Brandalism (a portmanteau of 'brand' and 'vandalism') is an activist artist collective founded in 2012 in the United Kingdom which engages in subvertising, culture jamming, and protest art. Brandalism uses subvertising to alter and critique corporate advertising by creating parodies or spoofs to replace ads in public areas. The art is typically intended to draw attention to political and social issues such as consumerism and the environment. Advertisements produced by the Brandalism movement are silk screen printed artworks, and may take the form of a new image, or a satirical alteration to an existing image, icon or logo. The advertisements are often pasted over billboards, or propped under the glass of roadside advertising spaces.
Prior to the formal emergence of Brandalism, similar creative activist movements had existed, using culture jamming, subvertising and détournement to promote a range of social and political issues throughout history. In 2012, during the Summer Olympics hosted in the UK, the Brandalism movement officially emerged. Since then, several public Brandalism campaigns have been launched across the globe. These include during the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire season, where the Brandalism movement sought to draw attention to topics such as environmental degradation, visual pollution, debt and the representation of body image in advertising.
History and notable instances
Brandalism is a movement that practices ‘culture jamming’ – a campaigning technique that uses mass-marketing tools subversively to criticise consumerism, advertising and mass media. It draws inspiration from ‘détournement’, a technique used during the 1950s by the Situationist International, an international organisation of avant-garde artists. Détournement is a French term that refers to the reappropriation of forms of popular culture to challenge and reveal hidden meanings within these forms. It has also been defined as the practice of “turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself”. During the 1970s, this technique was used by the Australian Billboard Utilising Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions (BUGAUP), who altered tobacco and alcohol advertising billboards in a campaign to rebel against the promotion of unhealthy substance consumption. Between 2000 and 2004 Greenpeace pressured Coca Cola to abandon the use of hydroflurocarbons by placing stickers and posters on Coca-Cola products and refrigerators and vending machines. These parodied the company's then signature images of polar bears, but had them floating on melting icebergs and used the corporation's calligraphy for wording such as “Enjoy Climate Change. The movement was officially labelled ‘Brandalism’ during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, when a group of artists replaced corporate advertisements on billboards with satirical posters critiquing consumerism and advertising. Following this, the Brandalism network expanded and large projects emerged during the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris and the 2020 bushfire season in Australia.
2012 Summer Olympics, London (UK) The first major Brandalism project occurred during the UK summer Olympics in July 2012. Over a five-day period, a team of 28 artists installed satirical parodies of corporate advertisements over 36 large format billboards in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and London. The project was titled ’48 sheet’ and sought to comment on the impacts of advertising on culture and community, specifically targeting the “brand mania” surrounding the London Olympic games. Artists involved in the project included post-situationist artist Robert Montgomery (artist), pop artist Ron English and Banksy collaborator Paul Insect. The works appropriated advertisements from brands such as Foot Locker, McDonald's, JD Sport and Nike. The project gained international media attention, provoking widespread public discussions about the legitimacy of corporate advertising. After this, the Brandalism network began to develop and expand, with installations popping up in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Oxford and Brighton.