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Crass Commercialism: Dark Side of Design
INDUSTRY ARTICLE
Reprinted from SLANT, Spring 2002,
an Art Directors Club of Houston Publication
(DOWNLOAD SLANT PDF ISSUE HERE)
The Dark Side of Design: Crass Commericalism
by Tommy Leo
The spirit of placing one's brand identity on the backs of culturally significant and socially widespread icons of modern society is finding growing solace among a great many of us in the marketing and design community. Perhaps on a daily basis, we face the handiwork of those brazen enough to emblazon their identifying marks and trite taglines on every conceivable physical container of space without regard, sensitivity or full understanding of its heritage, constituency, or sanctity.
This inflatable trend of pop culture "brand egoism" rips away at the aesthetic unique diversity of our world and supplants it with commonplace uniformity and commercialized clutter. Today, more companies are less restrained and seem eager to sponsor marketing campaigns that encourage bombastic overtures hammering into the porous sub-conscience of every individual who happens upon these blunt snares of canned cross-pollinization.
No longer satisfied with saturating or investing in traditional means of promotion, companies are now on a quest for highly visible concrete urban virgins, popular forums, and pristine public monuments to soil with their corporate signatures. Today, it is commonplace to find theatre, sporting events, ballets, and even your answering machine chock full of corporate branding banter.
This harsh realm of "Junk Marketing" affects everything from the Internet, print and new media design to packaging, environmental and architectural design. Designers and branding "experts" are creating new breeding grounds for these instruments of intrusion culled from a darker reformulated strategy of brand influence.
The simple strategic goal: in any way possible, pierce six millimeters of cranial dermal tissue, tunnel through 10 millimeters of bony matter, burrow deep within the subconscious, establish a beachhead in the heads of the American populace and secure safe haven for an onslaught of many more brand extensions.
As designers, marketing executives and creative directors, we stand on both sides of this frenzied commercialized assault on the senses. Yet, as both gatekeeper and enemy at the gate, we may come to realize that strongly endorsing either viewpoint ignores the true aim of graphic design. That is to appropriately relay a message of significance, inspiration or desire. The work must be strong and consistent without being too forceful or arcane. In this increasingly fragmented society, companies are switching from surgical silver bullet marketing strategies to those that piggyback on a carousel of cannons lobbing silver cannonballs in every direction in hopes of bringing down their desired prey.
Crass commercialism picks up momentum with each new computer, sporting event, stadium erection or plaza revitalization. These, and others, are the new battlefields, which large corporations compete upon to unload their familiar treasury of commercialized influence.
Online, search engines have come under attack for milking this movement to sweep revenues deeper into their pockets by liberally placing seemingly appropriate paid sponsors higher up in the search results that have little content value or no bearing on the search criteria.
This past summer, while in Bangkok, Thailand, I came across several McDonald's restaurants within a span of a few city blocks. Granted there are 10 million people living in Bangkok, but are they really that hungry for tasteless cow meat? Or is this one corporation's overbearing attempt to keep bumbling American tourists from weaning themselves from the comfort of this all-to-familiar fatty diet?
Our greatest tool against this myopic corporate pursuit of profit at any cost is to exercise restraint with the courage and foresight not to be afraid of encouraging talks to improve the intellectual, spiritual and moral values of design and marketing campaigns. Perhaps this marketing movement will play itself like the traveling salesman, the great fishmongers and sideshow tent barkers of yesteryear. Although, its successor may not be any more responsible in upholding a company's product legitimacy, produce better packaging, or offer gratifying user experiences.
To become socially responsible creatives, there's socially responsible work to be done. There is a need for the design community to step up to the plate and paralyze this movement. To do so, we must move to control the vertical and the horizontal game for attention by placing increased importance on the values of our cultural experiences and differences, which enrich our lives without necessarily lining our pockets. Our creative work should be selectively focused and offer an intimate closeness with our intended markets. In humanity's search for significance, these banal commercials and iconoclastic messaging tactics create a chasm of distraction that takes us away from our real mission at the moment.
Those among us who are advancing this art of annoyance in the hopes of controlling the will of the consumer and his or her objects of desire have many tools at their disposal, with ignorance being the all-purpose Swiss Army sledgehammer tool of choice.
We need to bring more of our visual literacy to the corporate boardrooms. However, as designers, we have our work cut out for us, as we are met head-on with consumer complacency counter-strikes. As the buying public crank up its indifference meter, companies are apt to trigger further escalation of this enterprising encirclement of visual stimuli.
If we're not too careful, the day may come when we'll be craving a hot bowl of Time Warner Soup-of-the-Day while watching a GAP Space Shuttle launch its cargo of Dr. Scholl's missile defense satellites.
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For comments, or opinions please contact:
Tommy Leo
Red Stone Digital
e-mail: info@redstonedigital.com
online: www.redstonedigital.com
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