This postmodern era is characterized by globalization and consumerism: fast, cheap, new, full of products, colors, big catchy words, commercials, ADV, fragmentation, extravagant, omnichannel and image focused.
This thought made me put together all of those features using illustrations, bold colors and text to give back this feeling of chaos and enthusiasm (as shopping does).
The basic concept is in the main text: "Don't be a victim of good marketing, think!"
The visual storytelling instead is set in the pac-man videogame, born in the 80' (exactly 44 years ago today) which is the time when consumerism made many Americans engaged in "conspicuous consumption", which is the pattern of purchasing luxury goods just to show others that they were doing well.
I choose pac man as a reference because of the main character. The yellow protagonist is in fact just running around a labyrinth without eyes and just eating as many points as possible to reach a higher score. Like consumers, following marketing messages until they are (even subconsciously) persuaded to buy more and more every day.
In the poster the hearts are the positive messages and promises spreaded by ADV and media, and we are pac man, eating those messages every day.
The ghosts in the video game used to play a dangerous role for the yellow protagonist. In fact, every time It hits them It would lose a life. In that sense the ghosts are the people who actually think and stop the binge "eating of points/buying behaviour".
On the other hand, the ghosts are the only ones with eyes, meaning they can decide where to go. Looking at their way, they don't eat points blindly like pac man does. Long story short, we can choose every day to be a pac man or a ghost.
What's your choice?
