Advertising and art

Art and advertising have been linked for decades. Illustrations are called artwork and the people that design them — art directors.

Before the age of photography, painting was used to communicate the likenesses of kings and queens, princes and princesses throughout a kingdom. Paintings also let the next generation know what previous generations looked like. Before., the age of photography, Rembrandt, Rubens, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and other famous artists invariably painted in a realistic style.

Painting is just as popular today as it was in Rembrandt's time. Only today painting is an art form almost totally divorced from reality. As photography gradu..ally assumed the visual communication role, painting turned abstract and became art.

Like sculpture, painting, and poetry, advertising is taking the same path. "Advertising", said Marshall McLuhan, "is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."

Not only pundits* like McLuhan but also top-level advertising people working in the trenches are making the art connection. Mark Fenske, a highly regarded advertising copywriter known for his work on Nike and other brands, says, "It may be the most powerful art form on earth." Advertising legend George Lois entitled his magnum opus The Art of Advertising: George Lois on Mass Communications.

Major museums around the world house permanent collections of advertisements. Absolute vodka posters are framed and hung on walls like paintings. An exhibition of Ivory soap ads on display at the Smithsonian*; Coke commercials are in the library of Congress, and the Museum of Modern Art owns a collection of TV spots.

Television networks put together collections of TV commercials and run them as programming. Walk into the offices of virtually any advertising agency in the world and look at the walls. You would think you're in an art museum — wall after wall of advertisements set in impressive mattes and expensively framed.

You might be thinking agencies are just exhibiting samples of their work. Maybe so, but lawyers don't frame copies of their finest briefs. Nor do doctors exhibit pictures of their most brilliant surgeries.

What is the role and function of advertising, anyway? Ask any copywriter or art director. Is it to increase the client's sales by 10 percent or is it to win a Gold Lion at Cannes? If they are honest, they will usually admit to going for the gold.

What's wrong with equating advertising with art? Many things, but the fundamental problem is that the creators of such advertising become more concerned -with what posterity will think about the brand.

More and more consumers, too, see advertising as an art form rather than a communication vehicle. How often has someone said to you, "I saw a great TV commercial last night; I nearly fell on the floor laughing."

When you ask them what the name of the product advertised was, they invariably say, "I don't remember". And when they do remember the name of the product advertised, they look hurt if you ask them if they are actually going to buy the brand.

People look at advertising the way they read a novel or watch a television show. They get involved in characters, situations, and plots without the least bit of motivation to act out any of the parts, including buying the product. It's all art.