A highly entertaining three-part video from the 1940s promotes outdoor advertising as a crucial way of harnessing the unparalleled "consumer power" of the American public.
The narrator explains how the study of everyday movement of people through the cityscape (in the videos' case, greater Chicago) can isolate valuable opportunities to better "inform" the public through advertising. The "scientific planning" of outdoor advertising optimizes sales potential through the study of various traffic flows; the secret is that urban form and economic engine are one.
Fast-forwarding 70 years, the footage of yesteryear Chicago finds its present-day echo in the unsettling world of the short film Logorama. Logorama takes the concept of a city optimized for advertising and runs with it, envisioning the resulting brandscape of the city (specifically, Los Angeles) at its most perverse.
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