AntiFriday: This week in critiques, dissent, and backlashes

Yes, another new Murketing.com feature!

It’s the first installment of AntiFriday, a weekly round of dissent, critiques, and backlashes in consumer culture. I hope from now on you’ll always end your work week with a check of what’s upsetting people, and go home early in disgust. List after jump.

1. At Anti-Advertising Agency, Anne Elizabeth Moore reports: “Branded Event Radicalizes Mommy Bloggers.” The basics: Johnson & Johnson put together some kind of murketing-ish expedition, sending a bunch of Mommy Bloggers on a junket. Mommy Bloggers who didn’t get invited were upset. Cry me a river, right? Well, Moore finds something interesting, which is that the issue led at least some of these spurned bloggers to speculate about the rules governing their unpaid-“evangelist” relationship with corporations.

2. Speaking of AAA, Steve Lambert will be giving “a short talk” as part of Gelf Magazine’s Non-Motivational Speaker series. April 24 in New York, details here.

3. Treehugger asks: “Does State Farm Bike Ad Make You See Red?” And adds: “Whatever your reaction, one thing is clear. State Farm needs a clue.”

4. Per Consumerist: “We Say No To Video On Flickr” pool, now at more than 25,000 members.

5. Earlier: Does Absolut advocate Mexico annexing massive chunks of the United States? More recently, Absolut pulled the ads, and clarified: “In no way was this meant to offend or disparage, nor does it advocate an altering of borders.”

6. Finally, AdPulp points to the site of artist Pamela Michelle Johnson. “When confronted with a six-foot tall canvas of enormous and precariously balanced hamburgers, waffles, doughnuts, [Pop Tarts], or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the viewer is forced to recognize that the work is about more than alluring junk food,” an artist statement reads in part. “Her goal is to invoke reflection on embracing a culture of complete and instant gratification while ignoring the consequences of our indulgences.”

In the critique response of the week, AdPulp’s David Burn writes that he sees her point, but “if I was a brand manager on Pop-Tarts, I’d be tempted to misappropriate the meaning behind the work for my own purposes (or at least buy the original work and hang it in Kellogg’s offices).”