UTTERMEDIA

So many people making a huge point of saying that they WON’T be buying an iPad. Seems a little counterproductive. I won’t be buying a Toyota Prius. Or visiting Dubai. Or purchasing Milly Cyrus’ new album. All heavily marketed, always in the public eye, yet I’m not telling you “DEFINITELY NOT BUYING THE NEW MILLY CYRUS ALBUM, SHE’S A C*NT, YOU’RE ALL TURDS!”

Ever thought that you might just not be the target market? Ever thought you might be paying a little too much attention to advertising and media hype? Anyone spending between £400 and £700 on a product has probably thought their motives through. It probably fits into their life quite nicely. They’re not a consumerist zombie. Apple might be closed, arrogant and expensive. But so is Dubai.

Hey, if advertising makes you buy something, then great - it worked. If advertising provokes a reaction from you and forces you to mention the product, great too. Free advertising, sucker!

You can be one of three people. (i) See iPad. Want iPad. Buy iPad. (ii) Miss the point, but lap up the media hysteria and marketing. (iii) Ignore it all.

If you’re number 3, you have my respect, you’re a normal human being who didn’t happen to be turned on by a 10-inch touch-screen mobile computing tablet device. If you’re number 2, move your susceptible head away from the media and find a hobby. Let’s face it, there are bound to be things in your house that your neighbour wouldn’t dream of wasting their money on. If you’re number 1, enjoy your new iPad, it’s every Creative’s wet dream.

PS: I won’t be buying an iPad. iPhone 4G looks pretty tasty though. I’m off to the pub, where I can guarantee I will overhear iPad haters slambashing something that they really don’t understand. You look like Bill Gates, GO HOME!

I guess it was inevitable that the quickfire ingredients of what is essentially an advertisement for advertising were hip invention, big-idea philosophy and ambiguous craft.

Art & Copy is a 2009 documentary film stalking the industry from the lo-res cut-and-dry late-70s through to the high-definition multibillion iconic modern age settling. Out of the starting blocks distinguished cash rich brands such as Apple, Volkswagen, Coke, Nike et al put their money and trust in young new creative agencies fraternizing in white-plaster New York offices.

Not only was advertising back then an unwritten language, there was only one ever-so-slightly proven formula of “tell the consumer what it does”. Almost over night Tommy Hilfiger was born and everyone knew about it. The brand stood shoulder to shoulder with Calvin Klein not through climbing the ranks, but by osmosis of the human mind; billboards, TV ads, and PR.

With Apple and Volkswagen back then being probably just as evokative and enigmatic as they are in todays ads, this documentary really opens your eyes to just how many heartstrings, how much empathy and how little time a message has to prove itself to you.

Whether you and I like it or not, advertising bombards us all day fucking long. The cynical and cocksure side of me would love to say that advertising doesn’t really have a profound effect on what I buy, but I can think of half a dozen instances where it had me hook, line and sinker. Walking off an American plane, into an American airport in an American state, the first American billboard I saw was one for Pepsi. What was the first thing I bought once I passed through customs? You got it. Suckerpunched.

• The food industry spends $34 billion on ads a year
• The average city-dweller receives 5000 ad messages a day
• Next year the advertising agency will be worth $544 billion
• The average child sees 20,000 TV ads in a year

From a business and financial point-of-view I find it just startling. From a creative and design point-of-view it enthralls me. If you work in marketing, PR, advertising, or the sales of any of the aforementioned services, after watching Art & Copy you will want to march to work the next day and kick some serious drawing-board ass [sic]. I sure do.

Advertising isn’t just about commercialism and consumerism, really it isn’t. MTV was bought by all the major cable companies in the US only because the US public bombarded the switchboards with calls. Public perception is not what an advertiser should be thinking about after the dispatch of his advert. They should be looking at public perception before they even start work on the advert.

Sadly though, it’s not always the case. Like Doug Pray said, 95% of adverts are bad. And what better day to type this blog than today, when a conservative capitalist party comes into power in the UK.