Bike lane graphics (via itsalex: seanbonner)
The philosophy behind much advertising is based on the old observation that every man is really two men — the man he is and the man he wants to be
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| — | William Feather, quoted in this story about Alex Bogusky. |
For marketers, memes sound-check the microphone and PA system of the internet in preparation for the commercial messages it will be expected to carry; they also allow a census to be taken of what sort of people are listening. Proven memes serve as a marketable demonstration of pure influence, abstracted from the relevance or utility of the message. So in other words, a meme is a pure, formal expression of marketing potentiality.
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| — | Memes and marketing PopMatters |
Marketing is the destruction of meaning (always contingent and personal) in favor of meaningfulness, a seemingly transcendent quality that masks the pressures of persuasion. At best, meaningfulness is our understanding of meanings that could be ascribed to certain things without our having intuited or experienced them ourselves. It is the sense that others might ascribe those meaningful experiences to us.
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| — | The Problem with Reflexive Authenticity PopMatters |
