The Lion's Underbelly. Is Advertising Art?

Hushed whispers were overheard somewhere in Europe a few days before the Cannes Lions about how this well known creative agency had created this film only for the Cannes Lions for a well known global client.  To give the entry credence, the agency is known to have released the film 5 times in the media.  The media was placed at the agency cost. And of course so was the production of the film. The client signed off the entire procedure while keeping a discreet distance, not wanting to know what really happened.  Of course if the entry does win a metal, the client like the agency is going to trumpet their win along with the others.

Advertising as Art

While earlier discussions on the subject of advertising pondered philosophically over whether it is art or science, the major award festivals may well relegate the profession to the realm of abstract art. Largely because  there is a lurking suspicion that some entries may not be so genuine. That they were not created like regular advertising, approved by a client and run in the media with substantial spends behind them.  The advertising industry calls these entries scams.  The defence from creative directors has always been that the award shows are a celebration of the craft. So it hardly matters if the entries are genuine.  Social causes  for example are a big hit with creative people  for award entries and nothing demonstrates this better than this video 'A video appeal to Cannes Lions jury members' made by The Indian Confederation of NGOs ( iCongo ) . The video challenges the advertising industry to think of ideas that do good for more than just the three months of the year when the biggest awards shows take place.

Which  raises the parallel question if advertising is art. The definition of art is 'the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power'.

But unfortunately advertising cannot be appreciated only for its beauty and emotional power because after all it is commercial art, which is art created with a commercial or business purpose in mind.

Advertising v/s Haute Couture

Fortunately for those whom it brings comfort, there are several parallels in other artistic endeavours.  Take fashion and haute couture for example.  A haute couture designer once had an exhibition called ‘Twelve Un-wearable Dresses’ made out of plastic, chain metal, ostrich feathers, plastic bottles, socks and door knobs.

Parisian haute couture has dwindled to become merely a kind of abstract conceptual performance art that has almost nothing whatever to do with reality or what the vast majority of women wear on most occasions (this trend had its first early beginnings with Paul Poiret around 1909). As Pierre Cardin said in 2005: "Intelligent women work nowadays, they drive cars, and the cars are smaller and smaller.  While the dresses at Dior are bigger and bigger. It's very beautiful, but it's not fashion.’

The analogy from haute couture is an important one.  The scamster can take refuge and say that the creative awards are a celebration of the craft. How does it matter that consumers of the product never really saw the ad.   And it met the hypocritical award criteria of having been seen on a TV channel  that nobody watches. If the purpose of awards is to celebrate advertising as a craft, why bother to lay down all these criteria for an ad to qualify I am not sure.

Art for Art's Sake

Art for art sake is when art is used to convey the idea that the chief or only aim of a work of art is the self-expression of the individual artist who creates it. So where does this all take us?  Does advertising as a craft have to be celebrated outside the boundaries of advertising as a practice and a profession?  This is a luxury not available to all arts. The architect for example cannot celebrate his craft by creating a building only for the architectural awards. Nor can the filmmaker make a  film only for the Oscars.  Unfortunately it costs a lot more to make a film or a building than releasing an ad in the hardly read suburban newspaper or less watched TV channel.

Which brings me to my last philosophical question. The advertising industry will have to decide at some point of time the rhetorical question that poses itself to all art. I refer to the aphorism posed first by Oscar Wilde.  Does art imitate life or life imitate art? Wilde says life imitates art far more. We may need to answer that with the roar of objectivity or the warp of subjectivity to use a euphemism.

Connect with me on twitter