Posts Tagged ‘brand names’

Brand Obama – No You Can’t

// February 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Anti-Capitalism, Politics

http://i480.photobucket.com/albums/rr161/Goldcreative/Obamachange2.jpg

President Obama’s popular appeal makes him a dream for marketing companies looking to siphon profits by using his image and rhetoric. So it should come as no surprise that the White House is looking into copyrighting “brand Obama.”

“Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Obama’s calls for change and his “Yes We Can” campaign mantra are being evoked to sell assembly-required furniture in Ikea’s “Embrace Change” marketing campaign, bargain airfares during Southwest Airlines Inc.’s “Yes You Can” sale and “Yes Pecan” ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. shops.

[...]
Riding the wave of Obama’s popularity may become a concern when advertisers use his likeness without permission to imply that Obama is endorsing a product or cause. The White House through the years has objected to commercial use of presidential faces, such as footage of President George H W Bush in a Cold War-themed 1989 television ad for cold medication.

Is “si se puede” going to come under attack?

Given the massive sale revenues generated using brand Obama, how much is he worth? Can he sell himself and just pay off some of the trade deficit that may help hedge U.S. dollar and restore some credit credibility to this country?

It’s not clear who will lose from this precisely, but the winners list is quite apparent with White House litigators at the very top.

‘Fair and Lovely’ No More – Bollywood Star blasts Fairness Products

// August 27th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Desi-Indian, Racism, Videos

Accolades for Akki – Bollywood star Akshay Kumar slams ‘fairness products’ and endorsers of such products at a news conference.

Rani Mukerji, Priyanka Chopra, Bipasha Basu, Konkona Sen Sharma are all the dusky leading ladies of Bollywood that may have succumbed to the ‘Fair and Lovely’ fever at one time or another–even images of them found on the internet are substantially lighter in tone than their actual skin color.

While my mother in the United States of America is haggling me about my ’sun-burnt’ skintone wondering when it would get better and my 75-year-old grandmother ruins her face with yet another facial product in her efforts to lighten her skin color (‘fix’ her face as they put it in my family), thousands of other Indian mothers across the world buy fairness and beauty creams for their young daughters. Darkness is a curse in our culture–it is likened to ‘evil’ — one need not look further than Diwali, “Festival of Lights” — the victory of good over evil, light over dark. Even Hindu Gods are depicted as light-skinned contrary to texts that write about their androgyny and darker tones.

The persistent importance given to ‘lightness’ and ‘light-skin’ is not just Indian culture but across the world. The global economy of whiteness employs fairness creams that exacerbate and thrive on the kind of racism that privileges light skin over dark and you will even find them in markets across the Middle East and Northern Africa, in villages of Southern African countries and beyond.
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Selling out the L – Product Placement on Premium Networks

// August 10th, 2008 // No Comments » // All things LGBT

Capitalism strikes again and this time quite close to home.

Whoring our community out to brand names so that inhumane corporations like Nike can “improve their image” and “capture new markets” while continuing their horrendous policies worldwide is absolutely not responsible. It’s degrading and dehumanizing when actual people are reduced to mere consumers to be used, played and discarded in order for a few at the top to make profits.

I recognize that The L word is in itself, a product made for the mass consumerism, a cultural artifact that is sold to us by centrally controlled media industries. Yet, we desperately need to draw a line between mainstream exposure and visibility on one hand and making the L Word and Ourchart.com into spaces for “friction-free capitalism” that proliferates and exacerbates the problem of commodity fetishism.

Don’t be fooled that this is for the benefit of the show– it isn’t. It is simply a way for Showtime to start making $$$ through “ads” discretely but not having commercial breaks. No–they will just desecrate thecontent of the show instead. Premium subscribers to networks like Showtime have been able to escape “ads” so far and NOW they will mix advertisement with the actual CONTENT of the show putting us at more of a disadvantage than cable customers who can at least use their DVRs and TIVOs to fast-forward through them.

What’s next for us? We already have bad plots and storylines; lets turn the L-word completely into a joke and “really” start selling commodities besides the sex that we already sell.

In other news, Sharleen Spitteri’s Don’t Keep Me Waiting from her album Melody, was chosen for the soundtrack. See here.

And this is the final package art for the S5 DVDs. Go and grab!

The L Word - The Complete 5th Season box art