Steven Harrap

Conflict wine salesman

The situation: Doing a course at Malmo University and have been given the brief to do a project about anything in 2 weeks... OK. We're a group of 4 people: Peter (from Finland), Malin (Swedish) & Carolin (Polish ??).

The Idea: There are regions in conflict - war, environmental destruction, poverty and dictatorship. These areas are often ripe for exploitation by underhanded organizations.

We are making people believe in unrealistic exploitative business situations that are presented in a believable and ordinary manner. The situations are the exploitations of these troubled regions by corporate activities.

We will present the act of an exploitive business by sugar coating and manipulating the facts and create of illusion of a legitimate business activity - wine production.

Drinking wine is a relaxing activity associated with sunny weekends, social enjoyment, nice food and romantic situations. There is no mental barrier against the delivery of the awareness of these troubled regions. "Trojan horse".

How?: By presenting a mock wine presentation to launch a mock wine company that has started producing 4 lines of wine in these 'troubled regions'. This project was executed in the university cafe to students and others. Some people were aware of our intent but many were not.

The Skinny: We wanted people (our gathered crowed) be made aware of the way that can be manipulated and coerced into accepting the unreasonable. Essentially an experiment to see if power point presentations, fancy speak and a little wine is enough to create the illusion of the acceptable.

The materials: Below are some of the speeches and visuals we used. It negates the purpose to explain these items - it would be best to read them and spot the hidden messages. We produced wine labels, bottles, posters, flash presentations and a back story to give our illusions some body.

The result: They bought it hole-sale. By using positive, emotional launguage, pretty graphics, professional presentation and looking well groomed most accepted the ieda. I'm told the other Malin was asked if it was on sale yet.