Today scrolling a hopeless hellscape of LinkedIn i stumbled upon a post.

In this post a marketing person praises the “beautiful execution” of an ad campaign for Oreo. Someone (or rather a group of people) decided that pasting this vomit of blue all around the train car is a good idea.

People would walk into the car, needing to use it to commute to/from work, go basically anywhere and see this. Your gaze cannot escape this vast field of corporate-mandated color, splashed all over. You can only look at your phone, ceiling, floor or aimlessly stare at the tunnel walls and cables out of the window.

Or alternatively be subjected to the influence of this visual assault. Why would anyone who is not a complete psychopath decide to subject tens of thousands of people to this every day? Truly beautiful execution, isn’t it?

Interestingly enough, the comment section of the post was limited to the direct contacts of the post’s author. I wonder why…

Lately I catch myself saying and thinking in categories of “We as a society”™, which is just a fun observation about what outlets you find for your energy when you have little work to do and a lot of free time.

We as a society somehow just accepted that corporations are allowed to invade our everyday spaces and just steal our attention. Just because they paid (probably through a chain of shady deals, corruption and middle-man companies) to the company, person or entity that owns the space. Which is especially annoying when it is not only a public space, but also something essential, something that people use every day and rely on.

I do also want to go on a tangent about how the entire business of advertisement in the metro cars in Kyiv is corrupt and full of bribes and kickback deals. It is sad to realize that I rented a large and decently furnished apartment from a guy, like 10 years younger than me, whose mother just gave it to him having worked exactly there: in advertising in the very Kyiv metro I am talking about.

I do not consider myself a communist or even left-wing politically in any way (neither I subscribe to right-wing agenda), but it just rubs me the wrong way that some people, who can hide behind large teams of lawyers in their ivory towers of corporate offices keep getting away with systematically making other people’s lives shittier, little by little. This is not the norm. It should not be the norm. It should not be allowed to be the norm.

You can probably protect their view by saying something along the lines of…
Umm, no, I’ll do it differently. Welcome to IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS!

— You should not spam your ads all over the metro car. You are adding visual noise to my literal field of view.

— Well, I paid money for that and therefore I can do that. If you don’t like it that much, just don’t go there. Wait for another train or use a bus instead.

— Yeah, right. You think you are the only one doing that all-surfaces ad thing?

— Well, sucks to be you then. This is what you get when you use public transport. You can always get a car and avoid that altogether.

— Okay-okay, so you’re telling me that I am the one who needs to pay to avoid seeing your shit. Not you just not paying to have it put up, but we both having a contest of who pays more. And by the way, what’s that there, over the highway? Isn’t that your billboard?

— Yes it is. See, you can feel the presence of our corporation everywhere. There also will be a branded truck passing by your window somewhere in the next 10 minutes. Don’t miss it! I got a huge bonus for running this campaign.

Imaginary conversation with an imaginary opponent who has been purposefully dumbed down and eviled up by a strategically delivered shot of 5G-enabled COVID vaccine.

Is this so much to ask? Just not being constantly advertised to, sold to, called to action and influenced. The world has ran just fine previously without ad blimps, branded metro cars and other ethical equivalents of the state of Florida. Moreover, I heard that in Sao Paulo they banned ads altogether and the world did not implode after and/or because of that.

When I was a kid, I legitimately tried to imagine what a world looked like if all of the companies were required to use the same exact plain white design on their products and where their products could only be told apart by reading the label. Don’t know where I’m going with that, just a thought 10-year old me had.

I would like to conclude this rambling by another stolen post from another social network:

As an impromptu post scriptum I also want to reflect on the post above. Not only the empty and nearly sterile interiors feel like a deafening quiet juxtaposed to the visually noisy adscapes, but also if you think about it, they can serve as an excellent canvas, upon which such vomits of color would stand out even more. Just imagine an object from the last picture inside one of the monotone homescapes from the picture above it. It would announce its presence and draw all attention. Just as intended. So, maybe dull interiors are just as bad? The truth is out there.

Post-post scriptum:
I just thought about the entire idea of ads. Shouting louder so that more people get a newspaper from you instead of your competitor. Running an ad in a magazine so that everyone knows that your new perfume is in this season. Convincing people that they have a serious and frankly embarrassing condition that everyone notices but does not tell them about so that they buy your oral hygiene product. True story.

It is all about inconveniencing other people some more to advance your business. Not enough that they would come and punch you in the face, not enough that they remember to avoid you at all cost because of how annoying you are, but just enough for them to remember you.

Do you remember how in newspapers there were separate pages for classifieds? I think it is the only more or less ethical way to present ads. You dedicate a specific space on a physical or digital medium, which one would need to visit or browse deliberately (opt-in instead of opt-out) and could easily stop/avoid interacting with. It was a thing not so long ago, you know.

Then corporations can have all the pissing contests they want trying to one-up each other by buying entire pages, which still would be limited to their dedicated space, without spilling out onto branded benches in parks and other artifacts of marketing bullshit.

An ad should not be something that distracts you on your way to work but rather something you consciously decide to see. It’s the difference between scaling a rock to get to the office and going to a climbing gym on the weekend.