Hold the pickes, hold the lettuce. Specials orders don't upset us! All we as is that you let us serve it your way.

I want to explore developments in television and internet advertising from the vantage of Terranova's theories of communication and production. I plan to call in Burroughs in order to address the more material and practical sides of the production of media, though both writers share many theoretical concerns (the production of subjectivity, genetics, representation and fragmentation, the move from molecular to molar, the play of images).

I will begin by looking at fast food TV/radio advertising. First, McDonald's: how does the change in its slogans and jingles reflect a greater move toward what Terranova would call network culture? In the 60's, the slogans referred to a more spatial realm, a realm in which producer, consumer, and consumed remain distinct: there are mentions of "place," "home," "eating out," landmark ("Look for the golden arches!"). At the same time, the slogans tend to center around McDonald's serving its customers. Eventually, the 1983 slogan "McDonald's and you" marks a hinging of perspective. Ad campaigns begin to suggest (and eventually produce) the audience's appetites and desires (1992: "What you want is what you get") as mention of McDonald's becomes detached from mention of place, becomes an abstract brand, a symbol (perhaps already suggested by the double reference of "golden arches"). The brilliant "Did somebody say McDonald's?" (1997) produces the actual actual saying of McDonald's, creates a discursive and subjective reality. " The whole host of "smile" campaigns after that had a similar effect of producing a satiated subject, while turning fully to the consumer and away from the restaurant/food itself. With "I'm loving it," McDonald's is finally putting words in the audience's mouth. The voice of the advertiser becomes one with the viewer/listener, effecting a feedback loop of desire, a production of production of reality, such as seen in Burroughs' playback experiments (emphasizing the erasure of context, the subject's vulnerability of placelessness) The latest "It's what I eat and what I do" as well as "What we're made of" reenforces the element of a virus, a collective, of bodies constituted by desire, acting through and as the brand.

Here is where I turn to Burger King's viral ad campaign. After years of flopped campaigns, BK hit gold with its reintroduction of the King character. First of all, the King is a frozen, flattened parody of an old BK character. In commercials, he appears in strange situations and places, seemingly already equipped for the removal of context and image replication that would come to constitute a viral campaign. Amused viewers have created their own photoshopped versions of the King in odd places, posting them to forums and blogs. The viral campaign relies on a sort of soft control, a reliance on viewers to produce their own content which becomes an integral part of the product branding. At the same time, BK (who had already innovated in product tie-in) has launched massive initiatives in which the King appears in video games, cartoons, even talk shows.

BK and its consumers, as in the music and fashion industries, have created a feedback loop in which the desires of the consumers leads to something productive in itself, then co-opted by the corporation (its adoption of the "Creepy King" appellation that became popularized on the Net; also, the taping and commercializing of viewer's affective reactions to being told that the Wopper no longer is made).

I still have to work out exactly how Terranova's idea of masses, molecules, moles, and networks relate to these ad campaigns, and how I will organize the presentation of these connections. I also have to read Terranova's final chapter more closely to absorb her ideas of image and affect. I'm also not completely clear on the "production of desire" concept, but it seems very relevant to this undertaking.

I may emphasis the production of subjectivity/collectivity more in the McDonald's case, and issues of capital, imagery, material flows, etc., with the BK example. I'm still unsure. I also don't know if I have room to talk about the decline of loud advertising, growth of libelous ads, and what that has to do with noise and communication.

That's that for now. I'm excited to explore this further.