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Kalle Lasn hates what you do. Here's the thing: He sort of does it too
ON A RESIDENTIAL STREET on the outskirts of Vancouver, British Columbia, it's hard to spot the dear plastic sign tacked to the brown shingles of a three-story house identifying the unlikely headquarters of Adbusljers Media Foundation.
Two tall pine trees shroud the yard. A narrow sidewalk curves around overgrown bushes to a wood staircase and a 13-step descent to the basement door. Pass by a carpenter building a shelf, and inside you'll find the man known for his dangerous ideas on advertising.
The man who calls advertising "brain damage" and says our time is "the age of the Manchurian Consumer" is inside a tiny glassenclosed office, sitting at a beat-up old kitchen table. At first, it's hard to reconcile Kalle Lasn, advertising's angriest and most prolific heretic with this unimposing and exceedingly polite presence sipping coffee.
This is the man, after all, who in his 1999 book "Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge-and Why We Must," offered this dedication: 'To my mortal enemy, Philip Morris Inc., which I vow to take down." The man behind Blackspot shoes, which sport a red dot on the toe "for kicking Nike's ass." The man who wants to de-market Mother's Day, Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Mr. Lasn launched Adbusters in 1989 after picking a fight with me Candadian logging industry. He was enraged by the logging companies' use of the phrase "forest management" to describe what he believed was blatant clear-cutting. In what was then revolutionary consumer-generated content, Mr. Lasn shot his own spoof ad, but he couldn't get it on air.
Today Mr. Lasn leads a network of 100,660 "artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs," who aim to "topple existing power structures and forge a major shift in the way we will live."
Yet he's also human, rejecting the "moral purity" standard put on those who dare challenge the system. He wears New Balance, not his Blackspot brand; it's kind of like Nike founder Phil Knight getting caught in a pair of Reeboks.
"I'm that post-modern contradiction," he said, pointing at his worn shoes. "We are all living in this crazy moment. We are all living...