.