ADBUSTERS, Journal of the Mental Environment, started in 1989 in Vancouver, Canada, as an independent magazine publication that is anti-consumerist. It is a non-profit that continues today as an ad-free digital and physical publication 6x/year as well as provides many free online articles, a podcast, and social content (youtube, instagram, facebook).
It relies on readers for funding.
The website currently boasts 19,129 "We the people" who are subscribers to ADBUSTERS.
Adbusters is filled with spoofy adverts showing the darker side of consumerism and corporate exploits.
Image from: https://www.adbusters.org/about-us
"Advertising is the main propagandist for the pervasive logic of consumerism" (Rumbo 128).
Mainstream advertising is "distorted communication" (Rumbo 128).
Adbusters magazine is unique in many ways compared to more "traditional" magazines that rely on advertisements and have a more consistent style and design.
Adbusters describes the magazine as "the people's bi-monthly journal of the mental environment".
Each issue has its own stand alone design.
Adbusters cover
Image from: https://litkicks.com/adbusters/
Adbusters cover compared with Rolling Stone cover
Adbusters May/June 2010 issue on the left featured the following:
"As nature becomes more and more ravaged, humans are increasingly unable to cope with reality. Our new issue explores the links between planetary death and the unraveling of the human psyche. How is the annihilation of our ecological home causing us to move through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance? Will we need to embark on a program of ecotherapy to heal the planet and ourselves?
Also in this issue:
Chris Hedges on Netanyahu, Lieberman and the assault on Israel’s legitimacy
Sam Cooper on The Coming Insurrection
Astra Taylor on Philosophy At the Edge
Nicholas Kristof on The Power of Empathy"
they are the 'third force'
Screenshot from: https://www.adbusters.org/manifesto
The Third Force in psychology is a method of change that is internal, and is "created and implemented by a thinking and planning individual...as opposed to...[an] external source" (Cassel 132). It bonds personal development and learning. In third force psychology the strategy is to get a person to think, plan, and actually do something for a change to occur. (Cassel 132).
Movement
Spoof Ads
Reminiscent of US war time propaganda posters
Tiger Woods Nike check smile
Richard Hamilton collage from 1956
Adbusters Spoof Ad Images from: https://www.adbusters.org/spoof-ads
Genre of Anti-Ads
Photography by Kelvin Murray - an anti-ad ad for Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation anti-smoking ad. Bringing awareness in 2009 that secondary smoking in homes in the UK had 17,000 children in hospital.
Founder of Adbusters
Kalle Lasn is co-founder of Adbusters (along with Bill Schmalz) and current editor. He was born in 1942 in Estonia and settled in Canada where he started Adbusters. He created a "movement called culture jamming".
The purpose of Culture Jamming is to "reclaim public, discursive and psychic spaces" (Rumbo 138). Includes boycotting, hacktivism, billboard vandalism, and putting up posters of anti-consumerist art.
Lasn continues to run Adbusters in his 80s!
Critique
Manifesto
Manifesto 2000 inspired by "First Things First" British Graphic designers in 1964. This 2000 updated version was started by Kalle Lasn and Chris Dixon (Adbusters art director). 6 other magazines launched this manifesto at the same time in fall of 1999.
Manifesto screenshot from: RE/DESIGN article by Kalle Lasn
Modern Adbusters
Targets youth, designers, students, everyone!
Worldwide topics, a lot of US based.
Image from: https://www.abillionpeople.org/octopus-arms/eco
Works Cited
Activist Facts. “Adbusters.” Center for Organizational Research and Education, 2023, https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/36-adbusters/.
Adbusters Magazine. 2023, https://www.adbusters.org/.
Adbusters Magazine. “The Ecopsychology Issue,” May/June 2010. https://subscribe.adbusters.org/collections/back-issues/products/ab89.
Asher, Levi. “Adbusters” The Zine That Created The Occupy Movement.” Literary Kicks, Oct 19, 2011. https://litkicks.com/adbusters/.
Cassel, Russell N. “Comparing the Dynamics of Second and Third Force Psychology.” Education, vol. 122, no. 1, Fall 2001, p. 131. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=a9h&AN=5570445&site=eds-live.
Goodman, Alana. “Organizer Behind “Occupy Wall Street” Has History of Anti-Jewish Writing.” Commentary Magazine, 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20111109101747/https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/13/occupy-wall-street-kalle-lasn.
Lasn, Kalle. “Re/Design.” Structurist, no. 41/42, Jan. 2001, pp. 82–85. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=asu&AN=504900222&site=eds-live.
Leary, Christopher. “Erasing the Material Base of Occupy Wall Street: When Soft Means Fail.” KOME, An International Journal of Pure Communication Inquiry, vol. 3, no. 2, July 2015, pp. 44–63. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.17646/KOME.2015.24.
Middlewood, Erin. "The spark for occupy Wall Street." The Progressive, vol. 76, no. 3, Mar. 2012, pp. 32+. Gale OneFile: CPI.Q, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A283021891/CPI?u=ecuad&sid=ebsco&xid=94df5348.
Poynor, Rick. “Conceptual Hybrids: Type in the 1990s.” Conceptual Type, vol. 3, no.1, 2013. https://doi.org/10.14434/artifact.v3i1.5038.
Smyth, Diane. "Adbusters." The British Journal of Photography, vol. 156, no. 7740, Jun 17, 2009, pp. 15-16. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/adbusters/docview/222757188/se-2.
Tolson, Jay. “What’s in a Name?” U.S. News & World Report, vol. 129, no. 14, Oct. 2000, p. 52. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=shib&db=a9h&AN=3602692&site=eds-live.
Yang, Peter. “Barack Obama’s second Rolling Stone cover from July 10th, 2008.” 2008, Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-lists/president-obama-on-the-cover-of-rolling-stone-20420/rs1056-1057-221776/.
Rumbo, Joseph D. “Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of Adbusters.” Psychology & Marketing, vol. 19, no. 2, Feb. 2002, pp. 127–48. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.10006.
Whitney, Jake. "'The spirit of occupy is alive': an interview with Kalle Lasn." The Progressive, vol. 79, no. 12, Dec. 2015, pp. 19+. https://progressive.org/magazine/spirit-occupy-alive-interview-kalle-lasn/.
written by Andream
June 15, 2023