Interview with Ji Lee, the Bubble Project (Gel '06 speaker)

Mar 24, 2006

If you have ridden the New York City subway recently, you might have noticed little speech bubbles stuck on to the ads that line the walls and halls of the subway. The bubbles invite passerby to write their own text into the bubbles, thereby adding a caption and commenting on the ad, the city, or anything else on their mind. (One ad for fashion brand DKNY, for example, has a young model wondering, through a speech bubble, "What am I gonna do when I'm 23?")

These stickers are all the work of Ji Lee, who started the Bubble Project as a way of allowing New Yorkers to talk back to the advertisements that often dominate their urban experience.

Ji Lee will be speaking at my Gel 2006 conference in a few weeks, so I had a phone call with him to talk about why he started The Bubble Project.

(The text below came from my notes I scribbled during our phone call, so any rough edges are mine.)

Ji Lee: The Bubble Project grew out of my experience working at an ad agency. I had learned a lot about how clients think, and how mass communication works, and I was frustrated with the often politically correct and conservative aspects of these companies.

Everything was a problem-solution setup. The brief comes from a big company like General Mills, or one of the big airlines - millions of dollars is budgeted to produce these ads. Every time I came up with an interesting idea, a great idea, I saw the potential of how to make communication interesting and engaging to the public - but these ideas always had to go through many layers of client approval.

I remember this one assignment for Cheerios, which was about communicating all the different flavors. Consumers are used to the yellow box, but there are several other flavors. So my partner and I came up with this line - "only the holes taste the same." The client loved it, everybody in the meeting was laughing - and then all of a sudden, this discussion started about the difference between "flavor" and "taste." So all the excitement shared in the beginning disappeared, and we were locked into this absurd discussion, forgetting the big picture. This experience was really common, having meeting after meeting discussing details, instead of seeing if the idea worked.

This is why a lot of ads look the same today. If you turn down the TV volume and remove the logo, the ads could work for practically any product or brand. There's a sense of fear about experimenting in anything, but also a sense that traditional ads are no longer working, because consumers have choices to skip the ads - TiVo, the Internet, video games.

On one hand, the companies are afraid of trying something new; on the other hand, they don't know what to do, they're lost. But when people in advertising see the Bubble Project, they're excited - it's a simple, inexpensive way to engage people.

I'm not against advertising - it's like money, it's part of our capitalist system. Advertising will be with us for a long time, like it or not. I'd like to see it be more entertaining, more challenging. And the Bubble Project is good for advertisers - most ads are boring, but with the bubbles on top, people look at the ads and interact with them. I'm trying to humanize advertising. It's not intended to be damaging. It's a form of graffiti, but it's disposable and inexpensive. And it's a lot of fun for everyone.

Mark Hurst: And you're expanding?

Ji Lee: Yes - there's also a bubble project in Italy now, Progetto Bolla.

- - -

Note 27 Mar 06: Edited the sentence "So my partner and I came up with this line - 'only the holes taste the same.'" because the original version had the wrong quote. Thanks to Ji for clearing that up. -mh

- - -

Remember - you can see Ji Lee speak at Gel 2006, May 4-5 in New York City.

Regular ticket prices end in about a week, so register soon!

• IN: Column Archive
• #