Advertisers try their best to love social media in their ever more desperate quest to persuade you their wares are still necessary and/or desirable. They also sponsor all those quirky bits of research that surface in newspapers in search of free copy. One such piece of research suggested that if you were feeling a bit poorly, what you most wanted was a tin of soup. This revelation was brought to you by none other than Heinz, purveyors of tins of soup to Her Majesty. And now the oh-so-modern bit, social media meets on-demand digital printing to let you order a personalised tin of tomato soup through a FaceBook page. In my own piece of research I ordered up a tin dedicated to one who would have undoubtably approved of such cynical advertising (and had more than a passing interest in tins of soup), the late, great Andy Warhol. This was in a vain attempt to emulate:
Jonah Peretti [who] attempted to order a pair of shoes from Nike. He chose to have the word “sweatshop” embroidered on them. Nike sent Peretti an email explaining that his personalization request could not be granted for one of four things: it contained another party’s trademark or other intellectual property, the name of an athlete or team Nike does not have legal right to use, profanity or inappropriate slang, or was left blank. Peretti replied, expressing to Nike that his personalization did not contain content violating the aforementioned criteria. Nike responded by allowing Peretti to alter his personalization and Peretti chose not to change it and cancelled the order. Ironically, the publicity led to Nike selling more of the personalised shoes – Wikipedia Nike Sweatshops.
Anyroad, if you have a PayPal account and can get on FaceBook, order your own tinned work of art for £1.99.
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