Comments on: The Pitch: Creativity in Advertising

By: The Pitch: Creativity in Advertising « A Word from Our Sponsor

The Pitch: Creativity in Advertising « A Word from Our Sponsor — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:34:51 +0000

[…] here to read my blog post about The Pitch at the University of Wisconsin’s media blog, […]

By: Cynthia Meyers

Cynthia Meyers — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:47:18 +0000

Thanks for your comments! Romanticism emphasizes “art for art’s sake” and so I’d argue it is often deployed to downplay the more instrumental aims of art making (such as profit or fame). Obviously, admakers aren’t making “art for art’s sake,” but then, neither are most “artists.” Commercialism supports most culture production, and the persistence of the romanticist discourse in creative industries is one way to have that cake (of being creative) and eat it too (make a living). I have argued elsewhere that commercialism itself does *not* degrade culture (http://bit.ly/vZ0W6C).

Ad creatives sometimes compare themselves to Michelangelo and their advertising clients to the Pope. Yes, advertisers pay for the creation of new culture and that economic relationship might include some constraints on creativity. But look at the Sistine Chapel!

Despite the self-importance of many of these creatives–are they really creating the contemporary version of the Sistine Chapel?–I think we should be careful not to laugh too hard at their efforts to find meaning in their work. As academics “pitching” our work at conferences and publishers and colleagues, maybe we can find more to relate to than not!

By: Erin Hill

Erin Hill — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:56:29 +0000

I am watching this show, too, and think it’s interesting. Liked the perspective offered here on art v. science and advertisers discussions of their creativity. Have to say that I absolutely believe they believe in the authenticity of their creative work. I think believing that their work is creative is what makes it possible for them to do it. If they think of themselves as schills, they don’t have the same sense of purpose. You can see this to lesser extents in all sorts of ancillary areas (agencies, marketing and research, etc.) of creative industries, where people rationalize the work they do by saying it allows them to be creative, or to work with creative people.

I think the creative teams at these ad companies are absolutely creative. Far more debatable to me is the question of whether what they do is art, or whether it’s as purely creative as their self-theorizing holds. So I really appreciated the use of the words art and artful here, as well as your discussion of these creative teams’ rhetorical framing of the work as passionate and message-focused.