We have been discussing creating an advertisement and the Art of Advertising in class. The Harvard Business Review quotes William Bernbach (an advertising giant in the 1960s and 70s) as stating; “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.” (Ignatius A. March 2013). This idea of using text and image to persuade and affect people in their buying habits is an interesting task for an artist. Artists tend to have a fractious relationship with big brands and corporations on the one hand they would like to be paid money for the work they produce on the other they are considered to be 'selling out'. Whatever your views on this, there is no doubting that some ads are truly great and extremely clever. My favourite adverts are camera ads both historical and contemporary as they tend to be quite funny and also often quite sexist!
The first advert below is a contemporary advert for Olympus suggesting that by adjusting the filter you can have a new girlfriend everyday! The second from Vivitar and the instructions point not just to the camera but the girl, with statements like 'interchangeable hair available in 29 colours', pointing to the bra it just says' completely removable' and 'head tilts, pans, swivels and nods.' These adverts do exemplify that there is still the notion that only a man can handle a camera and that women are exchangeable and usable objects. However they do still make me laugh and whenever I am holding my camera I do think that I am in control and it is a powerful weapon....I am just hoping I use mine for good!
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References
Ignatius A. (March 2013) The Harvard Business Review, Advertising is an Art and a Science [Online] Available From: https://hbr.org/2013/03/advertising-is-an-art-and-a-science (Accessed 4th October 2018)
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