The Netherlands’ largest attraction park Walibi has just opened its latest extreme rollercoaster: Lost Gravity. I helped with the ride’s background story and wrote the texts for the short films meant to entertain those waiting in line for their one-minute of heart attack.
I also resurrected my nemesis Tad Waterson to play the anchorman. I had killed him off years ago in a tragic hammock accident after I began resenting the fact that this half-assed alter-ego of mine began to get more Facebook friends than my own carefully nurtured and calibrated personal brand. Boy, did I hate Tad. But I’ve done some growing up in recent times and have now decided to take the high road and let bygones are bygones… And thanks to the audio-visual artistry of Arjan Beurskens of This is Taped and creative consulting from J-PECH, Tad is actually looking pretty darn good.
Anyway… The films will apparently be playing on a loop for the next 10-15 years — but not being made available online. So I made a short comic book summary below. Put on your seat belts and enjoy.
“We have a report from some tin can of a country in Europe somewhere. Denmark or something? Wait, what’s that? A bird? A plane? A meteor? Whatever it is, it looks like a definite something from somewhere…”
“Hey, I wonder what Van Gogh would have done with this landscape?”
“But Amsterdam still looks pretty much as I remember it from visiting in my student days… Ah, those were wild times indeed…”
“But what the hell is happening now?!?! The phenomenon seems to be spreading…”
“Isn’t that New York? Aren’t we in New York?”
“People! We need some answers, people!”
“Okay, authorities are telling us to stay calm. If you’re home, stay home. Preferably in a rubber room if you have one… The key is to stay calm. So everyone stay fucking calm!”
“Can I get make-up over here? I think I just anti-gravitied my pants!”
“Ah, whatever. Yippee!!!!!!! I finally shed those few extra pounds!”
DUF is a Dutch-language book-magazine for 12- to 18-year-olds. It’s a ‘cluster bomb’ of text and visuals. Edition three is out now and acts as a primer in navigating our world’s media insanity. Buy it. It’ll blow your mind and your kid’s. There’s even dirty pictures. Below is my contribution in its original English.
COLA & PROPAGANDA
Do you want to lord over your friends, parents and – why not? – the whole freaking world? Learn now how you can become a dictator and sell cola at the same time! In seven easy lessons!
by Steve Korver, for DUF 3 (2012)
What is the difference between advertising and propaganda? Um, good question. Advertising aims to sell a service or product (‘Mmm that’s the best cheeseburger ever!’). Propaganda aims to sell a particular ideology (‘Yippee, we’re the happiest country in the world!’) or goal (‘This war is justified.’) Meanwhile in most Spanish-speaking countries, when people say ‘propaganda’ they mean ‘advertising’.
Both advertising and propaganda tries to influence human behaviour – to get you to open your wallet for a cheeseburger, or to sign along the dotted line at an army recruitment office. They both play on your emotions and not your intelligence. So it’s not ridiculous that both dictators and marketeers use the same box of tricks.
BIG SECRET NUMBER 1: People are sooooooooo stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid! But…
‘There’s a sucker born every minute,’ the American circus showman PT Barnum allegedly said. And it’s true. So keep it simple. But remember that people NEVER consider themselves as stupid. Half the time they are not even aware they are being brainwashed. Yes, humans suffer from overconfidence.
So it’s very important to not make your target audience feel stupid otherwise they will find someone else to get brainwashed by. The easiest way to do this is by dumbing down. Be folksy. Be a regular person who represents regular wants and needs. Be the Joneses or be Henk & Ingrid. In short: posh it down and sincere it up!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 2: Facts are for amateurs!
A friend’s journalism professor always nobly said: ‘Even if your mother says she loves you, never believe her. Always check your facts!’ However, facts remain the arch-enemy of both propaganda and advertising.
The secret of both dictators and manufacturers is: the truth is what you make it. Facts are only important in that they can help make your story more believable. But otherwise telling the truth is not as important as picking the truths that you do tell – and leaving out any nasty details. Sure, you can call your country’s economy ‘resilient’ but don’t mention that it’s based on slavery. And yes, highlight a phone’s ‘sleek and modern design’, but don’t mention it was made in Asian sweat shops. And how long did you say that battery lasts?
In fact you don’t even have to tell any truths, as long as you tell your lies with conviction. Why did US President Bush begin the war in Iraq in 2003? Oh right, because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However these weapons were never found. It turned out that the photographs that were used to convince other countries to join the war were made up. But those pictures did look factual!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 3: Join the winning team!
People like to belong to something: a family, a tribe, a movement. So both admen and propagandists work hard to convey a message of ‘come and be cool by joining us and together we can rule the world, you mindless lemmings!’ (But then without calling the target audience ‘mindless lemmings’ – see Big Secret Number 1).
This tendency of humans to want to be on the winning side has many consequences. For example, if a country is taken over by a foreign power there are invariably many more collaborators than resistance fighters. It also means that there are more Coke drinkers than Pepsi drinkers. Social networking has made this much easier by returning both propaganda and advertising to their original roots: word of mouth. There’s no better advertising than friendvertising….
BIG SECRET NUMBER 4: Link to the positive!
Certain people, things and ideas are more naturally shiny and positive than others. Latch on to them! Associate your product or idea with such things as: Freedom! Democracy! Honour! Sustainable! Green! Tiger Woods! Oops, we better think of another example. How about Lance Armstrong? Oops again…
OK then here’s another tip: whenever you have a spokesperson that turns out to be human in some way, drop them like a hot potato. Also if the battle for political gain or market share grows nasty you can also apply the inverse of this rule: link your opponent to nasty words or images. Negativity is always fun! Always remember: one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 5 Fight pure evil! (AKA: Blame the ‘other’!)
In real life there are always two sides to every story, and usually there is no clear right or wrong. But let’s forget about that. Nuance kills sales figures. You want to make a clear message and then stick to it. Assume there is pure evil in the world, and then establish yourself as the lesser evil. After all, who wants to be taken over by Nazi scum? Or be blown up by terrorists? By playing on fear of ‘the other’, you can ask people to make sacrifices. By linking social ills to a specific group, another group can be made to feel superior. By blaming butter for heart attacks, the sales of low-fat margarine skyrocket.
BIG SECRET NUMBER 6 Re-re-re-re-peat-peat-peat-peat! Repeat!
Repetition is highly effective. Drink Coke. Drink Coke. Drink Coke. McDonalds. McDonalds. McDonalds. Islam is bad. Islam is bad. Islam is bad. People in the industry often call this process branding – repetition makes the public associate certain qualities to a product or idea. So establish your message and start repeating anywhere and everywhere: commercials, billboards, product placement, social networks, etc, etc. But also be selective and think about where your target audience would most likely absorb and act on your message. But please don’t try to be overly creative. Just keep pounding!
BIG SECRET NUMBER 7 Humour works
Humans don’t like feeling stupid, but they love to laugh. It’s what unifies us. And it can pull the rug out of your opponent. One famous example came from WWII. The Nazis produced endless propaganda films that depicted endless lines of strong and disciplined blonde men marching, marching, marching… It was highly effective in intimidating the UK public. But then a Brit film editor came up with the antidote. By re-editing and playing with the speed of the images, he essentially re-mixed the marching men into a comedic dance act. The moral of the story? Monty Python über alles!
ONE BONUS BIG SECRET… Sex sells.
Of course it does. What do you think? Are you stupid or something?
[Spoiler alert: Not recommended reading for those who believe in Santa Claus.]
Each year in the Netherlands during the Christmas season, the tone around the debate on whether Zwarte Piet (‘Black Peter’) is a form of racism gets darker. This year, the discourse was further inflamed by the rather violent arrest of ten protesters with ‘Black Peter is Racism’ t-shirts and the news that the Dutch-Canadian community in Vancouver decided to no longer allow Black Peters in their annual Sinterklaas (St Nicolas) procession. Meanwhile many of the Dutch-Dutch just get increasingly defensive as they treat such talk as a threat against their culture.
For the outsider, it remains a curious tradition: countless Dutch adults putting on black face, smearing on red, red lipstick, popping on a wig of kinky hair and adorning their ears with large golden hoops – and doing all this without any sense of malice. Then they hit the streets like a pack of highly caffeinated Al Jolsons to help St. Nick distribute sweets to children.
Years ago, a visiting friend and I came across such a posse. I was long used to it, but my friend’s jaw hit the ground in disbelief – and this is a man who has witnessed much weirdness worldwide. ‘What is this minstrel madness?!?’ he asked flabbergasted. (Not long after while in Russia our roles were reversed in a strange and convoluted way when we were waiting at a backwoods train station and some skinheads came to confront my friend about the colour of his skin. He stayed cool and dealt with the situation. I just stood there. Totally flabbergasted.)
Local Dutch cultural history only goes so far in giving my friend a reasonable explanation behind the Black Peter tradition.
Once upon a pagan time, this was slaughter season when meat was both stored for the long winter and sacrificed to Odin – the Germanic God of War, Sea and Hunt. It became a celebration of life and done, one assumes, with lots of blood and bonking. So when the Church came to town to wimpify the whole process, they decided the party should be rebranded around Saint Nicholas, patron saint of children and whose birthday conveniently fell on 6 December.
The Dutch were forced to repress their natural urges for communal butchery by aggressively baking huge mounds of animal-shaped cookies and chewing on marrow-textured marzipan. Later Sinterklaas mutated further by going to America with the settlers, eventually getting drawled out to become Santa Claus and having his special day shifted to 25 December to compensate for Jesus’s failing of character when it came to the spirit of gross revenue. Then in 1931, that darkest of beverages, Coca Cola, produced an advertising campaign that gave Santa his current look.
Meanwhile here in the Old World, St Nick with his white beard, bishop’s robes and ridged staff remains every Dutch kid’s favourite uncle, playing the good cop by controlling the distribution of sweets. Meanwhile, his assisting and equally beloved bad cop Black Peters represent the threat to the naughty kids. The blackened faces are explained away as resulting from Black Peter’s assigned job of delivering the sweets to the awaiting shoes via that dirtiest of orifices, the chimney. (But of course this does not explain Black Peter’s exaggerated lips, kinky hair, golden-hooped earrings and, often enough, Surinamese accent.) Another rationalisation has the tradition going back to when darkness represented evil; that Black Peter is actually the conquered devil, and that his colour and joy of mischief are the only leftovers of an evil beaten out of him by St. Nick. Either way – may it be through soot or sin – blackness tends to cling. As does St. Nick during the rest of the year as the official patron saint of not only Amsterdam itself, but also other favourites of Odin such as merchants, prostitutes, thieves and sailors (who, interestingly, paid tribute to their saint for centuries by using the term ‘doing the St. Nicholas’ as slang for intercourse).
The historical Nicholas is not precisely traceable. He is likely a mixture of many Nicholi. One of them, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64), was eventually disowned by the Catholic Church for promoting the idea that all of the world’s gods were actually the same and therefore all deserving of equal respect. And in many ways Odin and St Nick are still the same: Odin not only shares the same followers as St Nick, but also rides the same kind of white horse and, in some stories, has some dark sidekicks chained to him… So with such similarities it’s easy to assume that St. Nick is simply Odin cross-dressed as a bishop. And in turn, Odin is the devil – or so said the Church when they came to town. But as long as Satan continues to bring joy to the hearts of millions of kiddies each year, I’m pretty alright with it.
As for the Black Peter phenomena – a tradition that was only formalised during the last half of the 19th century… That just stays weird. And anything weird should be confronted. I’m just brainstorming here, but would it help if next year Black Peter was rebranded as a Jew? Or perhaps as a Canadian?
My old friends the Anacondas have just released their third album of post-surf tunes: Bad Buzz/Lost in the Space Age. It comes with a story. After they recorded it a year or so ago, they asked me to help turn it into a ‘concept’ album. Since making a ‘concept’ album out of something that’s already recorded seemed pretty high-‘concept’ in itself, I naturally said yes. And anyway, I always do like a nice ‘concept’. And it’s really quite amazing what some liner notes, visuals and overdubs can do when it comes to fleshing out the ‘conceptual’.
The album’s ‘concept’ is really quite simple — like any good ‘concept’. It begins with the anger we all share: that the shiny space age we were promised never actually showed up (Where are our jetpacks? Where are our slow food pill packs? Who can we lynch?). Now try to imagine how pissed off and bitter a jaded and washed up astronaut would be. Of course: he would be really,really pissed off and bitter. And so Bad Buzz as a ‘concept’ was born. And from there we only told the absolute truth. And as Bad Buzz, I was given the opportunity to rant anti-hippie poetry while wandering the deserts high on Tang crystals, and sound like a psychobilly singer from Pluto (the non-planet) while grunting out the tale of a hotrod rocket race between Major Tom and Barbarella. And for these experiences I would like to say: Thanks fellas! But yes, it’s now best for all parties if they return to their instrumental ways.
The release party is at Amsterdam’s Paradiso on November 6. Oh, and the coolest thing: this album is also available in vinyl. Now there’s a ‘concept’! And a big thanks to Unfold for indulging the above advertorial. Maybe next time they’ll actually get paid — yet another ‘concept’.
The local anti-vertrutting (“anti-frumpication”) action group AI! Amsterdam, who this summer successfully lobbied for the easing of terrace laws, has changed their logo after being threatened with legal action from the city since their original logo was a parody of the I Amsterdam city marketing campaign. Hmm, so not having a sense of humour is good for the city brand?
These are complicated times we live in. It was all much simpler back in the 1970s. To entice more people to visit Amsterdam all you had to do was put out some posters cajoling long-haired American targets to “Fly KLM, sleep in the Vondelpark”. Word of mouth did the rest.
And then there was the tourist board’s Get In Touch With The Dutch campaign during the 1960s. This one just gets me all misty-eyed; those must have truly been the most innocent of times.
And for the last few years, it’s been I amsterdam. I can imagine it can work to help attract tourists and business. I only start seeing red when it peddles the delusional idea that it also works to unify regular Amsterdammers. It’s as if the local government actually believes that culture is not a grassroots phenomena but rather something that can be shoved down our throats from the top down.
OK, it’s easy to criticise. Marketing a city can’t be easy. I certainly can’t come up with anything better. “Ich bin ein Amsterdammertje” would probably generate the same confusion and controversy as JFK’s grammatical gaffe, “Ich bin ein Berliner”. And “Handy Airport. Lotsa Coffeeshops”, while appealing to both the business- and leisure-minded, lacks a certain elegance.
I think I’d just opt for golden oldies like ‘Amsterdamned’ or ‘Amsterdamaged’. I regard these lines as way more effective ambassadors. After all, the visiting dope smokers of today may just hold our city’s future in their hands. I figure it was mostly sentimental ex-hippies who invested in this city during the booming 1990s. They figured it would be a good excuse to come and visit a few times a year, and maybe recreate certain perfect relaxed coffeeshop moments from decades past. (And these investments got the city thinking that they could get even more by coming up with that era’s ho-hum city marketing ploys — “Gateway to Europe” and “Capital of Inspiration” — that resulted in the building of lots of new office space that today stands largely empty…).
Anyway… it was short-sighted to force Ai! Amsterdam to change their logo. The city is losing a perfect co-branding opportunity with a group that is both grassroots and community-driven.
