Documentary: Art & Copy

Source: Pulp&Pixel, http://pulpandpixel.ca/2014/10/24/my-design-art-documentary-picks/

Sanmantha Khoo

After watching this documentary, it totally changed my understanding towards advertising. The word ‘creative’ was not oftenly used back then and creative people were nothing and not recognised, said Hal Riney. Mary Wells stated that after the occurrence of war and depression, the world took a twist and people started to love and appreciate fun ideas, hence life became more perky.

It might seem as if advertising is a fun and interesting career; in reality the creativity required in this field could be hard and burdening. In the video, it is implied that a successful advertiser is a visionalist, a salesman and an entertainer. Advertisers think about what people want to see even before people know what they want. However, with the aid of modern technology such as the revolutionary creation of Macintosh, the process of creating an ad is made easier. According to Lee Clow, everything that was done to Macintosh is now done different because of that product.

Advertising is related closely with marketing. It is said that an efficient advertisement has the ability to cut right through tradition that is getting in the way of a product and turn it around, making it a positive thing. Time Warner sold 8.8 billion worth of advertising. Food companies, car companies and politics spend billions on advertising each year. 70% of U.S television broadcasting revenue comes from ads. Moreover, a 30-second ad on American Idol cost $750,000 and it cost $2.7million on the Super Bowl. Jim Durfer said that advertising affects a lot of people when a strong, interesting and memorable ad is created. Advertising provides the company a sense of themselves and hold the power to tell people what to think. For example, volkswagen was known as the ‘ugly german car’ and was disliked, but with advertisement it turned the statement around. Ads can influence and manipulate the society easily as everywhere you go, there will be certainly an ad. Americans see 61 minutes of ads each day on the internet, television and mobile screen.

George Lois is confident in his advertising and has a straight forward personality. He said that advertising ‘changes the perception of everything’. Even though the quote is short, it holds several deep meanings in within. One of it could be it serving as a warning that advertisements could impact people’s life with negativity. Perception does not equal to reality and sometimes the perception that advertisements convey to us could be the exact opposite of the truth, and often these perception leads to stereotyping. In a multicultural country like Malaysia, stereotyping could tear the unity of different races apart.

Furthermore, I am amazed and enlightened by one of Jeff Goodby's theory about advertising. He said that sometimes advertising is not about the relationship of consumers and the product advertised, instead it is about how certain people that could relate with the advertisement forms a group or community and the product becomes the batch of the community. The theory provides me greater comprehension towards advertising strategies.

Additionally, I agree with Jeff Manning’s comment that great advertising starts with something true. Just like the Got Milk advertisement in the United States, it went viral because people could relate it to their daily activities. It's short and precise but that ‘brutal simplicity’ connects and reaches out to the society.

This documentary had definitely enlightened me about the future prospects in the field of advertising, however I do not intend to pursue a career in this field because I am not much of a creative person and I find myself more into broadcasting. Nonetheless, it is important to acknowledge the challenges faced by advertising industries as well. Liz Dolan, the former head of marketing NIKE said that it is a difficult process to make a great ad. Similarly, Hal Riney said that there is a lot of people in advertising business yet only a few do good ads, and only a few get the chance to do good work. Trash advertising also happens when the power of advertisement is abused by irresponsible individuals as they tend to have a mindset that consumers are vulnerable towards advertisements. It is important for advertisers to have passion in what they are working for. Making ads just for the sick of promoting and marketing a product produces advertisements that are not motivating, inspiring or aspiring.

A society without advertising would be dull and soulless. As mentioned in the video, advertising is a way for big corporations to have a personality and to interact with people in a meaningful way. Therefore, if advertising is extracted from the society, society loses its touch of humanity, warmth and the flow of emotion. For instance, big corporations would lose their valuable connection with the public and be portrayed as ‘mechanical and cold-hearted’. Advertisement links and unites us together. Besides, it is also said that the extinction of advertising field would stop people from wanting to tell and share their stories, whether it is to inform, convince, enlighten or amuse. Advertising agencies employ 182,600 people in the U.S and there are about 26,000 ad agencies worldwide in 2009. Hence, this indicates that growing advertising industry offers job opportunities, and an increase in job opportunities indicates the blossom and growth of economy in a country. A successful advertising industry does not only contributes to its own industry, but it also brings up the economy of other sectors, which is the product that it is advertising about. In addition, advertising growth motivates the development of advance technologies such as satellites or advertising hardwares and softwares.

Overall, advertising is a form of creative communication where a message is transmitted to a mass society. It is a platform for people to express their ideas and thoughts, to tell people that they could be more than just something. For that reason, advertising plays an important role as it serve as a form of entertainment it also adds flavour and colour to our daily life.

Xin Ying

The most frightening thing to being a human being is you do not have any idea what to do and where is your thought coming from. Throughout all the years since human started to draw drawings and symbols on the wall, human started to create a comfort atmosphere for their next generations. If the last generation did not sacrifice their time to work out for revolution, we will not have such a comfort atmosphere right now. From my perspective, media has made a big evolvement since the first human being. From symbols on the wall to pictures on the signboard, television, mobile devices and paper, then moving advertisement on signboard, television and mobile devices. I can almost imagine that moving advertisement in a paper! But on the other hand, we are relying too much on technologies right now. I can’t even imagine that one day when the whole world's server breaks down. It would mean the end of the world for this generation.

Satellite is the centre of communication. We can use satellite to watch television, listen to radios and so much more. The average United States household watches over eight hours of television a day. There are 1353 HDTV satellite channels around the world today. From the last research, this number will grow 350% in 2013. Jean-Yves Le Gall, the satellite launch controller, states that 44% of all satellite that are launched are just only for the purpose of commercial communication. You cannot imagine how important satellites are right now. One out of three houses will have a satellite on the roof top. 75% of global satellite services revenue comes from television and on the other hand, 70% of United States television broadcasting revenue comes from advertisement. Because of that, a 30 seconds advertisement on America Idol costs 750,000 dollars! Time Warner also managed to sell 8.8 billion dollars on advertising.

Moreover, Jeff Manning, the California milk Processor Board said that, their company goals are to create a good advertising and relaunched this product, California milk which is been with them on the beginning of time. So, they had been doing a survey from the public about what brand of milk do they prefer. The brand of milk that they prefer is “The Red Cart” or “two percent” instead of California Milk brand. There are a lot of competition among milk companies. The sales of milk is dropping four percent every year. Nowadays, everybody just take milk for granted. Milk will get sour easily if you did not finish the milk on time. So, there are least people who will choose to buy milk if they cannot finish it on time, instead they buy something is new and attractive. In addition, “the design of the white bottling gallon milk is the same design since 1993. So, this is a real challenge as consumers prefer nicer packages and design”, claim Jeff Manning.

There are some scene that impressed me. One of it is from the “rotators”, Chad Tiedeman. This job is named rotators by publics because he claims that rotators job scope is to rotate the copies and advertisement around the city. His family start doing this in the earlies of 19s. So he decided to follow his great grandfather and grandfather pursuit. He said his great grandfather is never free and is always busy. There are always a risk on this job, for example he is risking his life to post an advertisement high up on the signboard in the public. Even though safety precautions are provided.

Furthermore, this documentary has enlightened me on the future prospects of the field of advertising. I would be interested in pursuing a career as a production manager in advertising. I can gain a lot of experience by working in a cooperation with exterior advertising producers. Other than that, the job scope for a production managers is to guarantee that each advertisement is finished successfully. Nevertheless, to become a successful production managers, I must have strong writing skills. Creativity is also a key to success in advertising. A successful advertiser is the one who creates messages that can make consumers remember about it.

Last but not least, there are advantages and disadvantages on my own point of view if society does not have advertising. One of the advantages for the society is it will be much more eco-friendly if we did not print out banner and share it out on signboards. There would be also least harassment in the public. On the contrary, there are much more disadvantages if our world do not have advertising. First, we would not know much additional information. Second, if any politicians want to promote themselves, they do not have many ways to promote. Thirdly, there will be a lot of unemployment, and because of that, the world's economy will drop and criminal rates will increase without any doubt.

Chris

As soon I finished watching this documentary about advertising, I felt amazed that the advertising industry plays an important role in the society today. I gained some knowledge and get to understand more about advertising. In this video, Bill had a new idea by creating a force for advertisement to make it look more creative by putting the art director in the same room as the copywriter in order to work together. The reason was that during the olden days, advertisements were not so appealing to the public. Mary Wells stated that after the war, people started to look towards a new path by seeing new and crazy ideas that made a twist in life.

Well, the advertising industry can be fun for those who are passionate in it and as advertisers, we need new amazing ideas to create something to get the audiences’ attention. What Mary Wells said was important, as one must have the ability to see how one could just cut right through the tradition that was getting in the way of a product and turn it around to see the positive thing. For example, the German car from Volkswagen looked dull and old, but advertisers managed to change that by creating a different impression for the audience. When you do advertising, you must always look for big bright ideas. According to George Lois, advertising is like ‘poison gas’ as advertising brings happiness to people.

As we can see, time passes by fast and technology is getting more advanced. About 44 percent of satellites launched are for commercial communications and 75 percent of global satellites services are for revenues of television broadcasting advertisements. Advertisements are great for business. Charlie Moss stated that making successful advertisements comes from a good visionalist, a salesman and an entertainer. People these days are more interested in fun ideas and in creating something newer than before. People need something aspiring in their lives. Jim Duffer said that if we could find the core of the product and when we talk about it, it leaves an impression on the people who will be deciding whether they would want to buy the product or not. It is important for the advertisers to take the first step in saying the right thing and right way in order for people to do something that is new. Posting advertisements with strong messages will affect the audience. At the same time, the message shown on ads will also capture the audiences’ heart. For example, ‘Got Milk’ really made a huge impact on the society even though it’s just a simple milk advertisement.

I felt that the advertising industry also introduced the society to new trends, experiences and lifestyles. In addition, advertisements can also be said to reflect societal tastes, beliefs and norms as seen by the constantly evolving messages and images being created for a certain product with the constant change in beliefs, views and tastes. It is imperative that advertisements have to reflect societal tastes, as there is a need to stay relevant to fickle viewers of today and to avoid any disjoint between what is seen and what reality is. Advertising also allows the company to see things that other people don’t see and do something to make them see it before they know what they want. Well, advertising always start with something true by creating a feeling or sense in the society in order to convince them to do something new in their lives. Advertisers got to be ambitious as Dan Wiede stated as real risks come when one tries to be authentic. Furthermore, advertising is not just giving an idea to a customer, but also to the company itself of who they are and their sense of role and responsibility. Also, advertising impacts values. While it reflects society to a certain degree, it also has the effect of ‘normalising’ values or behaviours. With the average child watching 20000 commercials every day, it wields considerable power over what we consider normal. I also see that on some advertisements the artists tend to express themselves by telling a story, but there will always be a message when we watch the commercials from the media. Another example I saw from the video is the ‘Just Do It!’ quote which really impacts the society. The Nike logo “Just Do it” reflects a society that desires for achievement and success which is very much the ethos of society today. The sport shoes advertisement generates desires for the advertised product itself when consumers associate the realization of personal achievements with the Nike sport shoes.

All in all, I see that advertising is not just for entertainment, but it really does reflect on what the society desires to a large extent due to the need of appeal to sell products. The advertising industry also reflects on beliefs, views and the mindsets of today’s society to keep up with the ever changing phenomena. That's cool, I think.

Annie Gan

“Sell a product, Make a point”. That was one point stated by George Lois that really stuck out to me. The term “Advertising” does not only revolve around marketing a product but to present a real purpose and reasonings that will draw a consumer’s attention. Businesses are made to solve people’s problems and to achieve business objectives, and it is certainly impossible for a business to thrive if their form of advertising are not effective to the public. Mary Wells explained that life during war caused individuals to deal with depression which benefited later on, as the strength within the individuals had cause them to appreciate the art of advertising and to have the ability to cut through tradition, extract positive factors and to experience a range of emotions.

Advertising is something that I am fond of as I find reading between the lines and extracting connotations very interesting and a great way to improve critical thinking skills. Even so, the field of advertising does not seem like an ideal job as producing adverts can be very stressful and time consuming especially for someone with very minimal ideas and inspirations. Even though there are multiple challenges that come within the field of advertising, just like any other business, we have to overcome challenges as: satisfying the consumers is most important. Advertising has excelled throughout the years as marketing strategies no longer talk about "reach" or "impressions" as measurements of success. Instead, they aim for "conversations" and "engagement" with their consumers. Moreover, with the advantage of modern technology such as the Apple Macintosh, adverts can be easily be made now in comparison to the early years where most adverts were hand-made.

Phyllis K. Robinson stated in the interview that the field of advertising only consisted of 14 people, which included the producer and the phone operator, this is to imply that the job was easy going and only there to entertain the consumers and to give impressions. There was minimal skills needed as staff members came together to compile an advert even with their differences in job specialisation. “The art director and copy director work together from a blank sheet of paper”. Whereas nowadays, the competition between companies to sell their product or promote a message is increasing therefore more creativity and skills are needed in this field which result in the increasing amount of specialised employees. Creativity was not recognised in the early years as Hal Riney mentioned.

As the subject of war tend to be dull and depressing, Mary Wells came up with an idea to present to the audience a fun advert relating to airline stewardess and their uniform “Airstrip” which promotes in-flight explicit entertainment for men, this way the airline company is promoted alongside as consumers are excited and interested in using this airline for a theatrical experience. Adverts like this creates a strong and memorable images which impacts the audiences and lures them into wanting it and for them to say “Yes, I’m going to buy it”. In similar context, the Volkswagen, which was once “the little German car” that everyone disliked as it was released close after the war. No one thought the ugly German car would sell, but the adverts produced turned the Volkswagen into the hottest car in town. George Lois argues that advertising is all about the: Big Ideas.

Tommy Hilfiger has even made his own opinion on Lois’ visionaries. He believes that Lois sees what the audiences want to see before they even know it, he is able to create an advert promoting the fashion trends that have never been seen before overnight. His theory was to compare Hilfiger amongst other well-known designers to achieve name recognition right from the start, this causes the audience to be interested in his products and make them want to buy them even more. Nonetheless, the quality of product has to be as good as the adverts say they are, that way consumers are satisfied and believe that Tommy Hilfiger is as good as the other fashion designers. Lois’ theory becomes very successful and soon Tommy Hilfiger burst into a multi-billion dollar business.

Furthermore, creating an advertisement which is relatable to the audience can help with product recognition. The song “We’ve Only Just Begun” was written in order to reflect on people’s life and to create a close connection with the audience. The statement made by Jeff Manning “great advertising starts with something true”, this provides a wider knowledge in advertising strategy as anything that is being presented to the audience needs to be true otherwise the audiences loses interest and the business loses money.

As I mentioned earlier, I am interested in pursuing my career in this field as I tend to enjoy thinking outside the box when encountering advertisements. I enjoy exploring the creativity that lies within one’s self and their ability to put it on a piece of paper, it is very fascinating. Although I do not consider myself as an artistic individual and may not be pursuing my career in this field, I would really like to explore this topic further. Art plays a big part in advertising whether it may be drawings, colours, text or genre. Usually people with a lot of creativity tend to come up with an image with a simple text. However, within that simple image or text lies a metaphorical story. Lee Clow and David Kennedy both commented that creative people should step-in and be in charge of the advertising department as creativity is not being used as much as it should be thus resulting in poor feedback.

Society without advertising? Who could imagine. Adverts are made to help the audience relate, reflect and react which acts as a tool to connect with people outside to avoid being isolated. What would happen to the world without the constant awareness ads stressing on the consequences drink driving, texting while driving, depression helplines, drugs addiction and human trafficking? Crime rates and death rates will rapidly increase because of the lack of control that holds society together. “Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief” (Leo Burnett, n.d).

Zoro

Advertising has evolved into many aspects and cultures to our lives that we have not yet discovered the true meaning behind ‘advertising’. The documentary made by mad men on the field of advertising gives us an overview to the working field and how the interviewees have successfully managed to become a well-known figure in the field of advertising. People have forgotten that advertising has and still is playing a huge role to our society and life that it is overlooked by many. Installing ideas and creating them adequately can shape the way we think of things is something quite extraordinary. Therefore advertising has affected our perception, evolved much more to the days that will come. All of this was fit into the documentary and further conveys how it has revolutionised how the business world, including the world itself has grown into a new culture of having “the art director and copywriter” into one pot. Watching this made me understand more about their purposes, challenges and benefits.

The whole video has summarised useful and personal thoughts of being in the field. It made me wonder how advertising does create a whole new definition to the word ‘art’. Since the beginning it inspired many people, giving out the recognition of the product line or the company to enhance their own “personality”. However personally speaking I would have jumped straight to the conclusion that it’s only purpose is to promote that brand. Although, it is also to understand the viewer's perception and to connect with them in a way that makes the company memorable. For example Nike has established the slogan “just do it.” for many years now, that greatly impacted the society as more of the population are self-aware about fitness care, according to Liz Dolan.

The way they emphasised on creativity made me realise how much critical-thinking is needed and that it is a crucial factor and it basically is the key to advertising. Moreover, it makes me more appreciative to the advertisers due to how challenging it is to generate new ideas and to promote an entity of an industry in a “strong and interesting, memorable way”.

However, as described by Lee Clow “all they care is the money...let them [clients] dictate mediocre” results while the advertisers have great thoughts of input to share. He is basically stating that some people in advertising still has not realise their true purpose, which is to work with passion, push through boundaries and obtain the objective which is to make a brand alive.

In my point of view, the field of advertising has grown significantly since the days of World War I till now. Without realising the fact that it greatly influenceS our society, in other words “creativity can solve anything” as said by Lois. The documentary showed us that in 1970s “average city dweller received about 1000 ads messages everyday” Nowadays they come “close to 5000” ads per day. Especially, I think the ‘millennial generation’ which I am currently in, are very exposed to art and expressionism, therefore this will continue to grow even more than before. Not only that, companies have immensely spend a large amount of money to advertise their product e.g. food industry spends about 32 billion US dollars annually.

Strictly speaking, life without advertising would be quite difficult to imagine because we are in an era where the “art stream students” are exponentially growing. Though when surrounded by less creativity this would only result to dullness to our environment. People would become clueless to the products they are buying, no one would differ from a good business to a bad one because the image of that particular company was not established or promoted to the public. The whole world globally will not understand reasons to buy the products that they want which despite being free from manipulation, having scarce and limited amount of creativity flowing through our surroundings would make life dreary. Also, less motivation, less inspiration on gaining more ideas in the process of creating something. Plus competition between businesses would be very low.

In addition, one important quote that greatly made an impact on me was when one of the great advertisers discussed how “those who think can change the world, they are the ones that will do”. This phrase basically describe words such as ‘ambition’, ‘success’ and ‘perseverance’. Without these things, there cannot be affirmation, therefore one must stand firm to their vision and thoughts in order to make a change.

When I watched this documentary, it changed my own perspective on the field of advertising because the advertisers story of how it is actually an important part of the business field. But how their thinking process is so unique because there is a wide difference to a person such as myself. There was a part in the documentary where they talked about how “Got Milk?” started and it surprised me to see how ideas are so spontaneous. It just shows how anything and everything is an opportunity. It is only whether you are brave or not to take that risk and

Advertising is like an art in the form which has been molded into the business surroundings which accommodates much on each of their own organisations.