________________________________________________________________________________ Wired News Here's to the Crazy Ads by Craig Bicknell 3:00 a.m. 17.Aug.99.PDT Porn stars sell Palm Pilots. Ted Kaczynski plugs Apple Computer. Bulimic models sell Calvin Klein perfume. OK, that's not new, but these models are actually hunched over the bowl. Has the advertising world gone bonkers? Nope, these are all spoofs of well-known ads that have been slapped together and tossed up on the Web, often to the considerable consternation of the advertiser. With dot coms everywhere spending as much as half their operating budgets on marketing, and with online advertising expected to mushroom to US$30-plus billion in the next five years, spoofers are gearing up, too. "As corporations move to take over the world, we the people have to find ways to take back the power," said Kalle Lasn, editor and publisher of Adbusters Magazine, which publishes both a print edition and an online gallery of ad send-ups. Corporate reactions vary. Apple Computer, for example, shrugged off a spoof of one of its most famous campaigns. An anonymous prankster lifted the voice-over from one of Apple's "Think Different" TV ads and dubbed it over footage of some folks who really think different(ly). "Here's to the crazy ones," intones the golden-throated narrator as convicted Unabomber Ted Kaczynski is led in shackles to court. "The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes," the narration continues over clips of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and OJ Simpson. The spoof artists saved the video in QuickTime, and Web surfers promptly emailed copies of it all over the world. Other companies haven't been so forgiving of the instant online ad satire that pops up almost as soon as they launch a new campaign. When independent Web designer Jason Kottke lampooned 3Com's "Simply Palm" Palm Pilot ads by posting his own "Simply Porn" adaptation, 3Com's lawyers promptly fired off a cease-and-desist letter. Kottke took down the ads. Trouble for 3Com was, when Kottke's friends learned that 3Com had threatened him with legal action, they made sure to post mirror copies of the "Simply Porn" ads all over the Web. News outlets got ahold of the story and portrayed Kottke as David with a Web browser. "All in all, the whole thing worked out quite well for me and rather poorly for 3Com," said Kottke. "I learned a bunch about copyright and trademark laws, saw the power of the Web grassroots movement first hand, and have lots of press clippings for my scrapbook. All 3Com got was a bunch of negative publicity." Lawyers who help companies protect their corporate images said the 3Com incident succinctly points up the perils of the Web for brandholders. "[A spoof] can spread instantaneously," said Robert Phillips, head of the trademark department at Arnold White & Durkee in Menlo Park, California. "You have to try and approach the people and resolve the situation amicably and try to stop the use from spreading." Corporations police the use of their brands because misuse can erode a company's legal claim to its own product names. Dynamite, for instance, used to be a brand name, but it fell into common usage and the owner lost all legal rights to it. While there have always been spoof ads in print, Phillips said the Web has unleashed a parody storm that may well scuttle any attempts by corporations to control it. "When you have the Internet, which is such a huge universe of material, it's real difficult to police it," he said. That doesn't mean companies won't try. Phillips, who represents a major technology company, finds at least one parody ad a month that he believes steps over the line from First Amendment-protected free speech into the murky realm of "brand tarnishment." In a nutshell, a brand can be legally "tarnished" when it's linked with shoddy products or to porn or drug-oriented Web sites. In a famous 1972 case, for instance, a court found that the creators of a poster showing a Coca-Cola label altered to read "Enjoy Cocaine" had crossed the line. While most states have had brand-tarnishment laws for years, the US government has only had one since 1996. There is scant federal case law that defines the boundary between acceptable and unacceptable parody. That leaves a lot of wiggle room for corporations to file for injunctions against spoofers, and it makes satirists like Kalle Lasn nervous. "It's making me feel a little more vulnerable," he said. "If we can't dick around with other people's ads, then we're nowhere." To help settle the matter, Lasn has become even more aggressive in his satirical provocation. He's trying to push companies to sue so that he and his lawyers can help defend in court what he feels are free-speech rights. Lasn thinks his targets, however, are sensing that coming after him will bring them nothing but bad publicity. "We deliberately provoke them, but they don't take the bait," Lasn said. Not all spoofers show Lasn's resolve, said Phillips. "A lot of times people settle. A lot of times they don't want to bother," he said. Phillips is quick to point out that he only pursues legal action in cases of blatant tarnishment. Typically, that means he targets spoofs that are used to promote a competing product, are linked to porn, or contain foul language. "If it's obvious that it's intended to be humor only, that's no big deal," he said. Lasn, however, notes that his parodies, including a send-up of a Calvin Klein ad that shows a bulimic model doubled over a toilet, are intended to be a lot more than humor. "At the bottom of what we're doing is a very serious thing," he said. http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21290.html ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 1999 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org