I had a long response written to this, RL, but it occured to me that you encouraged theft of intellectual property in a previous discussion. I can't talk about advertsing without talking about brands, and I can't talk about brands without talking about the intellectual property and creative force behind them. And it goes back centuries. Advertising and art history are inseparable, which is why I would also take issue with Yay calling art inherently anti-capitalist. It's a part of our global culture...and it's not going anywhere. Debating its usefulness is ultimately rather pointless.

If you say so. If you convince someone to buy something because you made a good commercial, though, I don't see how that could be productive or useful.

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Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
If you convince someone to buy something because you made a good commercial, though, I don't see how that could be productive or useful.

It's productive and useful to the people who make the product you're selling.

If you own a business and you're providing any kind of product or service, you have to market yourself. Otherwise, you'll probably be out of business. I don't know of too many businesses that have endured any kind of success based on word-of-mouth alone.

Well, that would be true if one company unilaterally stopped advertising, but if no businesses advertised, it wouldn't matter.

I still say you need to have some way other than word of mouth to connect businesses to consumers. I think that would be a total hassle for both businesses and consumers in that system.

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
If you say so. If you convince someone to buy something because you made a good commercial, though, I don't see how that could be productive or useful.

The item itself could also be productive or useful to the purchaser. If I buy a widget because the commercial is cool, I may be a dope, but if the widget turns out to help me live my life better, than there's an increase in my personal productivity.

But if you need a widget, you'll buy one whether you see a commercial or not, no? And nothing about good commercials means a product is good or that it will help you at all.

As far as connecting consumers to businesses, I think there ought to be an insert in the paper (sort of like the TV guide) listing prices and sales that businesses have. That way people could compare prices and find what they need without all the deception and glitz of commercials (and without the waste of human resources). Consumers would make better decisions that way too.

quote:

Originally posted by RavingLunatic:
But if you need a widget, you'll buy one whether you see a commercial or not, no? And nothing about good commercials means a product is good or that it will help you at all.

As far as connecting consumers to businesses, I think there ought to be an insert in the paper (sort of like the TV guide) listing prices and sales that businesses have. That way people could compare prices and find what they need without all the deception and glitz of commercials (and without the waste of human resources). Consumers would make better decisions that way too.

Commercials keep your network TV free. I know you like free.

I realize that, but the bottom line is that commercials are occupying a lot of people who could otherwise be doing useful work.

!

Do you have a job? What do you do?

"Personal productivity"? WTF?

What's with the mentality that one's personal life needs to be anything, especially productive or... cool or desirable.

Do one need a battery-operated battery installer? Electric scissors? (Thank you, David Cross.) Does this increase one's "personal productivity"? How much convenience and productivity do we need?

I embrace capitalism, but at some point, you just gotta say "fuck it" and just live your life. Fuck what people are trying to sell you. The media climate we live in today is just so... abrasive.

Re: art being anti-capitalist -- I could concede and say its just un-capitalist, but I want to explore the possibility I could be right. In America, art is one half of a post-modern/post-WWII dichotomy. I'm not saying art is anathema to commerce, and I'm not saying quality is anathema to profit; but that's an EXTREMELY tricky balance. I'm also not saying that these balances don't have precedent either, but the only shared goal between artists and advertisers is to reach the masses, and more and more today, with the Internet and media demassification to the point of customization, artists don't even care if they don't do that. They just reach the people they happen to reach or know they can reach.

This is not to say artists are without guile or savvy, its just that most don't feel its their place to figure out who their audience is. Other people get paid for that, whether they're employed by the artist or not. The artist, for the most part, seems to feel his job is just to play for the audience and make them feel good. In turn, that will make the artist feel good and create more.

So yeah, art and commerce CAN be a creation (two joinable pieces of a puzzle), but more often than not they end up destroying each other (a flame on a fuse).

Graham Greene might disagree, I guess. He'd call the explosion of the conflict between art and commerce a form of creation or something.

quote:

the only shared goal between artists and advertisers is to reach the masses

My argument would go in the direction of artists employed as advertisers, since most people seem to determine art vs. non-art as whether or not something is created for commerce, without ever considering all the commissioned sculptures, posters, prints and portraits in our textbooks (note all the commissioned advertisements for God.)

That said, I get where you're coming from, and largely agree.

Michelangelo....what a f***ing sellout!

It's free for you to look at. Stop complaining.

I'd like to look at this progressively and proactively for a sec:

Advertising is a form of art in itself. In fact, its functional art. Just like fashion. Not only does advertising partially artful, but its also has aspects of social sciences (psychology/social psychology/sociology/anthropology) and business (marketing and sales), too. Advertising is a feild I considered going into for a long time, until I realized that most AD firms are made up of a bunch of money-hungry, cosmopolitan Republicans who buy $10,000 suits to feel good about themselves. I wanted the opposite of that, so I became a journalist.

Yes, there are those bankrupt, morally bankrupt, people in advertising and business, but there are also those who are taking a totally different approach to it all. You can take a look at two of the most visible CEO entrepreneurs in America today (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs) and they're WAY outside the box for most MBA suits in Fortune 500 companies. I know this is only in the past 10 years and I know its mostly in high tech, but this is the beginning of a HUGE change (a "paradigm shift" they call it in business) to the world economy.

Music can embrace this kind of shift. Should we hold it against Robert Smith that he put "Pictures of You" in an HP commercial, associating himself with a company whose CEO is the only NOT taking the fifth in a grand jury investigation when essentially giving a non-admission admittal ostensibly saying: "Yes we spied on our employees and reporters and went through their homes and tapped their phones, all illegally, to prevent any possible leaks about our upcoming products."

Assuming he gave the go ahead (though I think most of the Cure's song credits are Smith/Gallup), does this reflect on Robert Smith's character? How could he have known? Should he not have been in bed with them in the first place because all business types are inherently evil and all artists are inherently good? If you believe that, then you're being really, REALLY naive.

Just like Robert Smith was, maybe.

quote:

Originally posted by m.leland:
!

Do you have a job? What do you do?

It's quite telling when you consider this question went unanswered.

I just wanted to make you suffer, Leland. I knew you were dying to find out.

Since it's so important to this debate, I'll go ahead and tell you that I'll be a college student for about 5 more years if everything goes right. I plan on being some kind of doctor, probably an eye doctor. Over the summer I umpire baseball games and worked at an optometrist's office as a technician.

If you can hang onto your idealism after a year of optometry—Bausch probably already wants to be your best friend—then more power to ya.

I see Wendy's is using Eagles of Death Metal's cover of Steeler's Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle" in a new ad. I believe EoDM is being featured in another ad (for a satellite radio company?) too. Who knew they had soo much commercial potential?

They're using the intro section to Doves "Words" as the theme for NFL ads this season. I was playing that CD in the car with my brother and he was like, "Have I heard this somewhere?"