Flattery can get you places

Nice branding from Whitechapel via the US.

Where am I? Here, there or everywhere.

Seen on the platform at Tottenham Court Road Station, two ads side by side, telling me exactly where I am. Thanks.

Britney Spears Redacted

A really great flickr set of Britney Spears, or more accurately non-Britney Spears. These paparazzi shots become much more intriguing due to her absence. The mind is left to fill the void the eye doesn't see, and the people who her aura usually renders invisible—the minders, doormen and shoppers—suddenly become animated and real, their part in the drama of celebrity becomes tangible they begin to emerge from the edges of the shot into focus.
See the full set here

Whatever happened to the hidden persuaders?

Maybe it was an act of subliminal subterfuge, perhaps something activated a dormant loop somewhere deep inside my brain. Whatever it was, I suddenly recalled Vance Packard's polemic on the mass media and advertising, 'The Hidden Persuaders'. Persuasion was big in the 60s, and this book written in the late 50s taps into the paranoid idea of an arch Madison Avenue manipulating the unwitting public to do their evil want.

'Subliminal Seduction', follows a similar theme, and was a hit in the 1980s when I recall there was a fresh round of belief in subliminal advertising. A particular Levi's campaign featuring Hunter S Thompson was implicated as having had 'sex' written all over his face when a cigarette was airbrushed out. Having worked on photographs that need heavy retouching, perhaps it would be interesting to attempt this...

3 cafes, 3 names, 3 men, 4 letters

Seen on Upper Regent Street. Needs a further opening perhaps called Dirk to keep up the multinational theme.

Black,white,red,similar

Two consecutive left hand pages in the Guardian magazine, one for Prada one for Jil Sander's Uniqlo range.

Images from Steve Hollingsworth's show 'nuomena - neomena' at www.severalpursuits.org in Berlin.