September 25th, 2009
This new ad for the recent extension of the Hong Kong MTR’s West Rail Line, which now runs from Tsim Sha Tsui all the way out to Tuen Mun, via the farm fields, housing estates and wife cakes of Yuen Long, straddles a line between parallel traditions of public transit advertising: the earnest and the bizarre.
While it does a pretty straightforward job of depicting all of the places linked by the West Rail Line, the ad uses multi-coloured rings as a visual and narrative device to link everything together. I’m not really sure what the rings are meant to represent (stations? transfer points?) but it’s a cute concept.
Popularity: 2% [?]
August 6th, 2009
It’s got nothing on Il fait beau dans l’métro, but this 1985 TV spot certainly ranks up there in the pantheon of kitschy transit ads. What kind of bugs me about it is that the metro is taking this very fashionable couple from their living room to a restaurant and a swimming pool, yet they choose to get off and hop on a bus driven by some creepy moustachioed uncle with a twangy accent. What gives?
Popularity: 9% [?]
May 17th, 2009
This is what makes ghost ads in Montreal more interesting than in most places: more than just a window into the past, they reveal the city’s linguistic geography, past and present. Here we have two examples of early-twentieth-century tobacco ads revealed by recent building demolitions. One, on east-end Masson Street in Rosemont, is in French. The other, on west-end Sherbrooke Street in NDG, is in English. It’s a pretty straightforward illustration of Montreal’s linguistic divisions, which exist to this day — you’re far more likely to hear English spoken in western NDG than French, and the opposite holds true in Rosemont.
Of course, there’s more than just linguistic history that can be gleaned from these old ads. Turret Cigarettes were produced by Imperial Tobacco in St. Henri, about four or five kilometres from the ad in NDG, and they were marketed as the poker-player’s cigarettes of choice. Enough boxes of Turret made you eligible to redeem a deck of playing cards from Imperial Tobacco’s warehouse in the present-day Gay Village — hence the seemingly cryptic slogan, “Save the Poker Hands.”
Old Chum, meanwhile, was a brand of pipe tobacco, also produced by Imperial, that was popular with the tobacco charities run by La Presse and The Gazette. The tobacco charities raised money to provide tobacco to Canadian soldiers fighting in the first world war. After troops complained of being given inferior tobacco, The Gazette commissioned Imperial to produce packages of Old Chum specifically for the troops. Smoking became a patriotic activity promoted by both the French and English press.
Top photo by xbourque; bottom photo by Guillaume St-Jean
Popularity: 2% [?]
May 8th, 2008
For some reason, I’d never really considered how and where Hong Kong’s taxicabs are plastered with advertising, so I was somewhat amused to wander into a group of guys doing just that in an out-of-the-way part of the North Point waterfront.
Popularity: unranked [?]
January 30th, 2008
I’ve already written about transit ads in Montreal, Paris and Milwaukee. Now it’s time for Hong Kong.
With several competing bus companies and a metro system that is constantly being expanded, Hong Kong is in many ways a public transit user’s paradise. That can be seen in the regularity with which the company that runs its metro system, the MTR, advertises its services. Unlike many North American transit agencies, the MTR doesn’t take its riders for granted: every year sees new advertising campaigns geared at reminding Hong Kongers that taking transit is the right way to go.
Those ads are, in many ways, a reflection of Hong Kong. Take the one above for example. Set on an apartment building roof, it portrays the classic child’s game of “traffic lights,” which involves a cast of people who try to sneak up on a man who isn’t looking. When he turns around, they must freeze or else they’re out of the game. Before yelling “stop,” the man gives them a warning sound — “Doot doot doot! Doot doot doot!” — which is, of course, the sound the MTR’s doors make before closing. The message of the advertisement? Stand clear of the train’s doors when they close.
It’s an odd mix of passive promotion (the MTR doesn’t even sell us on its services, it just reminds us that they exist), local culture (all of the people in the ad are Hong Kong stereotypes, from the old man holding bird cages to the see lai housewife) and public service announcement (a love of which Hong Kong seems to have inherited from the British). I don’t think you would ever see an ad like this anywhere else.
More
Popularity: 3% [?]
December 20th, 2007
Montreal has eight American Apparel locations, more than any other city but New York and LA, but our streets are devoid of the company’s notorious advertisements, except for those on the stores’ façades themselves. (The back pages of our weekly newspapers, however, are another story.)
In New York, though, American Apparel has made a mark with frequently-changing billboards that feature the kinds of ads that have made it so infamous: young-looking hipsters, clad to various degrees in the company’s clothes, shot in unflattering light and in a variety of pseudo-pornographic poses. (If you still haven’t seen any of the ads, American Apparel has some of the tamer ones on its website, along with photo galleries of its models.)
Lately, there has been a sort of backlash against American Apparel. Earlier this year, a series of ads at the corner of Allen and Houston, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, raised the ire of some nearby residents. The first, described by one blog as a “leotard-and-knee high socks beaver shot,” came in the early spring. Then, over the summer, it was replaced by a new billboard advertising tights, its topless model visible only from behind, bum thrust outwards. By the end of October, it had been defaced with neon green paint and the inscription: “Gee, I wonder why women get raped?” Shortly thereafter, in early November, a paste-up appeared on a SoHo street lampooning a 2005 American Apparel tube sock ad.
I can’t help but find myself amused by the consternation over American Apparel’s advertising. For the most part, it is no more revealing or exploitative than most other fashion ads; the difference is that American Apparel’s provocation is cheeky and only half-serious. It takes typical fashion advertising and strips it of all pretence and glamour, reducing it to its bare sex-driven essence. American Apparel’s ads are vulgar, and they’re certainly brash, but at least they’re honest in their intentions. They don’t dance around the fact that they are using tits and ass (and other things, too) to sell fabric. At least its models are human-looking, unlike the hairless androids often featured by other companies.
American Apparel’s other, non-sexploitative marketing efforts suggests that the company has a pretty good sense of humour, too. In May, at the corner of Houston and Allen, it took a break from crotch shot billboards to run an ad featuring Woody Allen, from a scene in his 1977 film Annie Hall, dressed as a Hasid. It was accompanied by the Yiddish phrase der heyliker rebe, “the holy rabbi.” When asked about the ad, which only lasted for a few days, American Apparel’s representatives would only say that they view Woody Allen as their “spiritual leader.”
On American Apparel’s website, the company declares its devotion to “people, places and things that surround us” with photos of everyday streetlife in Hong Kong, signs in Montreal and mid-century architecture like Habitat ‘67. (Sound familiar?) This is a company with a heightened awareness of kitsch, and a passion for kitsch is what is driving a large part of our current urban culture. That might explain why, even though many people seem repulsed by American Apparel, even more are attracted to it.
Popularity: 21% [?]
October 15th, 2007
Posted
in
Uncategorized by
Christopher DeWolf
(I first posted about Il fait beau dans l’métro last April. Today, an article was published with a more in-depth look at the advertisement.)
A troupe of exuberant dancers isn’t what most commuters expect when they descend into the métro. But there they were, in Il fait beau dans l’métro, an iconic 1976 television advertisement that was a triumph of public transit geekery, gaudy fashion and vintage Québécois kitsch.
The advertisement opens with the familiar sight of a métro car entering Atwater station. A troupe of lively dancers jumps out, singing, “Il fait beau dans l’métro, tout le monde est gai, tout le monde a le coeur au soleil.” The métro’s distinctive three-tone chime – created by air rushing out of the brakes when trains leave the station – is incorporated into the tune.
You would think that this ad would be long forgotten. In the last year, however, Il fait beau dans l’métro has won a new generation of fans online, part of a burgeoning trend of nostalgia for public transit imagery and pop culture kitsch from the 1960s and ’70s.
The ad has racked up more than 100,000 views on YouTube and it has been featured on most of Montreal’s most widely read blogs. On Facebook, a group devoted to the ad has attracted close to 600 members.
Andrew Martin and Michael Baillargeon, undergraduate students at McGill University, created the Facebook group this year.
“I am a rapid-transit nerd, with interests in advertising, musicals, and costumes, so naturally I became an instant fan of the clip,” said Martin.
“It was Michael who took the initiative to start the Facebook group. Part of the original intention was to get a group of people to go down and reenact the ad. Sadly, to my knowledge, this has yet to take place.”
More
Popularity: 15% [?]
June 20th, 2007
When I think of George Takei, I think about a couple of his two most famous roles: that of Hikaru Sulu, the helmsman of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise, and that of gay rights and Asian-American activist. Spokesperson for Milwaukee public transit does not necessarily come to mind.
But, sure enough, after my last post on strange public transit advertisements, a regular reader directed me to this 1980s ad featuring Mr. Sulu extolling the virtues of Milwaukee County Transit. “When I’m out in space, I use the Starship Enterprise to get around. When I’m here in Milwaukee, I ride the bus to save time and money,” he says in his characteristically rich baritone before beaming off to points unknown.
This, of course, raises a couple of vital questions such as, When are you ever in Milwaukee, George Takei? and, Were you really so broke that you were forced to do ads for public transit in Milwaukee, George Takei? I’ve heard good things about Milwaukee but its bus system wasn’t one of them.
Naturally, I was curious to find out why such a well-known actor would bother to participate in such a hokey promotion for what must be one of the least important public transit companies in North America. Takei doesn’t seem to have family or personal connections to Milwaukee: he was born in Los Angeles and has spent his entire life in California. He didn’t seem to have any post-Star Trek period of cocaine-fuelled desperation, which rules out that possibility.
More
Popularity: 2% [?]
April 22nd, 2007
Watching these old advertisements—one from the 1980s for the Paris metro and another from the 1970s for the Montreal metro—leave me with mixed feelings. My initial reaction is to ridicule them for their kitschiness (or kétainerie, as one might say here in Quebec) but, at the same time, I feel a slight pang of regret that public transit agencies can no longer afford to buy television air time, especially not for an entire minute. Wouldn’t the Montreal Transit Corporation benefit from more of a brand identity? Public transit doesn’t need to be anonymous, the public made aware of its services solely by necessity.
Anyway, the strangest thing about the first Paris ad is its ridiculous soundtrack, which consists of a man singing things like “tic tac toc, tata clica clic” and background vocalists replying with “tata clica clac, tata clica clac, tika tika toc.” I have no idea what this is meant to represent, but this kind of gibberish actually seems to go well with the ad, complimenting a fairly striking—but goofy—set of images, linked together by the image of a yellow ticket bisected by a brown magnetic stripe. (Update: a reader with clearer ears than mine reports that “tata clica clic” is actually “t’as le ticket clic,” which makes more sense.) My favourite image is that of a striped Eiffel Tower passing behind the silhouette of a man wearing a beret, which not only evokes two of the biggest Paris stereotypes you can imagine, but also suggests either sex (swallowing a giant yellow penis) or violence (being impaled by a giant yellow dagger).
On the whole, the Paris ad is a bit more sophisticated than its early-1970s counterpart in Montreal, entitled “Il fait beau dans l’métro.” I enjoy it because it is a perfect embodiment of the seventies aesthetic: long hair, big moustaches, and bold primary colours. I also love that the music is based around the three-tone chime emitted by the metro’s brake system when it leaves a station.
More
Popularity: 22% [?]
Montreal Apartments