Life Incorporated: Advertising in periods of crisis.
What’s this new advertising company with the Red and White logo ? The last two years billboards appeared in several Flemish cities. The advertising messages were at times rather strange. Ads or Art ?
Life Incorporated is a young company that perfectly deals with the current trends. The company was created at the beginning of this millennium, the beginning of a new area.
For the first time ever a general rejection of the free market principles was massively expressed by the population. Initially, young people took part in the anti globalization movement. Later on, they joined the No War For Oil –protest. Finally the movement got stuck in the aftermath of the 9/11 incidents. Governments grasped control, however a critical anti-capitalistic tendency remained. This was far from an ideal situation for the advertising business. The traditional advertising industry is confronted with a crisis as the public gets more assertive and the messages are harder to sell. Life Inc. has the intention to deal with this in a most creative way and wants to start a turnaround in the sector.
Generation MTV
The statement that the MTV generation turned its back on those who brought them up is often heard. Life Inc. regrets this but does not blame the consumer. The business world together with the traditional politics lost all their credibility. The public is tired of being fooled with.
Life Inc. wishes to win the general public over by recognizing the facts of life. It’s non sense to continue to pretend that we live in paradise on earth.
In order to convince the general public of the overall capitalistic idea of growth and progress, business world will have to admit that somehow somewhere things might go wrong. But that’s the price to pay in the profit maximization game. It is the only way to avoid an escalation of the earlier class struggle as we have known it worldwide until 1989 (fall of the Berlin Wall).
Advertising does not influence people anymore, advertising is a lie. Hence the treacherous language of advertising causes a radical rejection of the free market principles. Life Inc. is sincere and respects the integrity of the consumer. Life Inc. sells the reality and people do not expect this. A Life Inc. advertising does not go unnoticed.
Controversy
One of the most noticed Life Inc. campaigns was the introduction of Passion® in the autumn of 2007. Passion® broke down the taboos around the phenomenon of prostitution. Currently students are pursuing greater financial independence. This is very much approved by the educational institutions following the cooperation from the European efficiency policy. But not all the methods through which that economic independence is obtained are tolerated. Upon launching its promotion campaign at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel , Life Inc.received negative reactions from the academic institution whereas the students themselves were interested.
One year later, Life Inc. was present at the Young Artists event in Ghent with its promotion campaign Imagine®. The Imagine® -campaign clearly wanted to touch the artists as well as the public at large. As the company is based upon imagination it simply invited the young public with a creative ambition to participate in the Life Inc. project. Upon which the remark came that a private commercial company is not welcome on an artistically happening.
Life Inc. does not mind the controversial issues.
Fusion of art and commerce
Life Inc. describes its “post-modern approach” as the employment of young artists in the image-building of the advertising world. Among artists it is not “done” to work for a commercial and profit oriented enterprise. However the time that artists led an autonomous life is long gone. The future of young artists lies in the Big Business. Life Inc .worked together with Boris Ljugov for the start-up campaign of the Metropolitan Move.
The 24-year old photographer made an intriguing set of pictures to support the Life Inc. message for the Metropolitan Move campaign. There exists a perfect synergy between the work of the young talented Ljugov and the mission of Life Inc. that is to say: the close cooperation between the artistic and the business world. “The public is overwhelmed with worthless publicity and remains deprived of accessible art. It’s about time to change this situation”, is just one of the basic philosophical statements of Life Inc. It’s the ambition of the young advertising company to come to a modus operandi that merges the interests of business and art. That is precisely the reason why the Metropolitan Move Leuven coincides with the artistically happening
"Autour et au-delà BROOTHAERS : Onomwonden".
Previous Life Inc. events were organized in cooperation with cultural institutions. For the Metropolitan Move Life Inc. had the opportunity and the pleasure to work together with Amuseevous and the new museum M of Leuven.
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