Word: bayer
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When artist Yael Bedarshi discovered this promotional film in Berlin a few years ago, the sponsor's name was instantly and ominously familiar. Bayer, a developer of cockroach control chemicals, was a subsidiary of IG Farben during World War II. IG Farben was the chemical cartel responsible for the manufacturing of Zyklon B gas, a pesticide used to exterminate victims of he Nazi regime...
Cockroaches and Jews? The connection Bedarski makes in displaying an edited version of Bayer's promotional tape as art (Cockroaches, 1993-94) is creepily potent. Her monitors are set up on the lowest level of the ICA, in a corner draped in black, appropriately damp and smelling faintly of sewage. Cockroaches accomplishes a disturbing transference of emotion. Already slightly queasy at the sight of six inch cockroaches, the viewer is easily horrified by the appearance of Germans in gas masks speaking calmly and matter-of-factly about efficient modes of extermination. Bedarski's parallel is clever, subversive and electric...
Germans Regain Bayer Aspirin...
...German chemical firm Bayer paid $1 billion to regain the American rights to its name by buying the North American over-the-counter medicine business of Sterling Winthrop. A Bayer chemist, Felix Hoffman, developed the company's production process for its most famous product, aspirin, in 1893. Bayer lost its American patents and copyrights in 1918, when the U.S. government seized the firm's assets following World...
...forgiven if they jump every time the phone rings these days. At any moment, an enviable client may invite a pitch or a major chunk of their business may walk out. When New York's N W Ayer celebrated its victory last week in capturing the $30 million Bayer aspirin account, the agency was still smarting from the loss two weeks earlier of the $65 million J.C. Penney account. Advertisers are flexing their spending muscle more aggressively than ever before. Even longtime clients feel little loyalty anymore to their agencies. As a result, ad firms are raising the stakes...