Adbusters

COMMERCIAL BREAKERS

Rejected by FOX News.

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• 05 Oct 2009
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We’re continuing our campaign for media democracy with a series of subvertisements aimed at disrupting the promotion of overconsumption and attacking the legitimacy of advertising. We want the right to broadcast these subverts and we’re willing to pay, but the major networks aren’t willing to air them. So far FOX has officially rejected our first spot, COMMERCIAL BREAKERS, and MTV has cut off communication entirely.

The idea behind COMMERCIAL BREAKERS is simply to sabotage the meaning of advertising and undermine the power of brands. The average TV ad presents the consumer with a crisis, be it a crisis of identity, a crisis of hunger, a messy floor, an unsightly blemish or erectile disfunction. The crisis is always a crisis of choice, but there is only one choice: the product being advertised. Each ad expresses an individual brand’s vision of utopia; a perfect world constructed around a singular message: if you buy the product being advertised, you will be happy and content … if only for a moment.