A phone interview with MR. Lasn
I had the honor to conduct a phone interview with the founder of ADJUSTERS, Kale Lsn. He was nice enough to give me insights and share personal stories.
Phone interview with Kalle Lasn
15th of October 12:00 P.M.
I was very fortunate to speak to Lasn, the founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, During our conversation over the phone I learned many things about the young Lasn as well as some useful information about the Anti Advertising Movement.
Lasn started off by sharing his opinion about advertising by saying, “Advertising grew from this modern enterprise into this trillion dollar global industry. And it started to manipulate people emotionally. Use the best people on the planet to figure out how to sell your stuff. So, really Adbusters, is fighting for the worst type of advertising and of course pioneering our own ideas.”
His answer led me to ask about his early days, what made him passionate about pioneering the Anti Advertising Movement. In which he shared a story of when he was a young man, “When I was in my 20s I lived in japan and had my own company. I was an adverting man, I was doing market research and analysis in Tokyo at that time, and then in my late 20s I was like, what the hell is going on here.”, “but actually when you want to talk to them about politics and say hey how can you advertise cigarettes, it’s a killer products, and then they would say something like, don’t be so political.” He adds, explaining that advertising agencies promote products because it’s their job, and that is to help the client sell.
“After awhile, I found those ad people to be boring and living in their own bubble and then the biggest thing I did was that I sold my company and traveled all around the world for about 3 years. I visited the poorest places in the world and I’ve had a lot of strange epiphanies.” He adds.
“My passion comes from traveling when I was young when I saw the inequality and the real sufferings that happen around the world. And ever since then I’ve been very angry about a lot of the things that are happening and that’s where my passion comes from, yeah.”
His answer resonated within me and that’s when I remembered one of my initial researches, and that is the advertising of ‘killer products’ such as Alcohol and cigarettes in poor neighborhood vs. others. Lasn strongly believes in helping the unfortunate people saying, “I want to stand up for the poor and the 1%, I’m definitely on the poor people side but you know there’s a much bigger fish to fry.” Raising a much bigger question, what does advertising do to us? Those who sees it most of our time? “You grow up in an environment, a mental environment where there are 100s and then sometimes 1000s of marketing messages being bombard by your brain, from the little moment, when you’re a little baby.” He says, “What do ads do to your brain? What does it do to your psyche? What does it do to your life style? Your opinions about climate change?” “These are the big questions that Adbusters is trying to answer.”
Having said that, I added by assuming that talking to advertising agencies to change their ways is not easy. In which Lasn explained, “I don’t think it’s a question of having a polite conversation with advertising industries. An advertising industry is like a service industry. They service large corporations.” He explains, “It’s actually about pushing the agenda of the mega corporations and advertising industry is just a service industry for those mega corporations so the real battle is sort of the battle of our mind. The battle of the mental environment is providing a counter force.” He adds, “You don’t go to ad agencies and say please be responsible and be nice and don do advertisings like this. You don’t do that, of course you talk to advertising agencies and a lot of them helped us in our campaigns because they’re disillusioned by their own industry but what you do is you fight back. You come up with counter ads.”
Furthermore, I asked Lasn as to why he chose a Magazine as a medium, in which he said, “Well you know back in 1989 magazines were the cutting age of political and environmental discourse and back in 1989 it felt like if you really want to influence the world you either make a documentary or make a magazine. Of course since 1989 the Internet came along and things changed quiet a lot and so what we are doing now at Adbusters is not just a magazine. We put most of our creative energy into it but we also have websites and we also launched a social marketing campaign and occupying wall street. Things have changed a lot.”
Aftewards, I decided to ask Lasn about their funding, where does the money come from? Adbusters website was used to promote their ideas and projects, “say, ok we have one spot now, have a look at it and if u like and you want to air it then help us out and we were able to raise 10,000-20,000 and once we raised $35,000” He says, and that’s how they were able to get a spot on CNN. “We had a very powerful ad against our prime minister. We were able to raise a huge amount of money, just crowd funding.”
Adding, “sometimes rich people suddenly they like what your doing and they contact you. Sometimes you get very large donations. But most of the time you get 10, 15, 20 dollars from people who basically like what you’re doing and like to be apart of a crowd funding campaign.”
Lasn explained how advertising is more than an aesthetics issue, “Another way to look at advertising is sort of somehow you can call it mind pollution. Just like the physical environment. Like the mercury in your food.”, “The mental environment is a very powerful concept. It has its own environment and advertisings is kind of a pollution of the mental environment.” Explaining that talking to advertising agencies is not the answer, but working on a movement, one that is similar to the environmental issue. It’s time to clean up the toxic of the mental environment,
“Because you are mentally polluted and suffering from anxiety or depression or being brain washed to change your body in a certain way” “If you’re a damaged human being and mentally polluted then what kind of a human being are you?” “How can you participate in human democracy? How can you become apart of the physical movement like climate change? To stop climate change you need a healthy human.”
Lasn explained how the advertising industry was different, 20 years ago, they were run by a traditional advertising corporations, however now there’s an increasing number of small agencies that in a way similar to Adbusters Media Foundation. “We produce advertising, we mostly sell ideas rather than products.” Adding a valid point by sharing the fact that there are ad agencies that market green peace and help by using powerful techniques to raise awareness rather than sell a product.
Lasn adds, “People are providing a counter force, sort of talking back to the consumer culture and that’s a fascinating development and I think it will grow. That particular, the other side of advertising. Something is on the rise, more and more young people who enjoy being apart of this anti advertising projects.”
Lasn Provided more information about his experience with the Graphic Design, when all design schools back in his days were taught in a way where students knew the tools to help corporations sell. However, Graphic Design has changed and grew, Adbusters launched First Things First manifesto. That was designed by 33 permanent graphic designers in the world at that time.” Which generated a huge debate.
I asked Lasn if he wanted to share any pointers before ending the interview and he graciously wish me good luck and explained that the Anti Advertising Movement is a much complicated route, “My suggestion is go deeper, look at the First Things First Manifesto and look at those small ad agencies that are helping green peace and think about the larger picture, it’s not just about advertising” “Its’ actually one of the most important topics of the world if we don’t have a healthy minds that are not polluted by the pollution of ads.” Adding that the future does not look very bright.
Overall, I really appreciate Mr. Lasn’s feedback. Speaking to someone who has worked to replace ads with political and social ideas rather than selling a product is fascinating.