Sturgeon's Law states that 90% of advertising is crap, because it states that 90% of everything is crap. But although that may possibly be true it doesn't feel true. It feels like advertising is disproportionately crap. It feels like there are more bad ads than bad movies, bad design, bad novels, bad magazines.
This may be one of the reasons why 'design' is so popular at the moment, and advertising so unpopular. Say 'design' and people think Rams, Ives, Eames. Say advertising and they think Cillit Bang.
This isn't especially fair. It would be just as valid to evoke the Amstrad emailler thing when talking about design or Tom Eckersley when talking about advertising. And there's a sort of floating feeling of moral hierarchy in there too. Advertising is obviously immoral and exploitative but design is somehow not. As though designing something to be bought is less complicit in capitalism than persuading people to buy it.
And the reason why we all feel this finally dawned on me the other day.
It's because advertising can be made to 'work' even if it's aesthetically / culturally /whateverly unsuccessful.
If a movie's unpopular or a piece of product design is obviously bad it disappears really quickly, if an ad's unpopular you're highly likely to see more of it - the business processes of advertising haven't tended to demand cultural success, just repetition. Just because something's dumb, insulting, patronising, unimaginative, glib, doesn't mean it can't be made to work - spend enough money, beat people over the head with it enough and you can get it to do something productive. That's why it feels like advertising's 99% crap, instead of just the usual 90.
This is a reason to be optimistic, because it feels like this business model is going away. Beating people over the head with crap is less and less viable. That will make for a smaller industry but hopefully a better one.
What an interesting post. Socially there is a significant distinction between design and advertising.
Design literate individuals will proactively select the items that they wish to have around them in the specific design style that suits and supports their life / lifestyle.
With advertising, due to it's intrusive nature, should the style of the ad not be consistent with an individual's personal taste it's highly likely they will consider it to be a bad ad.
But you could equally argue that, for example, the Cillit Bang ad is an exceptional piece of work. I doubt there is any pretence for it to be seen as a piece of design but so long as the ad helps to send the products off the shelf does it need to be concerned about its artistic merits?
Maybe this is just one case of a bad Ad being very good.
You could also suggest that the type of consumers who care about who designed their kettle are likely to be a small (all be it significant) minority. And trying to advertise everyday products in a language they would respect would create an Ad that simply would not resonate with the target market for the product.
Overall I like to think it fair to suggest that the main point is: we can choose and control the way we interact with design in our lives to a far greater extent than advertising. Which is why advertising will always have the potential to illicit both positive and negative responses from individuals.
Posted by: John Jackson | April 30, 2008 at 04:03 PM
As someone who has considered moving to ad from design [planning] more than once I think this is a really interesting point. I'm no expert in advertising so I can only really offer my opinion from a design perspective - is it not just a case of push and pull media? People dislike 99% advertising because it's pushy, unless it's really well thought out (and executed) it wont captivate or motivate. Whereas design is usually chosen, picked or even better, found.
Posted by: Rory | April 30, 2008 at 05:07 PM