In my first blog entry I spoke about change in regards to the progressive poster of Barack Obama, that was designed by Shepard Fairey. I was looking at FFFF! today and I saw that there was another poster that he did with Barack Obama in it. What was different about this one was that it was a direct request by Barack. Shepard spoke about this a little on his site.
I love seeing things like this happen, because it just reinforces the idea that art, design and creativity are relevant, and serve a purpose. Yesterday, I was listening to an interview with a CEO at a big ad agency, and he said the words, "it's just advertising". Those 3 words threw me off, and I actually rewound the interview to make sure those weren't the words that he said. I didn't understand why he said that. Advertising is very influential to how society is shaped and how people go about their every day lives. I've been wondering for a long time, why are there so many ads on tv that just strike, or attempt to strike, the emotion of humor? It's ridiculous to me because basically there are a lot of creatives who gamble with millions of the clients dollars and place a bet on how funny they think they can be. "It's just advertising?" I hate to say this, but those 3 words really do represent the work that's coming out of that agency, regardless of how many awards they've won.
Nike+ is a huge example of the effectiveness and relevance of advertising. R/GA and everyone who worked on the Nike+ account linked into the mindset and the life of a runner. And it didn't become "just advertising" to runners. It became apart of they're routine. They're are more examples of this, but Nike+ just sticks out to me the most right now, because I'm very impressed with it, and I've been talking about it ever since it came out.
Since the question "What makes you unique?" was posed to me back in early November, I've been picking my brain to figure out the answer. Even though that question is more deep than one may think, this is my answer, but in the form of a mission statement: I want to help save the thinking man's sport.
I'm not sure how good it is, but I know that it at least speaks to my love for baseball, which people don't like too much, and it comments on the advertising business that I hope to get into once I graduate. Baseball is something that I would love to help get people interested in. It's a great sport, and it really does involve a lot of situational thinking; and it's fun. And advertising, though in it's creative incline, is being somewhat abused right now because I don't think people realize the impact that it has on our world. But hey, maybe I'm wrong, maybe it is "just advertising".
1 comment:
Advertising will always be influential. The problem today is that there is more bad and predictable advertising than there is smart, creative, and risky. People have been exposed to so many cliche ideas already and have seen so much that the majority of the people do see advertising as just advertising. Which is fine because that is the nature of the beast. For those that are not directly involved in the creative process, that is a very easy assumption to make and they can not be faulted for that. For the people the people that are involved, I'm willing to make any type of bet that to them, it's never just advertising.
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