Subvertising

Subvertising (a portmanteau of subvert and advertising) is the practice of making spoofs or parodies of corporate and political advertisements.^[1] The cultural critic Mark Dery coined the term in 1991.^[2] Subvertisements are anti-ads that deflect advertising's attempts to turn the people's attention in a given direction.^[3] According to author Naomi Klein, subvertising offers a way of speaking back to advertising, ‘forcing a dialogue where before there was only a declaration.’^[4] They may take the form of a new image or an alteration to an existing image or icon, often in a satirical manner.^[5]

A subvertisement can also be referred to as a meme hack and can be a part of social hacking, billboard hacking or culture jamming.^[6] According to Adbusters, a Canadian magazine and a proponent of counter-culture and subvertising, "A well-produced 'subvert' mimics the look and feel of the targeted ad, promoting the classic 'double-take' as viewers suddenly realize they have been duped. Subverts create cognitive dissonance, with the apparent aim of cutting through the 'hype and glitz of our mediated reality' to reveal a 'deeper truth within'.^{[citation needed]}

Subvertising is a type of advertising hijacking (détournement publicité), where détournement techniques developed in the 1950s by the French Letterist International and later used by the better-known Situationist International have been used as a contemporary critical form to re-route advertising messages.