Ludlow + Grand

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Decorating Nature by Norm Magnusson

In the last few months, I’ve become closely involved with The Blind Project. Recently, my friends and I created this video for the Google Project 10^100. Our idea is to fight modern day slavery by creating economic job opportunities.

In order to fix a problem, we must be able to see it.

My visionary friends at The Blind Project are on an amazing mission to change the reality of sex trafficking in Southeast Asia. So many of us are unaware of this modern-day slave trade. Yet the young victims of it see everything and are blinded from hope of a better future.

The Blind Project is devoted to raising awareness through advertising campaigns and providing counseling, education and jobs for victims. Their long-term goal is to create a socially responsible fashion brand for the survivors.

Join me in this important social movement.

 Happy New Year!

Back in October, a Lower East Sider defaced American Apparel’s infamous billboard(s) at the intersection of Allen and Houston with “Gee, I Wonder Why Women Get Raped?”

American Apparel has been a brand celebrated for its sweatshop free products. But fair wages for factory workers no longer absolves the company’s pornographic exploitation of women in media. And let’s not ignore CEO Dov Charney’s 4 sexual harassment lawsuits. 

It’s time to put on a new t-shirt… try Alternative Apparel.

 

Absolut Vodka returns to its legendary design innovation. In a vodka world that tries way too hard to be cool, aka Belvedere’s bourgeois hipster advertising campaign by Terry Richardson/Berlin Cameron and even TBWA’s surreal campaign ”Absolut World,” it’s refreshing that something as fundamental as hot packaging makes a serious comeback for Absolut.

The 1-liter Absolut Disco limited edition gift pack is built of exactly 1,000 reflecting prisms formed in the classic bottle shape. The Absolut Disco is a clamshell skin that opens to reveal a bottle of vodka inside. Empty the package and use as a mirror ball by hanging it from its loop.

The concept of Absolut Disco was led by the Stockholm agency Family Business.

In a society that’s more diverse, more cultured and more dynamic than ever before, it’s fundamentally important to be inclusive of all perspectives. But I wonder who in the advertising industry helps or hurts the cause.

Ask any 1st or 2nd generation immigrant in the States how they connect with their ethnic culture – Mexicans, Koreans, Romanians will say that they watch telenovelas from the “home” country. Ancestral countries still strongly define and influence perceptions. And I bet the most popular shows on Telemundo or AZN are not original programming… they’re imported from Mexico or Brazil, Korea or China.

My question then, Are American-based multicultural agencies the best qualified to produce “in-language” advertising for each respective ethnic group – if ethnicity is the most important criterion?

I think not.

1. Global agency networks with best-in-class multicultural offices/talent abroad are better suited and more authentic.

2. Import international campaigns for non-English speaking American consumers a la “Betty la fea.”

3. General agencies have a greater responsibility and role to create inclusive, respectful messages to reach acculturated minorities who speak English and consume English-language media. Simply, ethnic stereotypes perpetuated is not creative for a creative business.

P.S. Maybe GM should harness the full power of its general market agencies with global networks and drop its multicultural [in-language] agencies as was mistakenly reported before. multicultclassics.blogspot.com

To the start of a healthy conversation.

UPDATE: A complementary p.o.v. on how Theme Magazine is pushing culture forward, ludlowandgrand.com/2007/12/14/beyond-race-theme-magazine