The Billboard Liberation Front

A sleeper cell in London, Ontario, Canada has sent this improvement to us. Deftly pointing out the horrors of American fast food, this from the country that created poutine.

There press release as follows:

Last night at approximately 1:30 AM, a collective of
London activists executed a brilliant billboard
liberation at the intersection of Adelaide and Lorne,
only three blocks away from the London Police
Headquarters. They undertook a wheatpasting operation
to bring more truth to their client, ‘Wendy’s ‘Stack
Attack’ advertisement. The word ‘stack’ was changed to
‘heart’ in order to point out the serious fact that
fast food causes a massive amount of serious health
problems in our society. An immediate and dramatic
police response followed the action and within a
minute several cruisers converged on the site of the
public mind-space reclamation. Fortunately the action
was thoroughly planned out and the activists all
disappeared into the darkness of the night within
seconds. The ad-bust stayed up during both rush hours
today, January 23, 2008, and was not replaced until
later on in the evening.

Photocredit: Paul Stamatiou

Paul Stamtiou spotted this wonderful liberation along the 101 near San Francisco. If anyone has any backstory on it, we’d love to hear more.

The bulk of our email communications are from media students doing a report on culture jamming. Occasionally the BLF get asked to speak at conferences or art shows, but I have to say this invitation caused us to soil our monitor with a hearty spray of coffee.

Emphasis ours, blinding gall theirs.

International Design Firm IDEO (www.ideo.com) is conducting an UNFOCUS group on COMMUNICATION in our Palo Alto location on Wednesday August 15th from 6:00-9:30pm. You will be compensated for your time with yummy dinner plus $100.

YOU ARE:
* You use new media for social change.
* You organize Smart Mobs
* You are a politically subversive or artistic grassroots organizer.
* You are an artist who does public space media events that are confusing or inspirational (street theater… Dada…)
* You are from the Bilboard Liberation Front
* You are a TV show super-fanatic! Your life revolves around a particular TV show. You have every episode AND you also watch it on your laptop, iPod, or TV depending.
* You are an extreme soap opera fan, Buffy maniac, or SciFi fanatic! You go to conventions in support of this lifestyle you also participate in on-line forums about them too!
* You are a Hyper-Wired person - You talk on phone while texting somebody else all the time.
* You are College Student who is a Hyper-Wired person!
* You run a LARGE online community ˆ mega blogger/myspace/freindster type. You have tons of friends online BUT you also have friends that you meet with in person as well
* You are an Ambulance driver or ER Doctor ˆ communication and technology are key
* You are a mom with the latest technology. Your family embraces technology to the extreme.

If interested please take a few minutes to fill out the below survey and send to {redacted}@ideo.com:
(all information will be confidential) {uh..sure -Ed}
Name:
Age:
Ethnicity:
Phone:
Cell Phone:
Address/Location:
Level of Education:
Married/Live-In/Single/Divorced:
Number of Children and Ages:
Do your children live with you?
Occupation:
Job Title:
Describe in DETAIL how you fit into the criteria above?
Can you make it to Palo Alto by 6pm on Wednesday the 15th?

Feel free to forward this to folks you know who might be a good fit for our unfocus group!
Thank you for your time,
[redacted to save you from yourself]

So of course I replied:

YOU ARE:
* Out of your fucking mind.

Most of us are in Marketing, you think I want to trek down to the Peninsula so I can sit in on the same meeting I was nodding off at around 3pm for $100 and pasta salad? If you need someone to tell your clients what the kids nowadays are calling ‘hip’, I suggest AdBusters Magazine. Its run by Media Studies hacks and design student interns who dream of running to a comfy agency job the minute the bill from Miami Ad School comes.

covertly yours,
Milton Rand Kalman
BLF Chief Scientist