Slamming Ad Culture

This year's fourth annual Schmio Awards -- the mock awards ceremony slamming the advertising industry -- was feisty, naughty and wise. It dealt both a comic sendup and a searing political critique to the ad world, whose own award extravaganza, the Clios, was also held in New York City in April.

"Let's Kick Ads" read the Schmio event poster featuring Reverend Billy, a New York performance artist, and his choir. Rev. Billy's troop is known for delivering kamikaze-like sermons on the evils of commercialism in places like Warner Brothers' superstore. The Reverend awarded a Schmio to Starbucks for "ubiquity" and for their penchant to stiff the South American coffee growers who supply them. "Schmio on you, Starbucks!" shouted the Rev. Billy, who with his pompadour, white suit and clerical collar looked part Elvis, part Jim Baker.

Rev. Billy's wildly bewigged choir stirred up the 450-member audience with a call-and-response chant of "Schmi-oooo!," while the Reverend promised to personally deliver a Schmio to all 101 Starbucks on the island of Manhattan. It seems Starbuck's heard the shouting. Within a few days, under pressure from the international human rights organization Global Exchange, Starbuck's agreed to sell "fair trade" coffee (coffee grown under fair labor conditions) in all their stores. Apparently, Starbuck's PR people did not like the idea of a global boycott nor were they pleased by the sound of "sweatshop" coffee, the term used by Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin at Starbuck's annual shareholders meeting.

Lest you get the impression that the Schmios was just one rollicking guerrilla theater, much serious critique of the ad business was offered. Media heavies such as Ralph Nader, Arianna Huffington, Neil Postman, Amy Goodman and Lewis Lapham took their turn at the podium.

Postman, author of numerous books on the media business, provided the evening's most serious note, honoring Ralph Nader with the first Herbert I. Schiller Award for work against commercial power. Nader, who is garnering significant attention as he travels around the country as the Green Party candidate for president, accepted the award with a blistering critique of commercial society. He described a culture where "kids grow up with a corporate mentality instead of a civic one," resulting in "a nation of spectators and gazers." Nader mentioned that Nike had approached him to do an ad for $25,000, ostensibly to capitalize on his independent image. When he refused, Nader said, Nike got Spike Lee to do the ad.

The Schmios are designed to get the audience to "see" what they often miss: ads fraught with disturbing implications; ads crafted to tickle the senses and get us to nod in consent. When we say, "Yikes, that's so sexist!" we learn at the Schmios that is just what advertisers want. What the Schmios do best is pull ads out of their context and make the viewer take a second look, a process that reveals how ads influence people's cultural politics.

Presenter Arianna Huffington offered perhaps the best advice for fending off creeping commercialism. In a pre-show interview, she said, "Get a life for a start. Life is not about shopping."

There were positive Schmios presented too -- awards for those doing good work in the world of media literacy. One of them was presented by Huffington to Commercial Alert, a coalition that fights such ventures as Channel One, which provides advertising-laden television programming to students, and ZapMe!, an Internet company that provides students online access in exchange for information about their consumer interests. (ZapMe! also won its own Schmio for the commercialization of education.)

Presenting the awards, Huffington imagined a dystopic future of logo-bearing sandboxes and school children subject to endless polls. And she couldn't resist the opportunity to educate the audience on her favorite topic -- the drugging of school children. Huffington cited a one million dollar figure for school kids on anti-depressants and a four million dollar one for youngsters on Ritalin, underscoring the absence of research on what effect these drugs have.