Dec 4, 2007
On Art and Advertising
[or: Haven't We Seen This Somewhere Before?]
I’ve been noticing recently a number of ad campaigns which seem to have “taken inspiration from” (which is a polite way of saying “copied wholesale from”) works of art.
In recent years there’s been controversy over the origin of Sony Bravia’s Bunnies ad (was it ripped off from LA based art due kozyndan?), the Honda Cog ad (did it borrow extensively from a 1987 art film?) and (while the original doesn’t really count as art, perhaps), even the Bravia’s Bouncing Balls commercial (was it all Letterman’s idea?)
While there’s always been a liberal approach to homage in ad agency’s bulging toolkits, I’ve been especially interested to see that some of the more recent examples seem to be directly inspired by art projects and works which have been heavily viral - the sort of links which people regularly send to each other on facebook, blog about and which rise to the top of digg and del.icio.us rankings.
It seems possible that creative ad agencies are turning to web trends/organically viral stuff to inform or inspire at least some of their creative vision - indeed, it’s hard to imagine how they might be able to get away without doing so, at least subconsciously, in an increasingly broad and social-infoflow-driven world. They may not be stealing ideas, but the influence of things which have also been popular on the web is clear in a many cases
I also wonder if the same circumstances of perma-connectivity and social object exchange by consumers means that concept appropriation is getting easier to spot because the circulation of information and sources is getting broader and more rapid?
Here are just a few examples….
This new Filofax campaign, using figures carefully cut out and emerging from the paper product:
…reminds me strongly of Peter Callesen’s A4 Paper Cut works, which, according to its bookmarking stats on del.icio.us, seems to have gone viral in February 2007, and then had a resurgence in August/September.
Then there’s the seasonal ad for John Lewis, called “shadows”, which features people piling christmas-gift-friendly goods in such a way that when a light is shone on the pile a silhouette of a person is revealed, cast against a far wall.
Here’s a still from the ad:
Here’s the print treatment, where you can see the foreground better:
Here’s a short film about the making of the ad.
And here are the art works it seems to owe a large debt to: most notably, artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster’s work, which (rather ironically) involves piling household rubbish to cast shadows of people against a far wall.
The one above is Real Life is Rubbish, 2002 - two separate piles of general household rubbish onto which a light is projected, creating a shadow self-portrait of Noble and Webster.
According to del.icio.us linking trends, this went ballistically viral in June this year, though references to it online (and obviously, the artworks themselves) predate this significantly.
Then there’s the press ad for the new VW Bluemotion Polo, which shows this zippy little car sitting in front of a wall of crushed cans alonside the proud boast that this car saves, in carbon pollution, the equivalent of more than 5000 330ml aluminium drinks cans in a year of motoring.
…which (aside from being a dubious claim) brings to mind the mass consumption photographic works of Chris Jordan, which, according to del.icio.us again, have been pretty steadily bookmarked and shared for a couple of years.
Any more? I’d love to know what you think, or if you have any more examples….
[...] On Art and Advertising. Meg picks up a few “homages” by ad agencies to artwork which is nothing new really, advertising always having been somewhat bankrupt in the originality stakes, but then goes on to track when the art in question “went viral” on del.icio.us, usually scant months before the advert itself was revealed. Nice one. [...]
You nailed it. Ad execs are thinking they’ll impress the client with cool ideas they’ve snarfed from the Web. Client is most likely very impressed, since he knows nothing about the Web. But exec is heading for a fall, because consumer is much more clued-in than client. Somebody is bound to blow the whistle, which is what you just did.
Um, what about the simple explanation, which is that the original artists were commissioned by the company in question to create the advert? Maybe no-one is ripping anybody off.
Pete.nu - that’s possible, of course, and if it is the case then great. But that’s definitely not what happened in the Bravia Bunnies/Kozyndan, Honda Cog examples, and the information about art direction I’ve been able to find out about the VW print ad (no link, sorry) makes no mention of Chris Jordan’s involvement, and the creative for the John Lewis ad was apparently by Johnny Leathers and George Prest at Lowe - again, Noble and Webster might have been involved, but they’re not credited as such.
I take your point about the potential for artists’ involvement, though, and hope that ad agencies might increasingly realise that they can work with artists to sell stuff. If the artists want to, of course.
On the same lines: Mr Splashy Pants is an imposter.
Hey Meg - I dig the post and charting the viral rise was a nice tough. Not sure I agree with the conclusion (or hint, as didn’t actually pointing the finger).
Reading the comments on the Sony / Kozyndan page, it raises a ton of questions. For example, did Kozyndan “steal” Hokusai’s wave or was it just inspiration? Clearly, there are instances when it becomes copying or plagiarism. BUT, there’s also riffing off what came before and taking it to a new place.
And it’s not just in visual art: Jazz is based on this, as is blues. You’ll hear the same chords, progressions and rhythms, but with a different tone, infection or pace. Heck, science does the same thing. Give credit to the original artist if that’s where it came from, but to me, it doesn’t lack value if (of because) the impetus for the work shows through.
It’s an interesting topic. Nice post.
Jeremy - absolutely! There’s a very blurry line in between inspiration and knock-off. I’m just interested that web attention trends seem to move in an advance wave to advertising trends.
List of others who’ve been ripped off includes Danny Wallace, and of course Gillian Wearing (this link is to an interesting discourse on this issue from a creative).
Ad agencies have always used a healthy dose of homage in their more creative work - whether it’s using Futurism as a design guide for selling a product or pastiching famous works of art. Equally artists do the same, making a mint by inserting a cartoon cow into famous works of art. You could cynically say that as most ad creatives are frustrated ex-art students the modus operandi is the same, it’s just the compensation is better.
Artists appropriating Brian Haw’s Parliment protest win the Turner Prize. You can bet your life that if someone like, for instance, Ask.com had appropriated it for a fake protest campaign, we’d all be up in arms.
[...] art and advertising [...]
Ah. So you wrote this up before I send you a text at a funny time of day saying ‘Noble and Webster!’