After September 11, the mood in the United States was somber and serious as the majority of Americans were led into supporting two failed wars by Bush II. Speaking out was unpatriotic, so those of us who were none too pleased found quiet solace and smiles in David Rees’ Get Your War On. The ironic cartoons gave us something to snicker about with co-workers — you know, the anti-American traitor types with bleeding hearts (as opposed to ones that pump oil) — around the water cooler.
In the years following, Get Your War On managed to spread around the world wide interweb faster than the swine flu, and it didn’t take long for a compilation of seven years of the hilariously un-PC drawings to be released by Brooklyn-based publisher Soft Skull Press, and for Rude Mechanicals to tour the country acting out the snarkified, curse-laden dialogue Rees was famous for.
After a brief hiatus, Get Your War On is back… sort of.
For their new animated Cubicle Picnic ad campaign, Jamba Juice has used the same clip art as Rees’ snarky, foul mouthed office-dwellers, but replaced the dialogue with their pro-Jamba corporate marketing nonsense. The intent was to capture a young, web-savvy demographic through the use of ironic imagery — and irony is exactly what they got.
Rees supporters were so outraged that they began speaking out against the image duplication for the purposes of selling Jamba’s Summer Bliss, which prompted Jamba Juice to issue a statement disassociating the company from Get Your War On. Sounds like a lesson in how to alienate just the audience they intended to corral. This explains why now they’re literally giving the stuff away.
Rees’ response to the drama? “Juice Sucks. Drink wine!” (Listen to an interview with him about it here.)
If you want to know what a Jamba Juice marketing meeting looks like, here is 40 seconds of your life you can never have back: