Adbusters: The North Face

Ads for outdoor sporting goods often come with associations. Advertisers for “The North Face”, a pricy, high performance athletic gear manufacturer, use associations with adventure, independence, and risk to sell the company’s products. The images in their ads show beautiful, untouched regions around the world, sometimes with courageous adventurers wearing their products. Their slogan “never stop exploring” reinforces the association between the product and the adventure lifestyle.

In this ad, I have created a parody of the North Face advertisements. I have featured an image of a pristine moraine lake, surrounded by glacier-capped mountians. However, I also included superimposed images of money in the forest and beach, and a modified slogan. In the ad, instead of trying to sell a product, such as athletic gear, I am trying to sell an idea. The subtext of the advertisement is that one should not have to spend huge sums of money in order to access nature. The slogan, “never stop spending”, is sarcastic, and infers that people should not have to “invest” in high priced, North Face outdoor gear to achieve this adventure lifestyle.

A second possible interpretation of this advertisement is that one cannot put a price on nature. In the ad, I have turned the forest into twenty dollar bills, and the pebbles on the beach into loonies. By looking at the spoof as an environmental message, I am trying to illustrate the clash between economy and environment.