TRANSCRIPT OF MAUREEN PRIMERANO INTERVIEW OF KALLE LASSEN REGARDING MEDIA

NEW PARADIGMS May 14, 1998


Hello and welcome.
Maureen: I'm Maureen Primerano, host of New Paradigms. This evening my guest is Kalle Lasn, publisher and editor of the Canadian magazine, Ad Busters, published by the media foundation, a global network of writers, artists, educators and others who want to build the new social activist movement of the information age. And as a way to commence the show I want to first set things in motion by offering a bit of background concerning advertising as well as some information about my guest. The power of advertising lies in it's ability to photographically frame and redefine our meanings and experiences, and then turn them into meanings that are continent with corporate interests. It has frequently been said by televisions critics that T.V. doesn't deliver a product to viewers but that viewers themselves are the real product, one that T.V. delivers to its advertisers. Since World War II the advertising industry has carried out one of the most massive experiments in programming the human psyche. The advertising culture has succeeded in creating. identity consumption, a sense that our meaning in life depends upon the significance of what we consume. As Paul Bergen illustrates in his book, Ways of Seeing, all publicity works upon anxiety. Alternatively, the anxiety in which publicity plays is the fear that having nothing, you will be nothing. It is crucial to recognize that advertising bears little or no relationship to items and even less to the companies which make them. For example, General Electric ran ads that sang quote "We are the good things" end of quote. When in truth they make bad things like parts to nuclear weapons. Victor Lebou, a retail analyst who promoted consumption as essential to our economy in the post-war period, was lucid about this. He stated, quote "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life., that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, warn out, replaced and discarded at an ever increasing rate" end of quote. It seems people are having a very hard time separating their sense of spiritual identity from their consumer identity; and there is a conscious blending of the two, by advertisers, to make it appear as though our spiritual or soulful substance is manifest in our consumption. Bare in mind, the average north American is bombarded by approximately three-thousand marketing messages per day, hawking everything from sneakers to automobiles and fostering pacivity among the population. In response to this ocean of advertisements, Kalle Lasn (founder of the Vancouver based Media Foundation and the quarterly magazine, Ad Busters, as well as the alternative ad agency, Power Shift) has been tirelessly working to beat the advertising industry at their own game. He is among the first to incorporate traditional marketing procedures as a way to help set new agendas and get serious messages across. And now, here is a little information about Kalle Lasn. Kalle Lasn is a former independent film maker. He is the founder of the Media Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to a revolution in world media. Kalle Lasn is publisher and editor of Ad Busters, the satirical anti-commercial magazine which was started in 1989. And while living in Japan he helped create one of the first market analysis software programs and with thirty years of experience in advertising he is one of the first to employ traditional marketing methods which target products then they damage a persons physical or psychological environment. And I believe we have our guest Kalle Lasn waiting on the phone. Good Evening Kalle.

Kalle: Oh. Good Evening.

Maureen: It is a pleasure that you could join us this evening.

Kalle: Oh. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Maureen: Well, thank you. I thought, for starters Kalle, you could tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, how you came to become involved in anti-advertising since you were involved with regular advertising for so long. What was the impetuous to make the transition?

Kalle: Well, first of all when I was a young man living in Tokyo, Japan I worked with the ad industry there doing market research for them for a few years. At the time I was a young guy and I was very proud to be working for the first time in my life and getting a salary and being part of this business community. But I got disillusioned very quickly, because people that I met in the industry they were kind of lame; they drank a lot and had a bit of fun, I guess, but they, they were sort of ethically neutral. They did'nt really care whether they were advertising or designing campaigns for diapers or for Coca-Cola or for cigarettes. It was all the same to them. So already, when I was very young, a kind of disillusionment set in there about this three-hundred billion dollar a year advertising industry. And then, when I immigrated to Canada in 19701 got involved in making experimental short films. I remember making a one minute film and trying to buy air time for it at at the CBC station here in Vancouver. I was totally bowled over when they refused to sell me the air time. Yes, so this was actually the big seminal moment in my life when 1, when I realized that there is really no democracy in the mass media.That only certain kinds of messages are allowed on. Ever since then I have been using my knowledge about advertising and film making to come up with these advertisements and uncommercials, and various other culture jamming techniques.

Maureen: Yes. The first ad that you made, wasn't that regarding the forest issues?

Kalle: That's right.

Maureen: Yes.

Kalle: There was, about six or seven years ago there was a campaign here called forests forever. And it was a six million dollar campaign put on by the forest industry of, of British Columbia. You know, you sit down at night and switch on your T.V. and out would come these ads, every night, telling us what a wonderful job the forest industry is doing in managing our forests. Of course, I and every other environmentalist in the province knew that this, this was just disinformation. It was blatant lies, that in fact, most of the good old growth forests have already been cut down. So again, we came up with our our counter ad that tried to tell what's really happening in the forests and again nobody would sell us the air time. We were not asking for PSA time or freebies. We wanted to buy air time under the same rules as the other people buy air time. But those very same stations who were selling millions of dollars worth of air time to the forests forever campaign refused to sell us even one lousy little thirty second spot.

Maureen: Right. Yeah, there is a lot of environmental advertising and brainwashing going on.. And that really seemed to accelerate in the '80s. Yeah. I was wondering Kalle, how, in your view, did we get to the point where possessing things has become so vital to people. What do you think it is fulfilling in their lives?

Kalle: Well, you know, this is a very, very complex question. That's what really, what culture jamming is all about - the realization that our culture has now become a consumer culture and that this consumer culture is, is unsustainable and it will eventually lead us to disaster - create untenable situations for future generations. So,I think that there have been many a confluence of all kinds of interlocking reasons. But I think the main reason is that for some crazy reason we gave the public airwaves to the sponsors. We somehow ceded control of our societies information delivery systems to advertisers. And repeatedly over the last (well ever since television started, you know, thirty fourty years ago) the public interest component of television and the rest of the mass media has slowly eroded way, and the commercial interest has triumphed to the point where television and to a large degree radio, and increasingly even, even magazines and cyber space and newspapers. They are mass merchandising tools, as you said in your initial speech. The advertisers that are broadcasters and so on, they are in the business of selling our attention spans to the, you know, to the highest bidders of the ad wars. And once you cede control of societies information delivery systems, then you've lost all control. Theen, somehow, they're able to pump consumption messages into your brain at an incredible rate. And if you grow up in that kind of a culture then you finish up being a consumer in good standing You are sort of, you're sort of invited into their consumer cult and there is very little you can do about it.

Maureen: Umm. Hmm. It is important to remind people that the airwaves do not belong to the broadcasters. It is the property of the people and I, I think that gets over looked a lot.

Kall: Yes. Most people aren't, they ... well, the word public airwaves is well used; but people don't seem to realize that those airwaves actually do belong to us and they are leased out by the FCC in United States, in your country and by an organization called the CRTC here in, in Canada for five to seven year periods to the broadcasters. And, according to the communications act and broadcasting acts, they are supposed to live up to the public interest. But somehow the FCC is really part of the problem now and they don't really regulate the airwaves and do the right thing. Basically, we've allowed our airwaves to slip out of democratic control now.

Maureen: Now a question that comes up for me is whether a T.V. system that only serves, really, the market driven economy can adequately market democratic values. Kalle Lasn: Well, I've no problem with the market place. But I think that we are always talking about the market place for cars and the market place for jeans and all kinds of other things, but we never talk about the market place of ideas.

Kalle: So, I would dearly love to see a sufficiently functioning marketplace of ideas where, you know, I was allowed on with my anti-car spots and then I could run them right next to a Nissan or a Toyota or a Ford ad if I felt like it. And at the moment ... We actually, made a one minute spot that tried to, that we tried to air during the GAD economic summit that is coming up this weekend.

Maureen: Yes.

Kalle: And you know, for the umpteenth time in a row ABC and CBS and NBC networks, the big three networks in New York, they refuse to sell us air time for our spot. So even when it comes to the most crucial issues of our time - the way our leaders are running the global economy and when the people want to speak back and say something, then they are actually not allowed on the air because well, for whatever reason, they just don't like it.

Maureen: Right. So. What are you doing to respond to the refusal?

Kalle: Well, every time we come up with a T.V. spot we are rejected by a television network. Then we put out press releases we, basically, try to get the word and do a kind of a media literacy education for the population to let them know how their airwaves are really being run. Because, as you know, most people aren't really aware of the fact. They think that if, well, if you have the money then

Maureen: Right.

Kalle: Then you can just walk into a T.V. station and plunk your money on the table and buy your thirty seconds. But that is not the case. So we, over the last eight years, I think we have awakened a lot of people as to how their airwaves are being managed. And we actually do manage to buy some air time such as this G8 spot that we came up with. We managed to buy two one minute slots on the CNN headline news. And, so there are a few stations who will sell us the air time, but by-in-large the big networks usually say no. Maureen: Yes. And Kalle, I know from reading adjusters over the years, you have challenged one of north America's oldest magazines, Harpers, regarding its acceptance of tobacco advertising. And you have a wonderful counter ad the Joe Chemo ad, which shows a young mascot of a camel cigarette completely bald and evidently from chemotherapy..

Kalle: Yes. (chuckle)

Maureen: (chuckle) Hooked to an IV in a hospital bed.

Kalle Lasn: Yes. (chuckle)

Maureen: And it is a really wonderful, wonderful ad. Have you been successful in getting that out there?

Kalle: Yeah, we try to buy a double page spread in Harpers magazine for that ad, but they wanted to have nine-thousand dollars and we weren't quite able to muster the money. But that particular ad parody actually has had a very wide distribution, some schools systems in Washington state and in California have bought tens of thousands of posters of that Joe Chemo and they have put them throughout the whole school system, and old Joe Chemo he does look very, very pathetic there and I am sure that anybody who sees that poster will think twice about

Maureen: It speaks volumes.

Kalle: About.... Yes.

Maureen: Yes.

Kalle: Also I should tell you that the other thing we do, when T.V. stations refuse to sell us air time is we take them to court.

Maureen: Yes, I know.

Kalle: We in Canada have Canadian charter legal actions that are still unfolding against some networks here. And over the last few years we've been desperately looking for a lawyer in the United States to take up a First Amendment legal action against the big three networks who have routinely and consistently refused to sell us any air time for eight years now.

Maureen: Yes, this is essentially a first amendment right, which I am a strong believer in. You know, free speech.

Kalle: Yes, there is a lot of talk about the first amendment when Philip Morris is
somehow thwarted from their ads. But when it comes to citizens actually walking into their stations and wanting to buy air time for some provocative social marketing message then they usually get nowhere.

Maureen: What is your perspective of the media these days. In particular this separation between news and entertainment, which seems to get more and more blurred.

Kalle: Yes.

Maureen: And how do you respond to that? Do you think people are able to decipher between what is real news, substantial news, and what is just entertainment or fluff?

Kalle: Well, I think, by-in-large, we (especially young people today) are very media savvy. People, I think they are pretty astute and they can tell the difference, but I don't... You know, I think the real problem is that if you have as many as three-thousand of those marketing messages coming at you. If the whole of T.V. is literally peppered with commercial messages and product placements, and if there is a tremendous pressure on a T.V. stations to come up with even programming that is nice for the sponsors to put their ads on, then somehow everything somehow gets dumbed down. And then, yes I do, I think eventually the issues do get lost. I think there is a dumbing down of America and a dumbing down of Canada happening right now. And that is the inevitable result of the commercialization of our media. So, until we somehow seize back democratic control of the airwaves again we will continue to have this kind of fluffy, do goody, soft pedaling kind of commercial fluffiness in our mental environment.

Maureen: Right. Not wanting to puncture the happy mood.

Kalle: Yes. I mean, for example that G8 summit spot that we just came up with, I wasn't able to buy air time on the big three for a very, very hard hitting spot that actually asks the audience, you know, is economic progress killing the planet?

Maureen: Yes.

Kalle: And it ends up by saying stop the ecocide. It is a very, very edgy hard hitting spot and in that kind of do goody climate of commercial T.V. broadcasting today, it stands out. If you know, when it's broadcast on, CNN I'm sure it will turn a few heads. But it doesn't fit into this commercial fluff. Yes, or the really heavy duty questions that we have to ask ourselves tend to get lost in the endless clutter that is urging us to buy more and more and more.

Maureen: Right. I was also really taken with the ad that you had, this was quite a while ago, with the muscle hustle. The the beef industry. It's really great frank talk. It says, while you are outside flipping, the meat the beef industry is inside your pants rolling your sperm count. There is nothing virile about cancer of the bowel and nothing masculine about eating farm animals. Don't buy the bull.

Kalle: Right.

Maureen: That's really, you know, very provocative and really right to the point.

Kalle: Yes, well when it comes to the main areas of our lives like food and getting around, you know, usually with cars. And when it comes to fashion and all these areas of our life, in all those areas if we had messages like that, messages that somehow didn't swallow the sponsors nutritional agendas and, and the sponsors way of looking at our bodies and our fashion and the sponsors way of looking at transportation and we started speaking back at those sponsors (and we had the first amendment right to speak back against those sponsors) then I think we could really start reinventing the American dream and reinventing our culture.

Maureen: Right. That is why it is really vital that we get into the schools and media literacy curriculums are being developed and I know that there are some kids and people are getting out into the communities and helping children. Because I think it is really important that children start to be able to look at things in a critical way and....

Kalle: Yes.

Maureen: Dissect what is being given to them, you know, so they can separate fact from myth.

Kalle: Absolutely. Yes. Without a media literate population, you know, we are not going to get anywhere. But, also, at the same time.I think education is a big solution to the problem. But I think an even bigger solution to the problem is for us to learn how to rage again, a little bit. When you are not able to buy air time on the most powerful social communications medium of our time, which is television, and some how it is just an issue that nobody really cares about and we are all running around in our cars, or whatever, and watching out TVs for four ours every night. You know, once we can't find a little bit of rage about the fact that there is no democracy on the airwaves, then we are not going to get anywhere either, no matter how well we educate our children.

Maureen: Right, it takes some action.

Kalle: It takes action.

Maureen: Yes. And speaking of action, Kalle, how can people, on an individual level, respond to this issue? What can they do? Perhaps get some advertisements in small local newspapers or make up some story boards and get them out? That might be a. start.

Kalle: Yes, I think that the people should start using the mass media and not leave it totally up to the sponsors to spoon feed us. So, whether it is liberating a billboard or buying space on a billboard yourself. What I am saying is to learn some basic culture jamming techniques and start speaking back at those sponsors of our lives. There are so many wonderful, powerful, effective and fun ways to do that.

Maureen: Yes. One of the things I wanted to mention is, again with youth, predatory advertising campaigns that target young people, particularly economically disadvantaged people who might be seeing billboards all the time regarding cigarettes or alcohol. It seems to me we really need to clarify and redefine the American way, the American Dream. I know I was brought up (and I think I can speak for a lot of people) to think that to be successful .... you have your two cars, you have a house, you have land, you have kind of made it. I, myself, rejected all of that. But a lot of people think you are weird if you don't want all those material things.

Kalle: Yes, well, I think you are right. The American dream is now unsustainable and dysfunctional and it should be jettisoned by all of us. It is going to take, of course, many generations to reinvent the American dream. And one way to approach it is to realize that the American dream is actually a very rigid kind of lifestyle. It is kind of like a robotic consumer, always trying to make more money to buy more things and you are never quite satisfied. People who live the current American dream, they tend to be very rigid types, usually. Whereas the people who have downshifted or have simplified their lives, they seem to be more spontaneous and more real somehow. So if there is one thing that is more powerful than consumption I think that it is spontaneity and authenticity.

Maureen: Yes, an internal sense of well-being.

Kalle: Yes.

Maureen: It seems that a lot of people are trying to constantly stuff themselves with outside things to make themselves feel good and it never can work because it is just all stuff.

Kalle: Sure and there is also a large fear factor involved. To pullout of the American dream is a very fearful thing to do for a lot of people - to somehow say, well I am not going to worry about it. I am going to get rid of my car or I am going to downshift and just live more frugally. It is a scary thing to do for a lot of people who have been part of this consumer cult that all their lives has told them that the way to success is exactly the opposite of that.

Maureen: Right, it is like facing a lie. You know, a lot of people have a hard time seeing that a lot of things they have been told all their lives are nothing but lies.

Kalle: Sure, and the cult with three-thousand marketing messages a day coming at you every day of your life from the moment you are crawling around the TV set as a baby right down to the time you are an eighty year old person in an old folks home.

Maureen: Right.

Kalle: That is an incredible amount of conditioning you know. And very, very few people can actually resist it.

Maureen: Let me just reintroduce the show Kalle. I am Maureen Primerano. You are listening to New Paradigms. My guest this evening is Kalle Lassen. He is founder of the media foundation and publisher and editor of Add Busters magazine. And speaking a little bit more about youth, one of the things that I, myself, am very distressed about is the food industry - how they have launched a such a clever and successful campaign, portraying it as an ally to burdened parents. You know, offering all kinds of junk food and snacks like Loony Tunes, or even the snuff. That is another thing, to get kids addicted to nicotine at a very young age, the fruit flavored snuff. And then industry waits for them to graduate to smoking cigarettes.

Kalle: Yes, well, in each of these areas of our life they set a transportation agenda, they set the nutritional agenda. The large corporations are setting our fashion and bodily agendas. So, yes, it is a question. These problems, I think we have to address them on that very large level and I think that if we go up against Monsanto or Mac Donald's or some food company on some micro level, you know, arguing with them about the snuff or about the junk foods or the chemicals or whatever; then I think this may the wrong way to go. Of course, we have to do it to some degree, but ultimately we are not going to get anywhere because we are just arguing with them about their products and the micro things they do. What we should realize is that we should start asking the companies why they are setting this kind of a dysfunctional nutritional agenda for our children. We should be asking them whether we even need a MacDonald's in our neighborhood. We should be asking ourselves whether we should kick some of these corporations out of our communities or out of our areas. We should take on large attitudes towards this problem and realize that corporations are actually abstract entities that we ourselves created? And why have we allowed these entities to suddenly get bigger than us and start telling us what to do.

Maureen: Right, control our lives.

Kalle: This doesn't make sense and we have to turn the tables on the corporations.

Maureen: Right. We are the who really have the power.

Kalle: We should have the power and if we have lost it then why? Why hasn't there been a single corporate charter evoked for a hundred years in the United States. A company like Philip Morris, it is arguably the worse corporation in the history of humanity. I mean, we should be revoking that companies charter rather than making it pay a few hundred billion dollars in fines.

Maureen: Right, that is just a slap on the wrist to a company like that.

Kalle: Ultimately, that is all it is. And it tells people, it gives people a message that corporations can literally get away with murder.

Maureen: Right, that they rule and then people just sit back and think that they do not have the power. Yes, It really has a psychologically numbing effect on a lot of people. Kalle Lasn: Sure. If we were able to revoke Philip Morris' charter then that would send a chill down the spine of corporate America.
Maureen: Positively.

Kalle: It would change everything. It would change the way we think and relate to corporations.

Maureen: One of the things, too, that is important to realize is that there is no relationship between the image and the item that advertisers are pushing. People might see sneakers, for instance, with a celebrity like Michael Jordan and it is hard not to think that you might be walking in the shadow of something great when you see him. You know, and people put on a pair of sneakers and think that they are a phenomenon, or ballet slippers or something and think that they are a dancer. It has this magical thinking quality that takes place all the time in advertising and people really need to be able to see that.

Kalle: Yes. Well, our society, our culture today has lost a lot of its traditional values and the old values of the spirituality like the churches and the schools and the elders. They have all lost their power. So now, I think a lot of us (especially young people) are thirsting for some kind of values. And, you know, they find them in brands. You know, somebody, some young dude who is wearing Nike swoosh on his cap, it just makes him feel cool. So, branding is, right now, one of the most powerful marketing tools that the large companies use. And literally, they attach emotional values to their brand and you are not so much buying sneakers are you are buying an attitude.

Maureen: Right, like you're unique or different because you are wearing Nikes or Reboks.

Kalle: Yes, and if you don't have them then suddenly you feel insecure. If you are wearing some sneakers that are cheap sneakers and they don't have any cool brand associated with them and your friend over there is wearing Nikes then all of a sudden you loose your confidence. You somehow feel inadequate and you go home and figure out a way how you can get Nikes too.

Maureen: Right. There is also another thing that goes on -flattery and empowerment themes in ads - that manipulate people. And these are targeted a lot towards women, with hair products or perfumes or anything whether it be detergent or cleaning things to make women feel as though they really need this. And it is really demeaning to women, some of these ads. But they might not, at first, realize it because it can sound almost like poetry.

Kalle: Sure. And they really do'their homework when a large corporation like
Proctor and Gamble comes up with one of these soap ads. I mean, they invest millions of dollars in focus groups and they get some of the best artists in the land to come up with concepts and they test it out on the audience before they actually start airing it. So by the time you see it on television it is something that is guaranteed to press your emotional buttons.

Maureen: Yes, and it does because the fear of having fly away hair or not being able to see your halo in the mirror or reflection in the dinner plate, people will run out and buy that detergent.

Kalle: Yes, next time they are at the supermarket it will just have a glow around it.

Maureen: I wanted to add something. We do need to examine our part in helping to trivialize our culture by participating in consuming. You know, we need to examine. Do we really need this? What need is it serving? Is it something that we could do without? Do we need that other car? Does it have to be a new car? You know, there are a lot of questions, before we buy something, that we need to ask.

Kalle: Yes, well that is the personal front then. It is probably the most important of the fronts. But there are many other fronts that we can also work on. Lets also do some TV liberating and escalate this kind of talking back at our culture which more and more people are realizing is unsustainable and dysfunctional. Let's change it. Let's reinvent our culture.

Maureen: Right. So, Kalle, do you have any closing thoughts. How can people get active and help you shift paradigms.

Kalle: Well, I think I have pretty well said everything I can. I think that we should all try to develop spontaneous, less rigid attitudes and start thinking about TV stations and corporations in a different way and not be so intimidated by them and demand our rights and go for it.

Maureen: Do you want to give the phone number of Ad Busters and the address so that if people want to get in touch or subscribe to the magazine, which I definitely would encourage them to do; it is a wonderful magazine.

Kalle: The best way to phone us is to phone our 800 number which is 1-800-6631243. And for people who are on the net you can go to www.adbusters.org.

Maureen: Well, thank you so much for joining us Kalle. It's been great.

Kalle: Well, I enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

Maureen: Thank you. Take care. And may be we can get you back on again sometime in the future.

Kalle: O.K. That would be great.

Maureen: O.K. Take care now.

Kalle: Bye. Bye.

Maureen: See you on the airwaves. Thanks a lot for listening. Take care and goodnight. Music up