In the category of YouCan'tBeSeriousOhButYouAre…
The following campaign is a series of outdoor ads for Chicago-Lake Liquors, a liquor store in Minneapolis. (It’s on the corner of Lake and Chicago streets, hence the name.) The store is located in a "ghetto-fabolous" (as one blogger put it) area of Minneapolis. In other words, CL Liquors is in a lower-economic class black neighborhood.
So you've got a liquor store in a black neighborhood looking to up its profile in harsh economic times. What do you do to break thru and get the people talking and drinking? *Cue stereotypical racist liquor ads*:
I swear these are real ads. Not even St. Ides' work was this bad. I guess I'd be mad except I've been in the ad world for 17 years and once again, i tell you that this is nothing new. What passes for cultural insights, humor and irony is largely bottom of the barrel laziness and middle class white boy arrogance disguised as "creative" and "strategy". Agencies produce this crap, media outlets take money for running it, clients fund it and all consumers can do is like it or not.
But I gotta give 'em credit for one thing—carrying the concept thru from print to TV (not always an easy task.). Here's the TV blight on the community I mean, "spot":
But I gotta give 'em credit for one thing—carrying the concept thru from print to TV (not always an easy task.). Here's the TV blight on the community I mean, "spot":
Priceless. Just watching that makes me wanna drown my sorrows and brain cells in a few pints of Guiness.
Now while I couldn't find the agency responsible for any of this trash (maybe it was done in-house/freelanced out), I did manage to find this guy:
This is John Wolf—owner of Chicago-Lake Liquors. No by what few accounts I've found thru research, John's a nice guy, tries to give back to the community, etc. No evidence of him being a bigot or even sharing the beliefs portrayed in the ads of the company he's touted as owning.
But this kind of stupidity at least needs to be questioned. In fact I tried doing that on other blogs and it's amazing the number of self-identified whites and ad industry folks who found this work to be "no big deal".
But this kind of stupidity at least needs to be questioned. In fact I tried doing that on other blogs and it's amazing the number of self-identified whites and ad industry folks who found this work to be "no big deal".
You can reach John at:
825 E Lake St
Minneapolis, MN 55407-1588
612.340.1110 or 612.825.4401
Give John a call. pay him a visit on your next beer run and ask him or the customers what they think of this sorta work.
