In ’89, British Co-lumbia’s timber industry created "Forests Forever," an advertising campaign via now defunct Corporate Strategies Group that claimed that the industry’s logging practices weren’t detrimental to British Co-lumbia’s forests. When Kalle Lasn saw the commercials, he was outraged. Lasn, a documentary filmmaker with a background in marketing, felt the spots misrepresented the forests’ condition. "In fact, the forests were in deep trouble, with only about 20% of the old growth forests left," Lasn recalls. Not one to sit and stew, Lasn decided to strike back on the industry’s own turf. To do so, he and a group of like-minded comrades came up with the idea of creating an "uncommercial" that would take the industry to task for its fallacious contentions. After storyboarding the spot, Lasn and his friends approached TV stations in British Columbia about airing the response. The station representatives bluntly refused, which only raised Lasn’s ire even more.
"This realization that corporations can buy airtime but people like us can’t is what gave birth to everything we’ve done since," says Lasn. In the wake of the refusal, Lasn and his cohorts created The Media Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Vancouver that strives to counter certain messages in contemporary advertising while nurturing a more sustainable and less consumer-oriented society. The Media Foundation is an umbrella organization that encompasses Powershift, an advocacy advertising agency, as well as Adbusters, a bi-monthly publication that critiques advertising. Lasn is president of The Media Foundation and editor and publisher of Adbusters.
The uncommercials are the principal means that The Media Foundation uses to achieve its objectives. Since that first attempt, the organization has produced over 30 uncommercials on a variety of subjects. The uncommercials are conceived by Powershift (assisted anonymously by ad agency creatives) and produced by a team organized by Lasn, who acts as executive producer. "G-8 Ecocide" is one uncommercial that questions whether the group of eight nations is addressing central contemporary problems of pollution, over-consumption and toxic waste. "The global economy is a doomsday machine," a narrator says as images of waste, ecological destruction and the effects of overpopulation flash across the screen. "The Product Is You" is another
uncommercial that encourages viewers to be wary of the constant marketing and advertising messages that bombard us on a daily basis. In a vision a la George Orwell’s 1984, the uncommercial shows a man watching TV. As the camera pans around him, a bar code becomes apparent on the back of the man’s neck. "Your living room is the factory," the spot’s narrator warns. "The product being manufactured is you." Geoff Rogers, a Canadian documentary filmmaker, directed both uncommercials.
Lasn doesn’t think the uncommercials will achieve The Media Foundation’s ultimate goals in one fell swoop. But they can catalyze the debate in the same way that traditional spots work.
"One corporate spot doesn’t necessarily bump up the sails immediately," Lasn explained. "What it does, it creates a kind of an atmosphere where that product is better-known and more talked about and has a certain kind of a ‘cool’ about it. That’s what we’re trying to do as well; we’re trying to create an alternative ‘cool’ to get people to debate these issues."
"We see eventually making a frugal lifestyle based on other values as being more ‘cool’ than the current lifestyle that is just buying stuff," Lasn continued.
In the attempt to further this vision of ‘cool,’ the uncommercials have been broadcast on outlets such as CNN, during its Headline News segment, as well as public access stations around the world. Other than CNN, the major networks have refused to broadcast the uncommercials, though local news stations sometimes do profiles of the effort that include uncommercial snippets.
Lasn said that station managers present two different faces on why they will not accept the group’s messages. On the one hand, they say the uncommercials don’t meet their criteria for advocacy advertising. "Off the record, they always tell me, ‘We’re scared that you’re going to piss off our sponsors,’" Lasn noted. "It’s really strange because those airwaves legally belong to the people and they’re leased out by the FCC to these broadcasters, who are then supposed to act in their own interest but also in the public interest. These public airwaves legally belong to the people but we the people actually can’t access them."
In an attempt to legally challenge the media blackout of the uncommercials, The Media Foundation took a case through Canada’s court system. The case wound its way through Canadian courts for five years and eventually found its way to Canada’s Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. The Media Foundation is now attempting to bring the case to the World Court, arguing that the refusal to grant airtime to the uncommercials violates Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has to do with the free flow of information. The Media Foundation is in the preliminary phases of raising a similar challenge in U.S. courts.
The uncommercial effort is ongoing, and Lasn said that The Media Foundation is now planning a new wave of uncommercials. One of the new uncommercials will suggest that when corporations violate the public trust-by, for instance, promoting smoking to teenagers-there is both a legal basis and a legal precedent for revoking the corporation’s charter to exist.
"We’re trying to popularize a movement, where it isn’t just a corporation selling its products and creating its kind of cool but we the people using advertising for our own purposes as well," Lasn said. "I think that the :30 is the most powerful social communications tool ever invented. I think a lot of people should be using it for all kinds of reasons."
Oscar-Nominated Director Sean Wang Joins Park Pictures For Spots, Branded Content
Park Pictures has added director Sean Wang to its roster of talent for representation spanning commercials and branded content. His feature-length debut, Dìdi, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by Focus Features and released later that summer to critical acclaim.
Wang is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker hailing from Fremont, Calif., and currently based in Los Angeles. Prior to joining Park Pictures, he was repped by Even/Odd Studios. Often pulling from his lived experiences, Wang can turn hyper-specific story points into universally relatable, memorable moments.
Dìdi won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize for Best Ensemble Cast at the Sundance Film Festival. His documentary short Nai Nai & Wài Pó premiered at SXSW 2023, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, later earning an Oscar nomination. The film following Wang’s two grandmothers is currently streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. Other films from Wang include the lauded documentary shorts 3,000 Miles, H.A.G.S., and Still Here. As a Google Creative Lab 5 Alumnus, Wang has directed several commercial campaigns for Google that highlighted live captions and teased large news from the tech conglomerate, including an ad that aired during the 2017 Emmy Awards.
Wang said of Park Pictures, “I can’t think of a better artistic home for me as a director. The work that comes out of Park Pictures is incredible, and I admire the work they do in advertising and the documentary and narrative space. Everyone I’ve met there is just as obsessed with making great films as I am, and I look forward to growing my career with them as I move into the commercial space.”
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