'A giant billboard in the heart of Manchester celebrates its first anniversary amid evidence that national wellbeing is adversely affected by outdoor advertising.
Artist and designer Micah Purnell’s empowering ‘YOU ARE ENOUGH’ billboard offers a cleansing antidote to what he considers harmful advertising practice.
"Capitalist ideology imparts the idea that we are only worthy of love and belonging once we buy into their product or service," says Manchester-based Purnell. "Advertising reinforces this idea with the assumption that we are inadequate - essentially stealing our love of ourselves, and selling it back to us at a price."
Standing proud in the heart of Manchester’s university district, Purnell’s 22x13 foot installation towers above the streets below – giving a refreshingly affirming message to passing students and commuters. The design has enjoyed a full academic year aside St Peter’s House, and by popular demand is set to remain for a second year, and now, Purnell plans to spread more visually prominent empowerment messages throughout the wider boroughs of Manchester.
"The World Economic Forum has found evidence of negative links between national advertising and national wellbeing," notes Purnell, "moreover, research professor Brené Brown has found that the one thing keeping us from love and belonging is the fear that we are not worthy of love and belonging. She found that those who fully experience joy and live wholeheartedly have the courage to accept their imperfection – recognising and believing that they are enough. We are all enough, but sadly, it’s harder to believe this when we’re bombarded by toxic messages suggesting we’re not. Through my ‘Selling Virtues’ project, I invite everyone to hold these cynical commercial intrusions to account and play a bigger part in their own happiness and wellbeing."
Now seeking funding to expand his ‘Selling Virtues’ project, visit Micah Purnell’s campaign page at sellingvirtues.co.uk.'
Purnell's project is designed to stimulate debate partly through its use of the approaches of advertising and design to communicate its anti-consumerist message. As a contribution to this debate I want to also highlight four other people/projects engaging with similar issues.
The theme of Purnell's project chimes with the experience of Maciej Hoffman, who turned his back on advertising in order to paint. absolutearts.com report:
In his series "Marketing Civilization," are observations of the contemporary style and content of life looked at from the perspective of the necessity and omnipresence of consumption. Our needs were mostly reduced to intellectually comfortable and psychologically exhausting contenting ourselves with the consumption of the world instead of giving something from ourselves to create the world. Our everyday lives became dominated by work and pursuit of products attacking us from the store shelves and by the pictures that are generated for the needs of this invasion. The reality under the thumb of the economy gave birth to a culture which would rather sell images created by others than create its own ones.
Hoffman's paintings refer to the composition of press advertisements and to the search for a stronger influence on people. Thus the poster-like flatness of the background and the strong color which, in the marketing world, makes the message clearer and attractive to the product. It is Hoffman's attempt of drawing the attention to what the world looks like from this perspective.
"Marketing Civilization" touches on how the advertisements ruthlessly use the symbols and appropriate them for commercial needs. Symbols and authorities which are deeply rooted in our consciousness are a pretext for pushing you any product, a beverage, a screw or even "an independent opinion" just by putting in the ad a man dressed up in a white lab-coat or wearing a dog collar.
On the other hand, we all function in this reality, with relationships built by the marketing and advertisement world which can be brought down to the fact that you always find yourself in one of the roles, a buyer, a seller or a person being sold. You can indeed exist as a product. Your absence in this chain of relations condemns you to a kind of nonexistence.'
Sinclair paints 'backwards', directly onto the reverse side of Perspex (or Plexiglass) giving his work of bright and strongly contrasting colours a luminous appearance. Often starting from pastiches of classic works, he incorporates provocative textual elements that use puns, flip old sayings on their head, or offer unexpected answers to rhetorical questions in order to challenge perceived orthodoxies. Others make heavy use of masking and scalpel work to form dense areas of vivid, alternating colour.
Sinclair's humorous, playful and gently mocking work reflect human and societal concerns regarding our relationships to one another and themes of wealth, power, and ego. Works by Lichtenstein, Hirst, Klimt, Da Vinci, Picasso and Michaelangelo and images of celebrities from Barack Obama to Elizabeth Taylor have all formed the basis for his paintings, subverted through cartoonish imagery and textual puns.
He has now launched The People’s Republic which believes that it is possible to live in this world without the need for violence towards each other and the earth. It believes we have the power to live engaged, healthy, passionate lives that have purpose and meaning which are not only good for ourselves but is good for all other life on this planet. The People’s Republic’s mission is to not only clothe the world with ethical, sustainable and revolutionary fashion, but also help facilitate the connection between ourselves, others and the planet.
Michael Gough is Strategy Director for Sparks, a brand and design agency that works best for ambitious organisations with rich histories and complexity helping them connect with a changing audience while discovering and expressing what matters now.
He says 'there are two aspects to good branding', 'brand promise is all about the client's shop window – what the world sees'. '"Brand promise is knowing who you are talking to and why you're relevant," whereas the experience is all about what the audience – the customers or the consumers – think of the brand.' '"Good brand communications bring brand promise in line with brand experience."'
'For Michael, listening is the first and most important part of his work with clients. Sparks identifies what the organisation does, and crucially why it does it, as it's usually the 'why' that helps to distinguish them from their competitors.' At a headline level, he says, 'what we're interested in is an honest, authentic representation of a particular client.' 'This honesty and transparency is rooted in the gospel, he says. "The gospel calls us to be real about ourselves and honest about ourselves. I think that's a direct extension of our business model. The client can be authoritative and genuine in what they stand for in their brand."'
'Michael believes the language used in the Christian context is inherent to the subculture, but doesn't translate well in the mainstream: "Our challenge always to our faith-based clients is to make them think about what the mainstream culture is. We think about how we can lift that from the assumptions of a Christian subculture, turning that into something meaningful, engaging and relevant to the mainstream culture."
For Sparks, it's all about helping clients see that opportunity to speak in a relevant way about an authentic Christian framework, but in a language that is engaging to a wider audience.
"The problem is the Church has an assumption about its culture, which sometimes gets in the way about people engaging and meeting with the true biblical expression of who Christ is. Lots of language we use in a church context is tied exclusively to this culture – it has little meaning outside."
I think the more we can do to help people outside of the Church to engage with the biblical text, the more we move away from this subcultural context and engage with the truth of the gospel."'
For Sparks, it's all about helping clients see that opportunity to speak in a relevant way about an authentic Christian framework, but in a language that is engaging to a wider audience.
"The problem is the Church has an assumption about its culture, which sometimes gets in the way about people engaging and meeting with the true biblical expression of who Christ is. Lots of language we use in a church context is tied exclusively to this culture – it has little meaning outside."
I think the more we can do to help people outside of the Church to engage with the biblical text, the more we move away from this subcultural context and engage with the truth of the gospel."'
Mene Mene located 13 texts in various formats around Leeds city centre such as CELEBRATE WITH ME, MEN FAINTING WITH FEAR and GO THROW YOURSELF INTO THE SEA. The statements were drawn from New Testament texts and filtered throughout the city in a variety of formats from high profile banners and adverts on bus shelters, to more intimate plaques on benches and handwritten signs. Some were affirming and instructive, whilst others are more predictive and challenging.
This collaborative art project investigated the relevance of ancient biblical sayings in a contemporary city by recommitting words back into the public arena. Transferring texts out of church and back into everyday life, where they were first spoken, gave the words new resonance. Texts were abstracted from their original context and as they entered the public square evoked different responses as people brought their own reactions to the work: for some, the phrases were hardly noticeable – just more consumer targeted advertising, for others they were reflective and thought provoking.
Mene Mene embraced an open and diverse interpretation of phrases which have been subsumed into our everyday language, whilst at the same time prising open a local space usually dominated by global marketing to provide a place to think.
That is one achievement common to all those highlighted in this post; they are prising open spaces usually dominated by global marketing to provide a place to think.
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The Clash - Lost In The Supermarket.
