I guess it had to happen at some point.
I can almost see the entire picture now, sometime in the future, in a cluster of plastic chairs filled with sullen, shifty people in dark colours, there I am. The recovering advertisers support group. The first step is to acknowledge you have a problem.
But that's the future. Right now, what I have is a sneaky addiction to learning about advertising. Oh sure, I learnt semiotics theory in uni (and used it in part to do a Nietzschean analysis of Batman), I've written academic essays on the portrayal of motherhood, I've skimmed through copy-writing books and screen writing books and watched the odd documentary here and there about design or typography. We've all been there ... it's recreational use only.
To state the obvious - the signal to noise ratio in modern life (even in a total backwater like Trash City) is horrendous. Thank-you Brain for filtering so much of it out. In the last week or so I have asked for the filters to ease back a little to I can see it all again, and it is everywhere. Really all over the place. Walls, Streets, rooms, flashing , bleating, radio - I don't even need to mention the TV do I?! Why do this to myself? Well, The Client wants a lot more advertising than they did when I started. Before, they just wanted some promotion, some press releases, some web copy. Nice, low key pull-stuff. Now, now they want branding and positionals and targeted ads and direct mailers that aren't letters. Shit that I, frankly, just don't understand and have spent some effort to avoid up to now.
Ok so the library card is getting a flogging, and I am learning some things including jargon. I have no qualms about learning jargon - I use it on the client whenever I feel the bullshit quotient needs adjusting. Jargon often means I can do the common-sense thing that I suggested in the first place, but the cool/official sounding jargon for it makes it all sound very upmarket and professional. So instead of sending a group a personalised letter, we will send them "A direct mail "feel good" response initiator to a targeted demographic utilising below-the-line best-practise." I'm clearly making stuff up there, and I'm laying it on as an example. Those of you reading with any background in actual marketing will know how that barely even makes sense. But wow! Can you believe how clients lap it up!? So jargon is a great tool when used sparingly/ lathered around like jelly.
It is slow-going to pick up how to critically read these things from a capitalist/product point of view rather than from my existing (almost second nature) dissident political POV. Perhaps that is what is addictive - this feeling of "insider secrets revealed!" One of the first books I read was written in about 1910 (I'm falling in love with ebooks too - another thing I never thought would happen!) and it is pretty much all still there, and in his intro he was "capturing these time-proven methods" etc. Hi-Larious!
Will I use this power for the greater good? Or will I, like the fuckarsebaby boomers, just sell out and get loads of cash and drive a Kompressor? oooh, a Kompressor. So sleek, so powerful....
NO! I work for an art gallery goddammit! I will lull stupid bogans into bringing their snot-nosed brats in for edifying art encounters! YES! And if it takes shouting FREE! in all the material, well so be it. I'm not above a gratuitous sausage sizzle either. Don't start me. I've sunk so low now that an alley cat would avoid eye contact.
* Actual sign seen in local TV retailing store
Friday, July 04, 2008
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Not Quite Neighbourly
The "Cult Film" mini project for work is happening. It's not for ages yet, but you have to get things nailed-down (spontaneity is for artists, not galleries) in advance so promotion can be booked, and staff can get used to seeing it on the horizon. There's a little hiccup with one of the Councillors having booked one of the nights for some lame event where they hand out certificates to whoever turns up. Might not be able to get out of that .... have to see.
KS and I have been circling mentions in the local paper of "Bookmarks of Excellence" being given to children who do craft at the shopping centres during the school holidays. There's something basically wrong with telling a general population that they're 'excellent' all the time, that their city is the best, that they're 'leading the way'. It's delusional apart from anything else!
Rather than get caught up on the many "quirks" of Trash City, I want to tell you a little about my new stalker. Anna.
Anna is my new neighbour (replacing Merv who Mowed), and has been transplanted from an Eastern Bris suburb - so she's a long way from her friends. She's moved to Trash City because her dutiful daughter is concerned for her safety (and the DD's response time should there be an emergency) now that Anna is in her winter years. So she has some time on her hands. And windows. Time to look out of windows. And a front porch as most of the houses in our suburb do. A front porch (rather than a back one) to add to that sense of 'community' - where everyone can 'watch out for each other'. Literally.
She has had a very interesting life - being raised in China in a Russian school (so although she's Australian, she has a heavy Russian accent). She and her husband started their family overseas and there were a few stories about trains and border crossings with babies and bags going missing, and no food and so on which made for an astonishing 45 minutes listening. She has two cats and a dog just like Riley ("only she is proper breed!") called Poppy. She's kind, friendly and always up for a chat. ALWAYS UP FOR A CHAT.
I realised last night as she sprung upon me out of the dusk as I darted from my car to the front door and started relating the activities of Rumi during the day, and how her two cats responded to this, and how great it was that one of my new shrubs was flowering, and how I had been at work a long time today and how I must be tired and she should be going, except that it would be best for me if I cooked a big meal on sundays and froze it in portions and then i wouldn't have to cook each night, just heat up my meal and it's much better that way, which is how she does it, in an enamel pot, they're the best kind and I nodded and tried to smile and it dawned on me. I am just not made for this suburban life. I am a crap neighbour. I have no interest in who is doing what to who over in number 13, or what number 15 thinks of it, and is trying not to say, nor why number 12 has so many people living there, or what they think they're doing with that great big boat, nor why Mrs Number 18 was in hospital recently, or if the people at number 11 are still the same ones who had the big drug bust or are there new people there now.
I DON'T CARE.
I say g'day, I offer to bring bins in if people are going away, I'll swap cuttings or dog-sit. That's kind of it for me. I've expanded that to being the loose-dog-pound-ringer and I'm done. I didn't realise that a yard would come with such a high cost. I also thought that fences would absorb more sound. There you go - wrong again.
KS and I have been circling mentions in the local paper of "Bookmarks of Excellence" being given to children who do craft at the shopping centres during the school holidays. There's something basically wrong with telling a general population that they're 'excellent' all the time, that their city is the best, that they're 'leading the way'. It's delusional apart from anything else!
Rather than get caught up on the many "quirks" of Trash City, I want to tell you a little about my new stalker. Anna.
Anna is my new neighbour (replacing Merv who Mowed), and has been transplanted from an Eastern Bris suburb - so she's a long way from her friends. She's moved to Trash City because her dutiful daughter is concerned for her safety (and the DD's response time should there be an emergency) now that Anna is in her winter years. So she has some time on her hands. And windows. Time to look out of windows. And a front porch as most of the houses in our suburb do. A front porch (rather than a back one) to add to that sense of 'community' - where everyone can 'watch out for each other'. Literally.
She has had a very interesting life - being raised in China in a Russian school (so although she's Australian, she has a heavy Russian accent). She and her husband started their family overseas and there were a few stories about trains and border crossings with babies and bags going missing, and no food and so on which made for an astonishing 45 minutes listening. She has two cats and a dog just like Riley ("only she is proper breed!") called Poppy. She's kind, friendly and always up for a chat. ALWAYS UP FOR A CHAT.
I realised last night as she sprung upon me out of the dusk as I darted from my car to the front door and started relating the activities of Rumi during the day, and how her two cats responded to this, and how great it was that one of my new shrubs was flowering, and how I had been at work a long time today and how I must be tired and she should be going, except that it would be best for me if I cooked a big meal on sundays and froze it in portions and then i wouldn't have to cook each night, just heat up my meal and it's much better that way, which is how she does it, in an enamel pot, they're the best kind and I nodded and tried to smile and it dawned on me. I am just not made for this suburban life. I am a crap neighbour. I have no interest in who is doing what to who over in number 13, or what number 15 thinks of it, and is trying not to say, nor why number 12 has so many people living there, or what they think they're doing with that great big boat, nor why Mrs Number 18 was in hospital recently, or if the people at number 11 are still the same ones who had the big drug bust or are there new people there now.
I DON'T CARE.
I say g'day, I offer to bring bins in if people are going away, I'll swap cuttings or dog-sit. That's kind of it for me. I've expanded that to being the loose-dog-pound-ringer and I'm done. I didn't realise that a yard would come with such a high cost. I also thought that fences would absorb more sound. There you go - wrong again.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
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