Kalle Lasn: Clearing the Mindscape

L.A.: Kalle Lasn, with Adbusters you have created something called “subvertising.” What exactly is it?

Kalle Lasn: There are two kinds of advertising, two kinds of marketing. There is product marketing, and there is advocacy marketing. You can sell products or you can sell ideas. And when you are selling products, then I think you can call that advertising. And when you are selling ideas that try to subvert advertising, we call it “subvertising.” Because usually, when we are selling an idea we are trying to undermine the system. So, “subvertising” is a good word for the sort of stuff that we do.

L.A.: Malcolm McLaren, the inventor of the Sex Pistols, talks about the three “Ss” of success: sex, subversion, and style.

Kalle Lasn: Well, you know, I agree with him. I think that what really rules the world is, of course, who controls the information and who controls the information flows. But, ultimately, I think a culture is created by the style. For me a better word than style is “the cool.” I think the cool is a word that describes what permeates up from the bottom of culture and ultimately helps us decide what we are going to wear, and what music we are going to be listening to, and what kind of ideas we will have about things like climate change, or about the war in Iraq. So I think that, for me, “subvertising,” or “culture jamming,” as I call it, is the art of creating a new kind of cool.