eastside living LA

Seeing the Blight, Part 1: Glassell Park

By Matthew Broad

Billboard: OUR BRAND PROMISE. AMPLIFIED AFFINITY (Schawk!)

Location:  Fletcher Drive, between San Fernando and Andrita, Glassell Park, Los Angeles.

“…modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug.” – George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

The Schawk printing house in Glassel Park is a great gray box of a building that feeds a steady stream of great big banners, billboards, and the like to awaiting trucks each day. Its ivy-colored west side faces what is referred to in the press as “the troubled Drew-Estara neighborhood” (much like the words “Lindsay Lohan” are always preceded by “troubled actress”). But it is the east side of the building, facing Fletcher, that caught my eye a few months ago.

At first I was relieved that new billboards were put in place. For what seemed an eternity, I had to pass by Steve Carell as he mugged disconsolately at the camera on a life-sized-times-twenty-eight advertisement for Evan Almighty. It’s hard to see actors I admire do “comedy face” at Universal’s behest. Then I read what the new featured billboard had to say; or, to put it more honestly, I saw that the new billboard featured an inscrutable phrase that could be read, in theory.  

And it was screwing with me; it was assuming I wouldn’t dare read it, guessing (correctly, at first), that I wouldn’t have any desire to analyze such a labyrinthine phrase. But after passing by a number of times, I started the analysis. What can I say? I like to be an informed hater of advertisements.

OUR BRAND PROMISE. AMPLIFIED AFFINITY

Those five words printed against a white background seem to fly in the face of eighty-plus years of marketing wisdom. The public wants image, not text. Tell a story, don’t just lay out facts. Of course, there is something of the old style here: note the ribbon extending from the Schawk! on Billboard 1 that weaves its way through our billboard. There is a movement there. And the color of the words: a bold, though safe, black (the promise) gives way to a decisive, and shocking, red (the delivery). Again, that implies a kind of movement, a kind of narrative. But still, it can’t be denied that this is not your daddy’s brand of advertising.   

For it is speaking to us 21^st century types, self-aware consumers of media. Its ultimate target audience, in fact, is that most self-aware of consumers: marketing divisions of other companies. “We’re not here to bullshit you,” says Schawk branding company. “What you see is what you get. You’re too savvy for us to sell you a line. We understand that, and we understand you. So allow us to amplify your brand affinity.”  

Wait a minute: what the hell does that mean, anyway?

It’s safe to assume that any branch of industry based in scientific research/development will muddle its jargon in oftentimes pointless verbiage (see what I just did there?). Idea men get paid tons to come up with inane phrases like “amplified affinity” in between their ski trips, blackberry binges, and futile attempts at intimacy with loved ones. That’s part of the job description, and others at the company put up with it because: a) they have to; b) it makes them feel smart and in the loop; or c) they’re not paying attention to the Powerpoint presentation. But advertising is everywhere and we are all its captive, not to mention unpaid, audience. Especially on the blighted streets of LA. So forgive me for acting the part of stockholder and calling out the designer of that phrase.  

You, sir, are a prick.  

Here’s what Schawk!’s billboard says: Why “enhance the consumer’s knowledge of a product” (which is what every branding company tries to do) when you can come to us and “amplify affinity.” Now, I’m no enemy of intellectualism. Hell, I’ve even read selections of the works of Foucault. Small selections, sure, but I’ve read them. And you’re not lying: you really do want to “amplify” [insert company's] “affinity.” And yes, “amplify affinity” sounds better than “enhance the consumer’s knowledge of a product,” but you’re not counting on that. Because if you set up a vocabulary that only a few people can understand, that only a few people will look into enough to ever understand, you are making yourself irreplaceable. And if you are irreplaceable, you will continue to work to stay irreplaceable, constantly upping the technical ante, and the public will have to put up with your sheer humbug for generations. And it’s just going to get work.

And you and your ilk will continue to thrust this nonsense, this needlessly technical jargon, onto the receptive public because no one looks at anything except in a passive way. After all, we don’t choose to see billboards. They are there, they are on our streets, on our computer screens. Middle school students walk past that billboard twice a day, and they aren’t ever going to care about what it says. They will simply accept this billboard, any billboard, as atmosphere, and it will numb them from ever wanting to analyze another billboard. You’re even undermining the core of your beloved capitalism, which (as a product of the Enlightenment) demands rationality from both sides of the bargain. How can we be rationally informed consumers if we consume humbug designed specifically to numb us out of wanting to understand? Congratulations, Schawk!, you’re killing Adam Smith again.

That’s advertising in our age of incremental interest: a war of attrition almost always lost by the consumer, because we just don’t give a damn anymore. I can’t believe it, but I miss that “Evan Almighty” poster.