Latest news with #Heimann
New York Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
The Beatles concert that helped usher in a sports-rock connection forever
INDIANAPOLIS — It's something to see, really. It hangs as a permanent display in the Indiana Farmer's Coliseum about five miles north of downtown, and from a distance it looks like just another old gatefold from The Beatles' 1967 album 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.' Walk closer and you see it's something else. It's the same image you see when you unfold that old vinyl masterpiece, but it's actually a work of art, designed by Corey Heimann, and it's actually a series of 2,368 solved Rubik's Cubes, whose colors make up the mosaic. Heimann designed it last September to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Sept. 3, 1964, the day The Beatles performed their only two concerts in Indianapolis, at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. A total of 29,337 fans watched the two shows, and though The Beatles described the audience as 'relatively quiet,' George Harrison would recall a memorable stop in this city on the way to the airport.
CNN
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
What the best ads of the 2000s reveal about American culture
In the year 2000, HBO advertised Ellen DeGeneres' latest comedy special with a Botticelli reference. Perched inside a clam shell and surrounded by figures from the original painting, DeGeneres created her own 'Birth of Venus' for the promotional print poster — subbing out nudity for a more signature white pantsuit. (Both HBO and CNN share the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery). Three years later, for a magazine advertisement, the now-defunct British car brand Scion decided to reproduce Damien Hirst's controversial sculpture 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991) by suspending their XII model in a tank of seafoam green formaldehyde. In the same decade, there was a surprisingly artistic print artwork for the sixth season of the popular 2005 CBS TV show 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. In the ad, cast members gaze through the window of a neon-lit diner lifted straight out of American painter Edward Hopper's seminal painting 'Nighthawks' (1942). Each of the campaigns may appear to have little in common, but they reveal an unmistakable truth about the advertising industry: before digital marketing became the norm, overtaking print in terms of revenue and budget allocation, there was arguably more room for complex, creative and daring image-making. Jim Heimann, graphic designer, historian and the editor of the forthcoming book 'All-American Ads of the 2000s' — available in the UK from April 14 and in the US a month later — is worried these might be the last of their kind. 'Print is slowly disappearing. That's a problem,' he said. Like a skilled archaeologist, Heimann has spent his life hunting down and preserving American cultural relics, such as cocktail napkins collected while researching the country's penchant for drive-in restaurants to travel brochures from the early 20th century. A fixture at Sunday flea markets for the last 50 years, Heimann finds they are a good location to scour for magazines — often the first thing to go following a home clearout, he said. He normally turns to eBay to source specific ads, despite the added cost, and takes care to cherry pick from across pop culture, selecting the most artfully designed campaigns for top movies, popular games and even beloved cereal brands, among others. With each decision, he's thinking: 'What would I want to revisit 20 years from now?' In 2000, Heimann was commissioned by Taschen to create a series of books that mapped the visual fluctuations of the advertising industry. He started with the 1950s, a post-war period often referred to as the golden age of capitalism in the US, sourcing John Wayne-fronted Camel ads, glossy Cadillac double-page spreads and kitschy lingerie illustrations. Then he went back to the '30s, the '40s and jumped forward to the '60s, following each decade until the last tome cataloging the Wild West of the '90s hit the shelves in 2022. This edition on the aughts, however, will likely conclude the collection. 'We had a discussion about doing 2010 to 2020,' Heimann told CNN in a video call. 'But the material just isn't there anymore.' Chronicling the earlier part of the decade has proved difficult. As the book's foreword by Steven Heller, former senior art director of the New York Times, reads: 'Advertising did not change when the Times Square ball fell at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, but the industry began its creative decline in the 2000s' — a period when digital advertising was starting to creep in. When Google launched its AdWords platform in 2000, small businesses could eschew forking out for expensive visual campaigns and instead promote themselves on Google's search results page with text-based adverts. By 2001, television had surpassed newspapers in terms of ad revenue for the first time in the US. These developments mark 'the end of a century of advertising,' said Heimann. For Heimann, ads offer insight into the values and aspirations as well as political and economic environments of a generation. On compiling them in the book, he explained: 'We always have a staple of 10 categories, but we expand them according to the decades. For instance, in the 1940s we had to expand war-related ads. They were really predominant, all these companies that were no longer producing automobiles or tires were doing everything for the war effort.' In the aughts, many of the ads were focused on technology. 'The tech world just blew up,' Heimann said. 'Everything fell into that (category) consistently.' It was the 10-year-period that saw the invention of the first ever iPhone, the iMac, the iBook, the MacBook, the iPad, the iPod, iPod Nano and iPod Mini — and that's just Apple. Heimann also found old Motorola, Blackberry, Sony and Nokia ads, along with a slew of brands that are no longer in existence. Amid a shift in societal attitudes towards sexuality and sexual freedom, the concept of 'sex sells' became a common marketing strategy in the '70s — so much so that it would be difficult to tell the difference between a Dolce & Gabbana campaign and an ad for Durex, said Heimann. Sexual marketing imagery continues to be prevalent, despite advertising's changing tides (see Jeremy Allen White's racy Calvin Klein underwear campaign in 2024, which Heimann sought to collect but failed to find a print copy, even after searching through 15 men's magazines at his local newsstand). In a Gucci ad from 2002, a topless male model is photographed side-on, undoing the monogrammed belt of his 'G' embroidered jeans — the leather strap in-hand creating a 'sophomoric suggestion of an enhanced male appendage,' wrote Heller in the book. A Tom Ford menswear shoot Heimann preserved from 2008 shows an entirely naked female model grabbing the crotch of a suited man. 'Females are always exploited,' he pointed out. 'But to the extent of how they exploit women just becomes (implausible).' At least the French brand Sisley somewhat evened the score, with an advert of a nude man saddled up and being ridden by a fully clothed woman. Still, to Heimann, this level of sexualization is 'toned down' compared to the material he has collected from the '80s and '90s. 'Now, we've got this new era of hyper masculinity,' Heimann said, referring to Trump's hypermasculine campaign messaging that called for a return of gender roles, as well as the rise of 'manosphere' influencers such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, who push male-supremacist viewpoints and call for the subservience of women on platforms such as YouTube. 'Where's that going to take us?' he questioned. Between the leaps in AI technology and the new US administration, Heimann has questions not only on what adverts in the future might look like, but also who might be making them in the first place. It's unlikely advertisers will want to spend on an agency to deliver a campaign when they can create them using AI for a fraction of the price. A recent study conducted by the University of Oxford suggests that AI-generated advertising images performed more effectively than human-made ones, as long as the images used do not look like artificial intelligence. 'Where will that creative world go?' Heimann mused. 'It'll have to play out, but it doesn't bode well.' A fixation on cutting costs might only become greater in light of President Donald Trump's anti-European initiatives and the recently announced 25% tariffs on imported cars among other products. 'How do you sell a car that's 25% more (expensive) than another car?' Heimann asked. 'Who's going to buy a Subaru (or) a Volvo (if they) charge 25% more than an American car?' For Heimann, advertisements of the last two decades have been selling a steady version of the American Dream. 'In the '90s and the early 2000s, advertising still has that same cadence to it. The population looks the same, the automobiles look the same,' he said. Now, Heimann thinks that as America continues to evolve, more monumental changes will come in the years ahead. 'I've been asked the question, 'Did 9/11 affect advertising and how people perceived it?' I think there was a little bump (in the road)… But I think what's happening currently is going to be much more impactful,' he said. 'All-American Ads of the 2000s', published by Taschen, is available in the UK now, and in the US from May 14.
CNN
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
What the best ads of the 2000s reveal about American culture
In the year 2000, HBO advertised Ellen DeGeneres' latest comedy special with a Botticelli reference. Perched inside a clam shell and surrounded by figures from the original painting, DeGeneres created her own 'Birth of Venus' for the promotional print poster — subbing out nudity for a more signature white pantsuit. (Both HBO and CNN share the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery). Three years later, for a magazine advertisement, the now-defunct British car brand Scion decided to reproduce Damien Hirst's controversial sculpture 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991) by suspending their XII model in a tank of seafoam green formaldehyde. In the same decade, there was a surprisingly artistic print artwork for the sixth season of the popular 2005 CBS TV show 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. In the ad, cast members gaze through the window of a neon-lit diner lifted straight out of American painter Edward Hopper's seminal painting 'Nighthawks' (1942). Each of the campaigns may appear to have little in common, but they reveal an unmistakable truth about the advertising industry: before digital marketing became the norm, overtaking print in terms of revenue and budget allocation, there was arguably more room for complex, creative and daring image-making. Jim Heimann, graphic designer, historian and the editor of the forthcoming book 'All-American Ads of the 2000s' — available in the UK from April 14 and in the US a month later — is worried these might be the last of their kind. 'Print is slowly disappearing. That's a problem,' he said. Like a skilled archaeologist, Heimann has spent his life hunting down and preserving American cultural relics, such as cocktail napkins collected while researching the country's penchant for drive-in restaurants to travel brochures from the early 20th century. A fixture at Sunday flea markets for the last 50 years, Heimann finds they are a good location to scour for magazines — often the first thing to go following a home clearout, he said. He normally turns to eBay to source specific ads, despite the added cost, and takes care to cherry pick from across pop culture, selecting the most artfully designed campaigns for top movies, popular games and even beloved cereal brands, among others. With each decision, he's thinking: 'What would I want to revisit 20 years from now?' In 2000, Heimann was commissioned by Taschen to create a series of books that mapped the visual fluctuations of the advertising industry. He started with the 1950s, a post-war period often referred to as the golden age of capitalism in the US, sourcing John Wayne-fronted Camel ads, glossy Cadillac double-page spreads and kitschy lingerie illustrations. Then he went back to the '30s, the '40s and jumped forward to the '60s, following each decade until the last tome cataloging the Wild West of the '90s hit the shelves in 2022. This edition on the aughts, however, will likely conclude the collection. 'We had a discussion about doing 2010 to 2020,' Heimann told CNN in a video call. 'But the material just isn't there anymore.' Chronicling the earlier part of the decade has proved difficult. As the book's foreword by Steven Heller, former senior art director of the New York Times, reads: 'Advertising did not change when the Times Square ball fell at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, but the industry began its creative decline in the 2000s' — a period when digital advertising was starting to creep in. When Google launched its AdWords platform in 2000, small businesses could eschew forking out for expensive visual campaigns and instead promote themselves on Google's search results page with text-based adverts. By 2001, television had surpassed newspapers in terms of ad revenue for the first time in the US. These developments mark 'the end of a century of advertising,' said Heimann. For Heimann, ads offer insight into the values and aspirations as well as political and economic environments of a generation. On compiling them in the book, he explained: 'We always have a staple of 10 categories, but we expand them according to the decades. For instance, in the 1940s we had to expand war-related ads. They were really predominant, all these companies that were no longer producing automobiles or tires were doing everything for the war effort.' In the aughts, many of the ads were focused on technology. 'The tech world just blew up,' Heimann said. 'Everything fell into that (category) consistently.' It was the 10-year-period that saw the invention of the first ever iPhone, the iMac, the iBook, the MacBook, the iPad, the iPod, iPod Nano and iPod Mini — and that's just Apple. Heimann also found old Motorola, Blackberry, Sony and Nokia ads, along with a slew of brands that are no longer in existence. Amid a shift in societal attitudes towards sexuality and sexual freedom, the concept of 'sex sells' became a common marketing strategy in the '70s — so much so that it would be difficult to tell the difference between a Dolce & Gabbana campaign and an ad for Durex, said Heimann. Sexual marketing imagery continues to be prevalent, despite advertising's changing tides (see Jeremy Allen White's racy Calvin Klein underwear campaign in 2024, which Heimann sought to collect but failed to find a print copy, even after searching through 15 men's magazines at his local newsstand). In a Gucci ad from 2002, a topless male model is photographed side-on, undoing the monogrammed belt of his 'G' embroidered jeans — the leather strap in-hand creating a 'sophomoric suggestion of an enhanced male appendage,' wrote Heller in the book. A Tom Ford menswear shoot Heimann preserved from 2008 shows an entirely naked female model grabbing the crotch of a suited man. 'Females are always exploited,' he pointed out. 'But to the extent of how they exploit women just becomes (implausible).' At least the French brand Sisley somewhat evened the score, with an advert of a nude man saddled up and being ridden by a fully clothed woman. Still, to Heimann, this level of sexualization is 'toned down' compared to the material he has collected from the '80s and '90s. 'Now, we've got this new era of hyper masculinity,' Heimann said, referring to Trump's hypermasculine campaign messaging that called for a return of gender roles, as well as the rise of 'manosphere' influencers such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, who push male-supremacist viewpoints and call for the subservience of women on platforms such as YouTube. 'Where's that going to take us?' he questioned. Between the leaps in AI technology and the new US administration, Heimann has questions not only on what adverts in the future might look like, but also who might be making them in the first place. It's unlikely advertisers will want to spend on an agency to deliver a campaign when they can create them using AI for a fraction of the price. A recent study conducted by the University of Oxford suggests that AI-generated advertising images performed more effectively than human-made ones, as long as the images used do not look like artificial intelligence. 'Where will that creative world go?' Heimann mused. 'It'll have to play out, but it doesn't bode well.' A fixation on cutting costs might only become greater in light of President Donald Trump's anti-European initiatives and the recently announced 25% tariffs on imported cars among other products. 'How do you sell a car that's 25% more (expensive) than another car?' Heimann asked. 'Who's going to buy a Subaru (or) a Volvo (if they) charge 25% more than an American car?' For Heimann, advertisements of the last two decades have been selling a steady version of the American Dream. 'In the '90s and the early 2000s, advertising still has that same cadence to it. The population looks the same, the automobiles look the same,' he said. Now, Heimann thinks that as America continues to evolve, more monumental changes will come in the years ahead. 'I've been asked the question, 'Did 9/11 affect advertising and how people perceived it?' I think there was a little bump (in the road)… But I think what's happening currently is going to be much more impactful,' he said. 'All-American Ads of the 2000s', published by Taschen, is available in the UK now, and in the US from May 14.
CNN
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
What the best ads of the 2000s reveal about American culture
In the year 2000, HBO advertised Ellen DeGeneres' latest comedy special with a Botticelli reference. Perched inside a clam shell and surrounded by figures from the original painting, DeGeneres created her own 'Birth of Venus' for the promotional print poster — subbing out nudity for a more signature white pantsuit. (Both HBO and CNN share the parent company Warner Bros. Discovery). Three years later, for a magazine advertisement, the now-defunct British car brand Scion decided to reproduce Damien Hirst's controversial sculpture 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living' (1991) by suspending their XII model in a tank of seafoam green formaldehyde. In the same decade, there was a surprisingly artistic print artwork for the sixth season of the popular 2005 CBS TV show 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'. In the ad, cast members gaze through the window of a neon-lit diner lifted straight out of American painter Edward Hopper's seminal painting 'Nighthawks' (1942). Each of the campaigns may appear to have little in common, but they reveal an unmistakable truth about the advertising industry: before digital marketing became the norm, overtaking print in terms of revenue and budget allocation, there was arguably more room for complex, creative and daring image-making. Jim Heimann, graphic designer, historian and the editor of the forthcoming book 'All-American Ads of the 2000s' — available in the UK from April 14 and in the US a month later — is worried these might be the last of their kind. 'Print is slowly disappearing. That's a problem,' he said. Like a skilled archaeologist, Heimann has spent his life hunting down and preserving American cultural relics, such as cocktail napkins collected while researching the country's penchant for drive-in restaurants to travel brochures from the early 20th century. A fixture at Sunday flea markets for the last 50 years, Heimann finds they are a good location to scour for magazines — often the first thing to go following a home clearout, he said. He normally turns to eBay to source specific ads, despite the added cost, and takes care to cherry pick from across pop culture, selecting the most artfully designed campaigns for top movies, popular games and even beloved cereal brands, among others. With each decision, he's thinking: 'What would I want to revisit 20 years from now?' In 2000, Heimann was commissioned by Taschen to create a series of books that mapped the visual fluctuations of the advertising industry. He started with the 1950s, a post-war period often referred to as the golden age of capitalism in the US, sourcing John Wayne-fronted Camel ads, glossy Cadillac double-page spreads and kitschy lingerie illustrations. Then he went back to the '30s, the '40s and jumped forward to the '60s, following each decade until the last tome cataloging the Wild West of the '90s hit the shelves in 2022. This edition on the aughts, however, will likely conclude the collection. 'We had a discussion about doing 2010 to 2020,' Heimann told CNN in a video call. 'But the material just isn't there anymore.' Chronicling the earlier part of the decade has proved difficult. As the book's foreword by Steven Heller, former senior art director of the New York Times, reads: 'Advertising did not change when the Times Square ball fell at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, but the industry began its creative decline in the 2000s' — a period when digital advertising was starting to creep in. When Google launched its AdWords platform in 2000, small businesses could eschew forking out for expensive visual campaigns and instead promote themselves on Google's search results page with text-based adverts. By 2001, television had surpassed newspapers in terms of ad revenue for the first time in the US. These developments mark 'the end of a century of advertising,' said Heimann. For Heimann, ads offer insight into the values and aspirations as well as political and economic environments of a generation. On compiling them in the book, he explained: 'We always have a staple of 10 categories, but we expand them according to the decades. For instance, in the 1940s we had to expand war-related ads. They were really predominant, all these companies that were no longer producing automobiles or tires were doing everything for the war effort.' In the aughts, many of the ads were focused on technology. 'The tech world just blew up,' Heimann said. 'Everything fell into that (category) consistently.' It was the 10-year-period that saw the invention of the first ever iPhone, the iMac, the iBook, the MacBook, the iPad, the iPod, iPod Nano and iPod Mini — and that's just Apple. Heimann also found old Motorola, Blackberry, Sony and Nokia ads, along with a slew of brands that are no longer in existence. Amid a shift in societal attitudes towards sexuality and sexual freedom, the concept of 'sex sells' became a common marketing strategy in the '70s — so much so that it would be difficult to tell the difference between a Dolce & Gabbana campaign and an ad for Durex, said Heimann. Sexual marketing imagery continues to be prevalent, despite advertising's changing tides (see Jeremy Allen White's racy Calvin Klein underwear campaign in 2024, which Heimann sought to collect but failed to find a print copy, even after searching through 15 men's magazines at his local newsstand). In a Gucci ad from 2002, a topless male model is photographed side-on, undoing the monogrammed belt of his 'G' embroidered jeans — the leather strap in-hand creating a 'sophomoric suggestion of an enhanced male appendage,' wrote Heller in the book. A Tom Ford menswear shoot Heimann preserved from 2008 shows an entirely naked female model grabbing the crotch of a suited man. 'Females are always exploited,' he pointed out. 'But to the extent of how they exploit women just becomes (implausible).' At least the French brand Sisley somewhat evened the score, with an advert of a nude man saddled up and being ridden by a fully clothed woman. Still, to Heimann, this level of sexualization is 'toned down' compared to the material he has collected from the '80s and '90s. 'Now, we've got this new era of hyper masculinity,' Heimann said, referring to Trump's hypermasculine campaign messaging that called for a return of gender roles, as well as the rise of 'manosphere' influencers such as Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, who push male-supremacist viewpoints and call for the subservience of women on platforms such as YouTube. 'Where's that going to take us?' he questioned. Between the leaps in AI technology and the new US administration, Heimann has questions not only on what adverts in the future might look like, but also who might be making them in the first place. It's unlikely advertisers will want to spend on an agency to deliver a campaign when they can create them using AI for a fraction of the price. A recent study conducted by the University of Oxford suggests that AI-generated advertising images performed more effectively than human-made ones, as long as the images used do not look like artificial intelligence. 'Where will that creative world go?' Heimann mused. 'It'll have to play out, but it doesn't bode well.' A fixation on cutting costs might only become greater in light of President Donald Trump's anti-European initiatives and the recently announced 25% tariffs on imported cars among other products. 'How do you sell a car that's 25% more (expensive) than another car?' Heimann asked. 'Who's going to buy a Subaru (or) a Volvo (if they) charge 25% more than an American car?' For Heimann, advertisements of the last two decades have been selling a steady version of the American Dream. 'In the '90s and the early 2000s, advertising still has that same cadence to it. The population looks the same, the automobiles look the same,' he said. Now, Heimann thinks that as America continues to evolve, more monumental changes will come in the years ahead. 'I've been asked the question, 'Did 9/11 affect advertising and how people perceived it?' I think there was a little bump (in the road)… But I think what's happening currently is going to be much more impactful,' he said. 'All-American Ads of the 2000s', published by Taschen, is available in the UK now, and in the US from May 14.
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sex, patriotism and Donald Trump cologne: the US adverts that explain the 00s
As the longtime editor of Taschen's All-American Ads book series, cultural historian Jim Heimann has helped chronicle the shifting landscape of commercial artistry through each decade of the 20th century. Now, with a final volume dedicated to the 2000s, Heimann has completed what he calls a 'swan song' – not just for the series, but for an entire era of advertising. It presents the last moment before social media and the decline of print media transformed the industry for ever. The 2000s were fraught with social, political and cultural disruptions. Chief among them were the September 11 terrorist attacks, which sparked a dramatic wave of national trauma that simultaneously drove the advertising industry to embrace patriotism while seeking escapism. Brands such as Budweiser, with its iconic Clydesdale tribute – which sees a team of horses pulling a beer wagon to New York before bowing their heads towards the Manhattan skyline – channelled unity, while luxury brands offered distraction through aspirational messaging. 'It was a transitional period,' says Heimann. 'There were not these huge changes that you would see from the 30s to the 40s, and the 40s to the 50s, in terms of things like fashion and cars.' Instead the 2000s was notable for the prevalence of nostalgia, with many campaigns harking back to previous eras of American dominance. The main innovations in the sector came from tech companies, who had an unparalleled ability to harness the tide of economic optimism and hire the best ad execs. Among the most influential campaigns of the era were Apple's silhouette iPod advertisements. With striking imagery of black shapes dancing against vibrant backgrounds, the campaign looked beyond traditional selling points – such as product features and price – to sell a new way of living. 'Their campaigns reflect that sophistication,' Heimann says. He compares this approach in the 2000s to Apple's famous 1984 campaign, which featured a flagship Ridley Scott-directed Super Bowl ad: 'From an advertising point of view, it wasn't so much print as much as the television and video. That's where it really struck its core.' Despite technological evolution, certain advertising constants remained and arguably reached their apotheosis in the period. 'The one thing that never seems to change is sex,' Heimann observes. 'Sex sells, women sell and, in the last 40 years, exploiting women has been a consistent way to go.' The book features numerous examples of this, including controversial Calvin Klein campaigns and provocative alcohol advertisements such as the one for Skyy Blue vodka, where the viewer looks through a woman's legs at the product. Celebrity endorsements also reached new heights, becoming central to marketing strategies. 'Look at who's endorsing fragrances,' Heimann says. 'David Beckham, Paris Hilton. You go down the line – everybody jumped on that bandwagon.' In this case, everybody includes a bronzed, smiling Donald Trump, pictured in the book posing with his new wife Melania in an ad for Donald Trump the fragrance. In many ways, the era's biggest campaigns prefigure the rise of influencer marketing. As traditional media fragmented, brands increasingly relied on familiar faces to cut through the noise, transforming celebrities from mere endorsers into brand architects whose personal mythology became inseparable from the products. The rise of environmental consciousness also created intriguing contradictions in advertising. Innovations such as the Toyota Prius promised eco-friendly cars, while Hummer advertisements celebrated gas-guzzling excess. 'Those are the kind of contrasts you look for,' Heimann notes. 'In one section you have the environment being concerned, and then the next section you've got these giant gas-eating monsters.' The true significance of the 2000s in advertising history may be its position at the precipice of fundamental change. 'Where is advertising going?' says Heimann. 'Well, we know where it's gone, and it's not print … with online and influencers, and now AI, who knows what advertising is going to be? You don't even need a human any more. You don't need advertising agencies. You don't even know whether it's real!' As well as celebrated ads, the book features a number that missed their mark, including one perplexing ad for Axe Dry deodorant, which features the surely unprecedented scene of a model holding a glass of wine in one hand, while the other is wrapped around her partner, a stubby, mutated foot with a 'vaguely vaginal hairy armpit for a face'. 'You want to know who was in that meeting', says Heimann. 'Who gave the green light to go with some of this stuff!' For Heimann, the book serves as both celebration and epitaph for an era when advertising retained its quality: 'It's depressing but the 2000s were the final time where real people made real campaigns. And for better and for worse, you know, it's in this book.' All-American Ads 2000s, published by Taschen, is out now. Omega, 2006James Bond has long been a staple of high-end advertising, with many campaigns employing a retrofuturist vision of the 60s. This ad appeared when Daniel Craig began playing the iconic spy and tied in with the film's return to a rugged, masculine aesthetic after the Pierce Brosnan era had leaned heavily on gadget wizardry. Hummer, 2002This Hummer advertisement embodies the conflict between environmentalism and masculinity perfectly. The comically large SUVs, popularised in the US by Arnold Schwarzenegger, had become symbolic of an era where bigger meant better, a mentality that was beginning to face cultural scrutiny as the decade progressed. Conservation International, 2008In the 2000s, NGOs and public bodies used advertising techniques to appeal for a less consumerist culture. Conservation International were criticised for their work with companies such as BP and Exxon, with Heimann remarking that it became important for the industry to rehabilitate its public image. Evian, 2000The 'Evian mermaid' ad featured a very artistic concept that was highly unusual at the time for such a quotidian product. The ad was notable enough that it likely inspired a scene in the movie Zoolander (2001), in which the title character plays a 'merman' for a beauty campaign, to the chagrin of his friends and family. SKYY vodka, 2002While sexually explicit imagery has long been a feature of advertising, the 2000s is particularly notable for evincing a sort of hypersexuality that frequently bordered on the comic. 'Flicking through the magazines you see sexuality being expressed in all kinds of weird situations,' says Heimann. 'I thought there was something zeitgeisty as well as graphically interesting about the stilettos being featured as prominently as the product.' Earth Day 2009Earth Day, an annual environmental event, produced this image to promote its day of activism in 2009. It was chosen as the book's cover image to reflect the rise of environmentalism in the 2000s.
