Adverts

    Advertising is a sophisticated form psychological skeet shooting.  We are consumers and we are supposed to buy things, we are the target..  They are the players they dictate and influence what we purchase they are the shooters.  To do this the advertisers are forever coming up with more creative and ambitious, and often offensive schemes.  Being that most of us have grown up in this consumerist culture, we take for granted this mode of existence.  "Privilege is invisible to those who have it", well in this instance we have the privilege of being a very important part of a larger mechanism.  I will desperately try to avoid a cynical tone as I write this but it's going to be a challenge.  I fear I cannot appreciate the joy that must come with initiating and then reaping the rewards of successful marketing campaign, maybe someday.   Nevertheless I can appreciate the sophistication of their efforts.

   In this instance Heineken and Friends manage to find a yet untapped few square inches of advertising space.  What I appreciate about this is that like any good advert it keys into a psycho-emotional sensibility to the viewer.  The act of crossing a threshold or passing through a "portal" has serious psychological and spacial temporal implications.  Well done Heineken.  Better yet you must partake in the interaction!  Gotchya.


     Just as a smoker comes to augment their every experience with a nicotine fix, advertisers make sure that not an experience goes by without their name or imagery (iconography?) riding shotgun through our ever waking lives.  But I would like to remind all who are reading that as Debord points out in society of the spectacle we are becoming less attuned with reality as we would directly perceive it and more fixated on our place in the spectacle itself, thus closing the referential loop.   I mentioned the term iconography before because I think it's fitting.  I was walking down a main Ave. in New York one day and I beheld the most incredible towering ads, as many of us have seen.  I began to go back through my art history training and I thought about the whole lot like a Marxist, where's the capital?  Where's the dough flow go?  Then it dawned on me that I was looking at the masterpieces of our time, the real art was right here.  Sure the Art Market has its own self referential loop of capital and investment, but it's chump change to the gargantuan enterprise that is advertising.  In terms of pure face time Picasso, Rothko, and DaVinci don't stand a chance (unless they're lucky enough to be appropriated for a full page ad or something).  I know what you're (I'm) thinking, that adverts don't have that art spirit, that real soulful goodness that makes high art so high.  But I think when we take a closer look we'll find that art that plays tricks on the hearts and hopes of the entire populace, and then turns around and makes them the subject of the work, that watches with the widest of eyes how they collectively respond, tweaks its methods and does it again, better, makes cubism look like a Kindergarten project.  I don't know though I've never met anyone raised on great fine art.  I know plenty of people who've been weened on ads.  So to reiterate, next time you're looking at an advert stop and appreciate the pinnacle of art in western culture.


     Without rambling any further let me take a minute to dissect an ad campaign that's been driving me nuts, partially because I don't fully understand it, and secondly because I see it so damn often.

So take a second and soak that in.   There's a number of really interesting things going on in this ad, firstly is the language "Glass up to Howling Faith", that actually comes from the book of psalms, but in this context its a bit of poetic jibberish.  What exactly is howling faith?  Who knows but it inspires in me great thoughts of being true and authentic, amongst other things.  Next Love and Havoc, YEAH!, sounds great sign me up, again a few evocative words thrown together to create a really visceral reaction.  This last one really gets me Fear the Poet & Drink the Whiskey, I'm all for that too, being a disenfranchised artist I really appreciate the prospect of having my creative power recognized and drinking a fine whiskey while I do it.  To me a great deal of strength in this ad comes from the ambiguous language, I've learned as an artist that wherever you apply absence of ambiguity you create an arena for the viewer to write their own narrative.    The head shots of the characters provide a similar mechanism, there's no real narrative, just enough description to give us a "textural" sentiment of what these people represent.  This open-endedness again allows viewers to truly become part of the advertisement finding a way to interface with this gold, green universe with plenty of booze and plenty to think about.  As Irish true as the color scheme may be, It reminds me more than anything of money and gold.

Before I wrap up I want to talk about how I came to see this ad.  Riding the path train I noticed something a I hadn't seen before, the whole care filled with one ad campaign, that is to say the car was bought out.  I was accustomed to this on the NYC subway but I'm pretty sure this is new for the path.  So I'll just take a minute to address the issue.  Am I the only one who finds it horribly oppressive that you can't open your eyes without partaking in a campaign.  Maybe there's a theme emerging here.  Something about trains and rails.