ADs? Goodness!

As I was searching the internet in an attempt to find inspiration for my blog, I was exceedingly surprised to find that there were very few, if none at all, that pertained to the same specific topic – targeted advertising to Asian Pacific Americans. Blogs on advertising and marketing in general, on the other hand, were much easier to come by.

One blog on advertising caught my attention because of a specific post. The post was an image of an outdoor ad for McDonalds in Helsinki, Finland. On the ad was a picture of a young woman – ironically, of Asian descent – holding a chicken nugget in her hand. The advertisement itself was innocent enough; however, what caught the blogger’s attention, as well as mine, was the fact that somebody distorted the image by folding the corners of the ad to form a “hat,” reminiscent of straw peasant hats, on the young woman’s head.


[image from frederiksamuel.com/blog]

The blog is titled “Advertising/Design Goodness: The Best and Sometimes the Worst Around the Globe.” It was started in May 2005 by the writer Frederik Samuel, a German born art director/designer who is currently working for TribalDDB in Toronto, Canada. He has worked in the advertising and design industry for the past five years. The purpose of the blog is to showcase the best advertisements from around the globe while at the same time juxtaposing them with some of the very worst in order to have us fully appreciate the merits of good designing. His blog is ranked quite high on Technorati with an authority of 575.

Samuel created it with the point of view of the “designer.” He posts quite frequently with at least one new post almost every day, and many are simple, short, and straight to the point with usually just the image of the ad and some pieces of information about the designer and the company for which it was created for. It cannot be considered an academic/scholarly type of blog, but is more driven by the author’s opinion. What interested me about this blog was that much of the commentary on his posts, which are many, not only looked at the actual design of the featured advertisement but also focused on the meaning of its messages.

This blog relates with mine in that it supports my point that advertising and society are mutually linked. Although Samuel posts specific ads because he admires their creative design, they are still subject to social commentary. For example, another post titled “Wheelchair” made me stop and look. The post was about an advertisement that was meant to be in print but was instead painted in parking lots before the school prom. The ad states

“Every 48 seconds, a drunk driver makes another person eligible to park here.”

[image from frederiksamuel.com/blog]

The “Wheelchair” ad was commended for its clever use of location and catchy headline, but one cannot overlook the fact that it also makes a profound statement on the serious issue of drunk driving. In the same way, the simple ad for McDonalds was changed to inadvertently make a strong statement about Asian stereotypes.

The purpose of an advertisement is to catch one’s attention, and it can be done through its artistic design. How society chooses to react to such designs varies from merely stopping and looking to physically engaging with the ad. Society is constantly interacting with advertising messages – they are filtered through our cultural norms in such a way that we may interpret it quite differently from its original intent. Samuel's hope is that people do look at the ads and be inspired, start a conversation, or share their points of views. A smartly designed ad can have cultural consequences; this is exactly what I intend to show in my own blog.