The Art Gallery of Ontario is defending its photo booths that take Frida Kahlo-inspired self-portraits of people wearing fake unibrows after pushback from a few gallery-goers who say it was disrespectful.
The AGO set up the booths on Friday and Saturday to draw attention to its new Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting exhibition. Passersby art enthusiasts and philistines alike were asked to put on the thick, black, worm-like unibrow, take a picture and get 50 per cent off admission to the exhibition for Oct. 27.
Some weren’t happy with the marketing initiative, with a few people posting their disagreement on Facebook and Twitter.
I’m not opposed to everyone having fun, it’s just that when I opened it and saw it I was kind of shocked,” interior designer and part-time artist Patricia de Liberato told Metro. She had spoken out against the move on the AGO’s Facebook page. “I just thought it was in terribly poor taste.”
Gonna have to agree with de Liberato here. This just seems to be an example of really bad judgement on the part of the AGO. Click the post title to read the full article.
Nike Inc. said it is severing ties with former cycling champ Lance Armstrong, saying insurmountable evidence shows that Mr. Armstrong participated in doping and misled Nike for more than a decade.
The clothing and footwear company, which sponsored Mr. Armstrong and his former cycling team, said Wednesday that it was ending its contract with Mr. Armstrong “with great sadness.” It added that it will continue to support Mr. Armstrong’s “Livestrong” cancer charity, despite its break with the cyclist.
Mr. Armstrong announced Wednesday that he resigned as chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, his cancer charity. “I am deeply grateful to the people of the foundation who have done such hard and excellent work over the last 15 years, building tangible and effective ways to improve the lives of cancer survivors,” he said in a statement.
CLICK HERE to read the full article at The Wall Street Journal.
Representatives for Swedish furniture giant IKEA on Monday apologized for removing women from some of the photos in catalogs shipped to Saudi Arabia, and said the blame lies squarely with them, not the local franchisee.
The move to manipulate photos sparked criticism from government officials in Sweden and raised questions about how IKEA is living up to its own values.
iPhone line-sitting has never been a proud endeavor, but at least there was something pure about the diehards and wackos that set up shop outside Apple Stores for days, even weeks ahead of launch. This year? It’s just a bunch of sellouts and self-promoters.
Solid book laying out the argument for why pirates and youth subcultures from punk & hip hop to open source software developers are all ‘Punk Capitalists’ reinventing business models and creating new markets and revenue opportunities. Author, Matt Mason makes a compelling argument for openness, collaboration and the value of altruism (vs. self interest) in business and why the best strategy for responding to pirates is to compete with them, not try to shut them down.
Mason is also well versed in music and pop culture laying out some interesting links between a Boston nun whose birthday parties she held for the children in the orphanage she worked at had a direct influence on modern disco and house music and some excellent sections on the history of the remix and why hip hop has had such a sustained impact on youth, pop and business culture without seriously compromising it’s own authenticity and credibility. The Pirate’s Dilemma is definitely worth reading for anyone in the social media and youth marketing fields.
Last week, the Canadian Digital Dealer Conference was held in Toronto, hosted by the Toronto Automobile Dealers Association.
The “social media boot camp,” as it was nicknamed, was sold out and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Dealers everywhere have been trying to understand social media and to apply various aspects of it to their businesses.
The conference featured social media experts from across North America who specialize in marketing for the auto industry, including automotive bloggers, digital marketing gurus, legal experts and social networking mavens.
The central message was clear: we’ve entered a new age of marketing and communications, where dealers now have unprecedented access to online tools, technologies and platforms that allow them to connect with — and create deeper relationships with — their customers and the community at large.
The Benetton clothing company quickly withdrew an ad featuring a fake photo of Pope Benedict XVI kissing a top Egyptian Imam on the lips after the Vatican denounced it as an unacceptable provocation.
Benetton had said its “Unhate” campaign launched Wednesday was aimed at fostering tolerance and “global love.”
The campaign’s fake photos feature a half-dozen purported political nemeses in lip-locked embraces, including President Barack Obama and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.
The photo of the pope kissing Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb of Cairo’s al-Azhar institute, the pre-eminent theological school of Sunni Islam, had been on Benetton’s website all day but was pulled about an hour after the Vatican’s protest.
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