They are, however, tests of the creators’ imaginations. Commercial art, at least that I’ve seen, tends to be more conservative than fine art: in a world where the bar is set by expensive ads in glossy magazines or films shown on giant flat screens, everything has to be bigger and brighter and louder.
But as an animator, you never know how big your budget is going to be, so you can’t make everything bigger. You have to find ways to be imaginative on a budget that would barely pay for a set of pencils for the New Yorker. Here’s an example from my own work experience:
The Acorn gives a gift of guilt:
An ad for The Acorn showing an unlikely gift given to an unsuspecting music lover.
**The ad for The Acorn shows an unlikely gift given to an unsuspecting music lover. This review reveals that the recipient is a musician and the gift an acoustic guitar.**
The Acorn gives a gift of guilt.
The ad shows the recipient sitting at his piano and creating a piece that is more than a little like Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude, but also seems to have a decided influence from Lennon’s Imagine. Either way, it is not something you would expect to hear in the background of an ad for an investment newsletter.
The music plays on and the recipient is transported back over the years to all those other times in his life when he could have been doing something different with his life. He almost feels like he could cry, if he weren’t so happy with how things turned out.
It’s an ad from The Acorn, by Wieden + Kennedy, and it will run on TV during next year’s Super Bowl.
The focus of this ad is on the gift that is being given. The music lover has been given a present which he will love and enjoy for many years to come. The words chosen for this ad are very effective in showing that the present is something that he will love as soon as he receives it.
Although the message of this ad is positive and encouraging, there are also some negative aspects. The first negative aspect is directed at the music lover himself. He seems to be a male who enjoys listening to music alone or with a few friends. It is possible that this man prefers listening to other types of music rather than rock and roll. This shows that although the present will be enjoyed, it will not be enjoyed by everyone, because everyone does not like the same kind of music.
This ad could also be seen as a self-centered one because it focuses on what the giver wants rather than what the receiver wants or needs. It should be more about what the receiver wants or needs, then think about what they want them to have or need, because that would make them happier and more appreciative of their gift.
The Acorn, it turns out, is a fruit. And, as everyone knows, fruits are chock-full of vitamins and minerals. So, in the spirit of healthy eating and fun, Acorn has come up with an unusual new way to “give” its products away.
The idea is simple enough: You call a toll-free number on a card and wait for a recorded message to tell you what kind of Acorn you have gotten. Or you can go to the Acorn Web site (www.acornforeveryone.com) and make your selection from a menu of more than 30 varieties of the fruit—each one with a different personality and answer to your questions.
So far, so good. We’ve given our information to Acorn so that we can find out just how healthy it is for us to eat its products; that’s fair enough.
The problem comes when you actually follow through and connect with one of the Web site’s “live” operators. If you get someone who speaks English well enough to understand you, he or she will be happy to tell you anything about Acorn products—except what they are selling. When I called to ask about the kind of
Creative advertising executives cannot keep track of the latest trends or products. They can, however, look at the work of their peers and ask an important question: What are their clients trying to sell?
Imagine you’re a creative director for The Acorn, a record label that specializes in folk music. You have been given the job of coming up with a print advertisement for your new album by the group Return to Forever. You have three basic options: (1) you can try to appeal to people who buy records, (2) you can appeal to people who listen to records or (3) you can appeal to people who make records.
Overall, it’s more effective if you can make all of these groups part of your audience. But Return to Forever is a fairly obscure band and has very little chance of making more than a small dent in sales figures. So let’s say your mission is simply to get the album reviewed in as many places as possible. If you go after the listeners, you might use an ad that shows two young people sitting on a stoop somewhere looking cool and listening to music on headphones; if you go after the makers, you could show some famous producer or musician being interviewed or lounging around in sunglasses; and if you go
Commercial art does not have to be devoid of motives, or cynical. It can still be a work of love, and it still needs to seem beautiful, or funny, or both. But the artist can’t get into too much trouble if the art is pretty enough for people to accept what it’s saying about its maker.
The Acorn ad is a fine example to study. The Acorn makes inexpensive computers for children. They are trying to market these computers by getting adults to buy them as Christmas gifts. This ad is aimed at adults who don’t know much about computers but who want to give something nice to children.
The ad has been criticized because it shows two adults giving the computer away while a black child looks on sadly, having been given only a doll. The criticism strikes me as overblown; the child looks happy enough with her doll and she is black only because that was the best picture they could find of a child of that age with dark skin. She is also very cute; I wanted one as a present myself.
But the ad isn’t just being criticized because it shows a black child sad while white adults are happy. It’s also being criticized because it shows an adult giving a small computer away as a Christmas gift when there are plenty of