(This via the blog Adland.)
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday.
They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small.
They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else.
They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate.
They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it.
They are “The Advertisers” and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them.
Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that.
Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours.
It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use.
You can do whatever you like with it.
Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing.
Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy.
They owe you.
They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you.
They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
~ Banksy
Personally I’m with Banksy on this.
We do come uninvited into people’s lives.
If we can’t do that in an amusing, informative, fun way, we shouldn’t do it at all.
If we’re interrupting their newspaper, barging our way into their living rooms, annoying them on their laptops, defacing their landscape.
If that’s all we’re doing, no wonder they don’t like it.
I wouldn’t.
You wouldn’t.
Banksy says we’re intruding.
Fair enough, we are.
And when we do that, the only way to get away with it is to do something they like.
Make it a fun, enjoyable experience.
That’s just polite.
Anything else is rude, boorish and crass.
Just like the sales calls we get at home, when we’re in the middle of something else.
They don’t care what we’re doing, they just want us to shut up and be sold to.
No wonder we get angry.
And advertising like that is just the same.
It deserves to be defaced, switched off, or ignored.
No wonder 90% of it doesn’t work.
Most advertising is just visual pollution.