Imagine for a brief moment, that the world’s last five remaining communist countries decided to unite forces and hire the world’s top advertising agencies to re-brand and create a resurgence in the ideologies of Communism? Television Commercial for Communism [TVCC] embarks to re-position our relationship to current global economics and socio-politics by getting the world’s leading advertising companies to pitch their most radical ideas to re-brand Communism. How will capitalism’s most influential by-product, the advertising machine, process its former political opponent in a post Cold War context, still saturated with Cold War idiosyncrasies?
This, oddly enough, seems to be coming from TBWA Vietnam.
Needless to say, the last question is redundant since we already know from China how communism and capitalism rub along together. The ad proposed is one of those big NGOs-do-cable-news things with a little girl traversing the world exchanging smiles with all manner of good, plain folk and the smiles eventually reconstituting as a hammer and sickle. An ad for actually exsiting communism would be an Ayn Randish montage of thrusting skyscrapers, packed airport VIP lounges, guys in dark glasses sitting inside top of the line audis with tinted windows, tiny hard-faced beauties sneering at expensive trinkets in Harrods, manicured hands peeling off crisp 100 yuan notes from bulging clips and so on. Eventually, a cluster of diamonds will appear and form the words COMMUNISM - FUCK YEAH! Obviously, there's more to it than that but let's take the brief seriously. Also:
'I am Xi Jinping and I endorse this message.'
TBWA was originally French, I think, which adds another layer of WTF. This is a clear sign of an agency branch that doesn't have enough work, and that needs something to keep its salaried creatives busy. Generally this kind of project is about generating new business. I'm sure you're right that it's an attempt to nuzzle into Chinese laps.
If there was one class of people communism never needed any help from, it was the western ad man. It was only towards the end of the Cold War that their branding got stale. And even then you had bourgeois parasites like The Face doing wholesale ripoffs of their graphic design.
Posted by: bert | December 10, 2012 at 09:06 AM
Television Commercial for Communism [TVCC] embarks to re-position our relationship to current global economics and socio-politics by getting the world’s leading advertising companies to pitch their most radical ideas to re-brand Communism.
This reminds me of the Australian TV programme that used to get ad companies to pitch - and actually put ads together - for unacceptable ideas. Like "Let's Invade New Zealand" and "Global Warming is Good".
http://www.inquisitr.com/1634/invade-new-zealand/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/gruentransfer/thepitch.htm
Posted by: ajay | December 10, 2012 at 10:19 AM
"used to" up til a few weeks ago - still running, although as Gruen Planet rather then Gruen Transfer for some reason.
Posted by: john b | December 10, 2012 at 10:24 AM