NATALIA
After watching the documentary, I realised the focus of Doug Pray’s unrated documentary, Art & Copy is about the innate human urge to express oneself with creativity. The film shows us the good old days when the ads spoke to the society and got stuck in our heads. The film shows that the advertising industry not only is built around selling products, but also emotions, ideas and lifestyles. In the early years, the word ‘creativity’ was almost unheard of by people. Creativity were viewed as slaves and unimportant while the grey suited men—the accountants, were more important and respected by the society. It wasn’t until Bernbach decided to put his copywriter in the same room as the art director who usually has no input that creative professionals found modern advertising come to life. The ads then began to deliver a more impact; they began to show more emotions, humour and entertainment. Mary Wells stated that the world changed and people started to love and appreciate fun ideas.
The advertising career is simply thought as a fun career; however, in reality the creatives in the industry sometimes found creativity hard and a burden. David Kennedy even stated that creative people are insecure about themselves. They want to think they know everything but deep in their hearts, they know they’re just deep in trouble for their crazy ideas.
“Great advertising makes food taste better, it makes cars run better, it changes the perception of everything.” Was what George Lois, a 70-ish old man who talks fast and loud when he told stories of his overnight success of his “I Want My MTV" campaign and the launch of Tommy Hillfigher’s clothing label. His quote made quite an impression on me because advertising gives the public a new perspective of a product or an opinion on something which could lead to negativity in people’s life. Sometimes the advertisements shown to us could also lead to stereotypes because of the advertisements that were conveyed to us were the opposites of what they were.
There are also scenes in the documentary where the employees of an ad agency were playing basketball, and some were being entertained by performances. In these scenes, I saw how preciously ad agencies treat their creative types. They are given freedom to be themselves, to be the confused, self-conscious and driven people in order to remain successful and productive in a line of work where the only constant is rejection.
I agree with Jeff Manning’s statement that ‘great advertising almost starts with something true’. The idea of making the right advertisement that people would want to see and like was to connect to society in entertainment form. The “Got Milk?” ad was criticised as dumb and ‘almost nothing’ but it went viral because it connects to people in their daily lives. This documentary also enlightened me more about advertising strategies. I was very enlightened by a theory by an interviewee who stated that sometimes advertising isn’t about connecting the products to society, it’s about connecting people with people from an advertisement that forms a ‘mass communal happening’.
Art & Copy has definitely enlightened me more about the future prospects of the field of advertising. Before, I wasn’t very interested in this field of choice, but after watching the documentary, I am slightly moved and now sees the field of advertising as something that I might decide to pursue in the future. I was very inspired by the great ads shown in the film such as the Volkswagen’s ‘Think Small’ ad and Nike’s ‘Just do it’ ad. However, making ads is a long and hard process. There are so many advertisers out there yet, only few make good ads. Thus, advertisers should have a deep and burning passion in what they are making instead of making trash ads that abuses the ability and power of advertisements to control the thoughts of the public by making deceitful perceptions.
A society without advertisements could mean people having access to a website without annoying boxes popping up and blocking the page. It would mean TV shows running back-to-back nonstop, instead of the usual seamless entertainment of car ads stealing 5 minutes of your favourite show. Yes, it would be great to have a full 30 minute show, and yes, how great would it be if those little boxes would stop appearing every time you clicked on a website.
But would it really be that great?
Imagine. The society would not have good ads that could make us laugh and cry in a range of 30 seconds to 1 minute. No ‘Take a break, have a Kit Kat’, No ‘I will follow you’, No gleek university ad that sings and dances to ‘I got a whole world in my hand’ and finally, there would be no emotional Petronas ads that could almost make anyone cry.
On a serious note, advertising makes people feel lesser than what they are and what they have. They create ‘ideal types’ and shape the society into a bunch of stereotypical human beings. For one thing, advertising creates the idea that if you want to be happy you need this product. However, most advertisers believe that they are not creating these needs, but rather stimulating the consumer. This shows that advertisements affects the societal lifestyle negatively. But, let’s think about it. Maybe advertising is actually an innate human act itself, because surely, to sell a product to a consumer, you need information to spread, you need attention from the public—that’s how a product sells.
Lastly, advertising is a form of creative marketing communication to connect with the society. It is a way of creative expression and freedom to create something with their ideas to inform people that there could be more to something than what it seems to be. Advertisements are informative and serves an important purpose which is to inform the public of the existence of a product, the availability and the cost. This information is needed in a free society.