Kalle Lasn

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Biography Born in Estonia (March 24, 1942)

Founded market research company in Tokyo in 1960s

Produced documentaries for PBS and Canada’s National Film Board

Time for a change…. Lasn started Adbusters in 1989

Started a counter-ad to a campaign by British Columbia’s forestry industry

TV stations would not air the this ad, so he fought back through other media forms

This ad received a lot of support and was effective This was the beginning of Adbusters!

ADBUSTERS Non-profit, anti-consumerist organization

A global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.

ADBUSTERS

Here are a few examples from Adbusters!

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In this first picture it features golf icon, Tiger Woods. Nike is his greatest endorser and therefore Tiger will do whatever Nike wants him to do. The artist behind this picture altered Tiger’s smile so that it is in the shape of the Nike symbol. This subtle, yet humorous alteration is utterly thought provoking and it brings awareness to the relationship Tiger and Nike share. Nike puts a smile of Tiger’s face!

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This culture jam confronts one the biggest issues people find with ads and the mediaÑ

body image in women. Because so many ads only feature a prototypical woman who is

tall, blonde, white, and extremely skinny it forces the public to believe that this is the

definition of beautiful. This leads to women having low self-esteem, self-hatred, eating

disorders, etc.

Calvin Klein has a popular fragrance line called OBSESSION. They have a

menÕs and womenÕs fragrance that is supported by ads featuring the prototypical woman

described above. So Adbusters created this culture jam to reveal the true obsession these

Calvin Klein ads are creating. Here, there is a woman who is visibly thin and she is

crouching over a toilet vomiting in hopes of getting smaller. Below is a real Obsession

ad produced by Calvin Klein.

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This ad is attacking the phrase that Big Mac Attack which became a pseudo

slogan for a burger at McDonalds. Because the public is not media literate, they do not

understand the affect that fun, exciting monikers for extremely unhealthy food has on the

public and especially children. Therefore, with this ad Adbusters are satirizing the

nickname and the actual effects that it could cause in real life. It features a heart monitor

with a heart rate reader line in the shape of the golden arches, which is McDonÕads

trademark. This is clever and it is thought provoking, which is the grand idea behind

adbusters and LasnÕs efforts in the advertising world.