kapitaal spam

Many people have raved about this fantastic film from Studio Smack but I first found it via City Of Sound. As Dan points out, it's hard to see it as just a critique of 'urban spam', surely no-one's saying that clocks or the keypads on cash machines are graphic pollution, they're fairly necessary  in the life of a city. And the film makes all this stuff look rather beautiful. But it does serve to make us look again at the cities we walk through, which is always a good idea.

I've been thinking about urban spam. I'm supposed to be saying something clever about it on the World Service on Friday. It's clearly subjective; one person's spam is another person's useful service or entertaining promotion. Just like with email spam. It's just the balance of annoyance to usefulness is way our of wack. But I think the reason it winds so many people up is it makes us examine the deal we've done, as a society, with marketing and forces to decide if we want to do it again.

Not many people are bothered by the fact of ads on TV or in newspapers. We know why they're there. They're paying for the content and we're used to seeing them there. We don't think them. But when 'ads' turn up somewhere new, somewhere we're not used to seeing them (which increasingly they do, because of the interuptive marketing arms race) we're forced to think about them, to decide whether their presence in this new, novel place is a deal we want to do. Will we swap some attention for some entertainment, or a coupon? Maybe we will, but I think, when it's somewhere new, when we're confronted with a new invasion of our attention space then the bar gets raised. We're used to ignoring the bad ads on TV or in the papers. Our filters automatically screen out the dumb. But we're not set to do that in new places, new environments, so if brands are going to invade those spaces, they'd better be very confident they've got a deal worth doing.

Or something.

Comments

[Ben]

The World Service? Another step closer to Newsnight.

[Emily]

Yes, I think you're right. It's all about expectation. Like being at a party and finding yourself suddenly being sold to by the person you are chatting with who seemed so interesting a moment ago. Oh drat, my drink is empty -can I get you anything?

[richard]

I have this old thought I have probably told you before about the ethics of advertising. It says that advertising should benefit the consumer even if they chose to ignore it or never see it in that the revenue does something positive for them - free television channels, subsidised or free newspapers, regular rubbish collections, transport improvements that kind of thing. My concern abot urban spam is that it benefits no one but the advertiser. Occasionally it might raise a titter like the odd 118 running shirt but on the whole it is a very selfish activity whereas advertising shares the wealth.

[Dan Hill]

It's an interesting point you, and richard, raise about the value of advertising to the context that surrounds it i.e. ads in a mag or newspaper help pay for the overall content experience of mag or newspaper etc. What's different about this advertising in urban space is that very little of the revenue - if any - is going back towards the context i.e. the urban experience. I imagine some of the adshel advertising in London might hit, say, Transport for London, but I'm not sure. Certainly most of this information, such as that 'projected' from shops for example, will not generate any revenue for the street in which it resides. It'd be great if advertising did provide some actual funding to pay for the upkeep and maintenance of the street ... Just as newspaper ads help pay for the context of the newspaper. Hmmm.

[Holycow]

Now I don't know if this is correct - or indeed I am setting myself up for a fall - but I would have a fairly large bet that most 'urban spam' has been fuelled by media agencies 'adding value' to clients rather than traditional creative agencies. Correct me if I am wrong of course (waiting for left hook from Faris) but how many of these 'ideas' are from traditional agencies? Hardly any I bet as we are still going through the painful realisation of the 'Great Reel' not necesarily being the panacea to all the client's business objectives let alone an ad on a coffee cup or table top in Oxford Street.

Most of the urban spam I would venture is the result of 'brainstorms' around 'customer touchpoints and journeys' where the budget does not allow for traditional media solutions to be deployed but the media agency has a 'few ideas' fuelled by a recent presentation from a paper cup manufacturer/printer etc.

What would be interesting is for Russell to host a gallery of the worst cases and to then attribute the 'work' to the agencies responsible. Now that would be fun...

[Perry de Havilland]

"I have this old thought I have probably told you before about the ethics of advertising"

I think it has nothing to do with ethics. I just happen to think interuptive advertising dos not really work even 1/10th as well as advertisers thing and annoying people is poor business.

"My concern abot urban spam is that it benefits no one but the advertiser"

If someone buys the product, then it benefits them too (or they would not have bought the product).

However I am abit unclear on what you mean by advertising "sharing the wealth"... in many ways that is the big problem I have with (most) advertising: it shares the wealth with advertising agencies when a more direct engagement marketing approach works bets when done in-house. One does not start a company to share wealth but rather to try and amass it :-)