Hasta La Creative!

Wal-Mart want to clear some things up. Hence, the launch of a new PR-driven site, TheRealWalmart.com and new TV spots that began airing on Saturday during the Kentucky Derby.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the campaign is the company’s first purely image-based ad push in several years.

WSJ also reports that Wal-Mart’s “energized differentiation,” an advertising term for the direction a brand is going based on consumer interest, loyalty and momentum, dropped 50% between 2011 and 2012 among college-educated adults.

That’s what allegations of bribery, poor global sourcing practices and low wages brings.

Barbara Andridge, 38, who has been working at a Placerville, Calif., Wal-Mart for nearly eight years and makes $12.15 an hour. She said she had to drop its health plan this year because she couldn’t afford the $18 weekly cost.

“I don’t want to see ads,” she said. “I want to see Wal-Mart provide decent wages, affordable health care and enough hours to feed my children.”

The post Wal-Mart In A Battle To Redefine Its Brand appeared first on AdPulp.

Stephen Floyd practices an innocent form of culture jamming. Here’s an example of his work in Fairplay, CO.

[via The Moment]

Super sensitive conservatives are freaking out about Rachel Ray’s choice of neckwear in a Dunkin’ Donuts spot. Apparently, the scarf is like some kind of gang sign, except the gang in question is from Palestine.

I wonder if this means I need to boycott falafel to prove my loyalty to the USA. I hope not. I bet it’s okay, as long as I order a side of freedom fries.

[via Little Green Footballs]

Not to go all Adbusters on you or anything, but I like to see is people actively resisting advertising. I think it’s a healthy reaction to the onslaught of commercial messages.

Debranded Home is doing its part by offering a set of generic labels printed on high-quality waterproof vinyl.

Our objective is to provide you with the tools and information you need to debrand your home. We want to change the way people think about and buy products. Advertising is everywhere and, granted, does serve a purpose, but we want to show you how to can reclaim your space. Once a product has made it off the shelf, its label has served its purpose.

It’s freeing to not be pressured to dole out extra cash to buy that product with slightly nicer packaging. And you can feel good about recycling your bottles and either buying in bulk or learning to make things yourself.

The label sets are $9.00, plus $1.50 for shipping.

There does seem to be irony in the fact that Debranded Home is offering labels, that essentially act us an unbranded brand. It seems, one could take their advice but skip the labeling, or device a simpler labeling technique.

[via Quipsologies]

According to The Wall Street Journal, both activists and the corporations they rail against are moving at internet speed.

Just last week we took note of the Greenpeace campaign against Unilever, a company they accused of Indonesian deforestation.

Speaking at a climate change conference in London Thursday, Unilever Chief Executive Patrick Cescau said his firm will buy palm oil (an ingredient in Dove soap) only from suppliers who can demonstrate they haven’t cut down forests.

The speed of the campaign marks a big moment for activist groups. One Greenpeace ad has been watched more than 250,000 times in the week it has been on YouTube.com. Just as the world’s biggest marketers have used such Internet sites to get their video ads to consumers, pressure groups are now using the technique to cheaply and quickly spread their message.

A Unilever spokesman said the Greenpeace protests “had some bearing” but little influence on Unilever’s decision to source palm oil. He said the company’s policy has been in the works since November.

Palm oil is produced mainly in Indonesia and Malaysia by farmers who squeeze the oil from small flowers found on oil palms. Surging prices for the oil have contributed to deforestation, especially in Indonesia, where farmers have cut down rain forests for palm plantations.

Here’s an earlier video from Greenpeace on the same issue:

Chicago artist Pamela Michelle Johnson likes to paint still lifes of food items on large canvases.

From her artist statement:

In the American Still-Life series, Johnson takes on another fixture of contemporary American life, and does so with no apologies. When confronted with a six-foot tall canvas of enormous and precariously balanced hamburgers, waffles, doughnuts, or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the viewer is forced to recognize that the work is about more than alluring junk food. Johnson’s fascination with the phenomena of mass-produced foods comes from viewing those artifacts of our culture as indicative of the state of the culture as a whole. Her goal is to invoke reflection on embracing a culture of complete and instant gratification while ignoring the consequences of our indulgences.

I totally hear all that and can’t quibble. But as a fan of Pop-Tarts, PB&Js, waffles and the rest, I also see her work as in a lighter context. In fact, if I was a brand manager on Pop-Tarts, I’d be tempted to misappropriate the meaning behind the work for my own purposes (or at least buy the original work and hang it in Kellogg’s offices). I mean, Johnson makes the product look good. Does she not?

[via Bad Banana]

According to The Wall Street Journal, Heng Yuan Xiang Group, a top Chinese wool producer, wanted to celebrate its sponsorship of this summer’s Beijing Olympics. So the wool company began running a 60-second ad in February, during the celebration of Lunar New Year, China’s biggest holiday.

When the Chinese public first saw the ad, some people thought their TV sets were broken. Viewers savaged the commercial in print media and online, some calling it intolerable or singling it out as the worst spot they had ever seen.

The backlash suggests that increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers are rejecting low-budget, low-quality marketing.

The arrival of foreign ad agencies in the 1990s, together with the rapid expansion of the nation’s middle class, altered Chinese consumers’ expectations, the Journal surmises.