Advertising is without doubt an art form. It can nurture interest, however superficial, in new movements in art and design, bringing these to the attention of huge audiences. Conversely, an artist like Warhol does sales of Campbell’s soup a favor. When someone who would never drink the stuff displays a shelf crammed with condensed chicken soup and says, without a trace of irony, “It’s my homage to Andy Warhol”, you feel that here is truly a case of art masquerading as advertising advertising art. Or something to this inscrutable effect.
Advertising uses an array of techniques in their aesthetics to accomplish its task: to promote a product. The purpose of the art is to provide the product and the firm that manufactures it with an image. An image is a set of emotional associations the consumer, is meant to have with respect to the product. The artistic methods of advertising revolve around the creation of such an image.
Can advertising be considered an art? This question is a loaded one, for people have very different definitions of what is considered art. If art is defined as a skill, then maybe. If art is defined as a craft or a work, then possibly. But with so much gray space, is there a way to get a yes or no answer? Probably not, but we can take a look at several key factors to help you make a better argument for or against advertising being considered as an art.
In the way that this argument was formed, it would be concluded that it is not art. Advertising can use artistic and creative methods in order to accomplish a goal to influence consumer behavior, and that itself could be considered an art. Perhaps advertising could be described as an applied art form. Creativity is needed, and the ability to craft a message, to package the message, and to make it salient to specific audience makes advertising (especially good advertising) a skill to be admired.
In advertising, giving people the freedom to create their own interpretation is not the goal. Advertising must be able to relate, but the audience is supposed to feel the emotion the advertising was designed to stimulate. As advertising is still a controlled medium, having free-form interpretation goes against what advertising stands for.
busybusinessweb 