So I finally got round to watching ‘Art & Copy’ at the weekend and all in all, I enjoyed it.
To be honest I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to.
For me, it felt too much like it was preaching to the converted – I would have preferred to hear some more clients talking about the impact adland had on their business – but it was still enjoyable and I was very happy to see my 2 new bosses coming across as toptastic gents, but then even Pol Pot would look quite nice compared to the heads of the big 4 agency networks.
Saying that, one thing I did find incredibly interesting was being reminded just how brilliant some of the work from way back when, was.
Let’s face it, when people talk about the ‘old days of adland’ they tend to only talk about DDB’s “Beetle” ads or some terrible P&G soap spot that basically said if women weren’t married by 25, it’s probably their body odour.
Well you know what, there was a shitload of good work back then … work that would put many of today’s so-called hot agencies to shame,
One of the great protagonists was Mary Wells.
Not only was she the first female CEO to be listed on the NY Stock Exchange – quite a feat back in the uber-sexist 50’s – but she was also instrumental in the development of some breathtakingly creative campaigns.
She was the person who helped convince Braniff airlines they should paint their planes a multitude of colours to help differentiate from the competition [The End Of The Plain Plane] and she was also the person who helped create the iconic I Heart NY expression/logo to name but two.
Think about it … an ad person created possibly the most identifiable ‘tourism’ logo in the World … a logo that means more than all of Arnell’s ‘gravitational pull’ designs put together.
Now with the upmost respect to the Juan’s and Droga’s of the World … what have they done that is anywhere as big as that?
Don’t get me wrong, they’re great guys and have done some interesting and exciting stuff … but Mary Wells was living and selling ‘big ideas’ before either of these guys could even hold a pen, let alone log onto Youtube and find something weird/abstract that they could then be ‘inspired by’.
And this leads to the point of this post.
[Yes, there is one]
One of the guys in the doco said that whilst advertising had a role in business, it was still only advertising … it wasn’t art, it wasn’t literature, it wasn’t re-writing the future.
His exact words were – and I love this – that advertising reflects the future, it doesn’t affect the future … and you know what, he was right.
However I genuinely believe the opportunity to change that perspective is now.
Advertising does have the power to affect change rather than just reflect it … it does have the ability to create ideas that can positively affect the lives and environment of the wider community whilst still making our clients rich [ala my ‘Socialistic Capitalism’ paper] … it can be something that is seen as having intrinsic value to business and society but to do that, I believe more agencies have got to adopt the attitude of Mary Wells rather than David Ogilvy, because whilst he was a brilliant man, he made – for all intents and purposes – relatively traditional communication whereas she went out and created change rather than hoped to fuck her ads would make it happen.
As an industry we sit here, craving acceptance and applause from our peers, the business community and society as a whole … but if we are to stand any chance of achieving any of that, it requires us to do a number of things.
1/ Get back to selling, not telling.
2/ Get back to creating, not executing.
3/ Get back to really understanding society, not casually noticing it.
It’s not going to be easy … it might end in failure … but if we don’t try, then the things we can be sure of is our industry might never recover from its current downward spiral and that we’ll always have to live in the shadow of our brilliant elders and whilst I’m big on respecting them, I’d love to be part of people who re-write history and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way – both interms of ego and approach.