[chxchen] Subversive Advertisement

For my subversive ad, I chose an app called Citizen which tracks and monitors crimes and police activity in your area in real time. This ad was inspired by a notification I got from the app a few weeks ago:

The app can be very helpful in keeping people in an area alerted about any potential dangers to their safety. However, the almost social-media-esque approach to the app is concerning in its potential to glorify crime. The app uses language like “trending” and “top incidents”, wording you’re a lot more likely to see in relation to, say, a trending post on Instagram. In addition, Citizen pays users to go to crime scenes and livestream what happens there. This incentive can be very dangerous.

In my advertisement, I used an advertisement style similar to Apple, trying to embody Citizen’s dark, sleek appearance. The language I used is ironic given the topic of the app and is a lot more similar to what you would find for a Twitter or Instagram advertisement.

The images used on the app are meant to be subtly disturbing and draws from current Citizen advertisements – the usage of a picturesque, “utopian” city is dead center (the “pretty” picture associated with most social media ads), but if you look closer at the surrounding information and details, you see a video of arson and text about harassment and robbery, juxtaposing against the clean, pretty main picture.