It encourages consumerism for the sake of consumerism and enables excessive e-waste. Sony has put forth plenty of effort since then to convince you that you've needed yet another new and shiny TV to replace the Bravia, and will continue to do the same.
I truly don't understand the idea of praising a commercial that exists solely to sell you something we could probably, reasonably, be making and selling a lot less of. We only keep going "because growth". When's enough? This is gross.
Edit: And after watching the video, it's extra jarring to me to feel the warm fuzzies it gives you, and then realize, "It's not asking me to be a good person or do something that's gonna match the feeling this commercial is giving me, it just wants me to buy something it's gonna want me to replace eventually". Ick. Get the fuck out of my emotions like that.
I feel like this is a very myopic perspective. It can be both art and a commercial at the same time and appreciable for either or both. As time progresses, it becomes more art than commercial because the commercial utility has expired.
Commercials are interesting as they are a way to support artists financially. Many artists make a living in commercials while also getting a chance to exercise a creative profession.
Conceptually it isn't that much different than church commissions during the Renaissance.
Or 19th century poster art. Many people collect reproductions (or originals if they can afford it) of advertising posters by people like Firmin Bouisset. Yes, they are ads, but they are also beautiful long after the products they were advertising are no longer available.
I visited the Mucha museum in Prague and was surprised by how many of his works were advertising posters. On one hand, I don't care for advertising: on the other hand, it brought us these wonderful works that we admire a century on, divorced from their original context, so I can't really deny their artistic potential.
As an artist, with a ton of artist friends, I wrestle with this idea very frequently. I understand the necessity for those who take that path, and I don't judge them for it (huge Jose Gonzalez fan, btw). Yet the ick remains.
It’s a pattern I’ve noticed with Americans, this bundling up art with the capitalism. Commercial/Ad work can be a lot of fun and a good living for any artist, but it’s just not fucking art. It’s such a cringey pattern - that somehow makes commercial work into chivalrous patronage.
That being said - cool ad! Fun to make and probably good money! Would love to work on something like that! But. Not. Art.
I don’t think I believe in the term “commercial art” - it’s “commercial artwork”.
My spouse is doing artwork for a beer company right now and she would throw the chair at me like in that Orange Country TV Show meme if I tried to insinuate that this is her “art”. It’s not art it’s artwork, it’s labor, it’s a job, it’s for a boss.
This is where the ick is from - nice artwork can be commissioned, can be labor intensive and require talent. But it’s not truly the distillation of the artists process that art is.
Commercial art? No, can't be art. Illustrations? Only if unpublished during the artist's lifetime. Commissions? Certainly not. Political art? No, just no. Religious art? Are you kidding me?!
Any arbiter of the arts will find that these handy guidelines readily facilitate the elimination and/or downsizing of unnecessary galleries and other non-art collections.
Boo - All I did was confirm the ick while acknowledging that we can, in fact, enjoy a cool thing for what it is - an ad.
See, that’s the thing about this POV that the term “art” is placed on some sort of pedestal and then all the other forms are then compared against it. “How dare you say [other thing requiring effort] is not art!”
Art !== artwork
An element of art is that it functions for its own relationship between artist-work and maybe somewhat the viewer or participant. It’s neither better or worse, it’s just something separate from all of those ideologies. It just is, they just make it. They place it in museums so we don’t have to bump into each others’ egos.
I will reiterate my belief: it’s foolish to wrap up art with corporate, religious or institutional patronage.
I think you've explained your belief. But a definition of art that dismisses Michelangelo, Da Vinci, et al. seems unlikely to resonate with many artists, art historians, or art galleries/museums.
On the music side, we'd have to dismiss The Beatles, Bach, Mozart, and probably most of the greatest composers and musicians of all time.
Marketing is just raising awareness for things you might enjoy. I don't think it has to be that deep.
They are doing marketing to get me to buy things. You are doing marketing to get me to NOT buy something.
The iPhone enabled everyone to see consumer buying cycles in that most people don't go buy the 11-12-13-14-15-16, they go 11-16 and 13-17 and the like. It's the same with all products. Most people don't buy every single new model, unless they are an enthusiast, in which case who are you to say what someone's hobbies are?
> Marketing is just raising awareness for things you might enjoy.
If that were all it is, there wouldn't be much problem.
Marketing is also creating a demand where there wasn't one before and exploiting psychological weaknesses to prompt actions not necessarily in a person's best interest.
See I don't get that at all. I don't find it selling me something - it's from TWENTY YEARS AGO. It's just a video of 250,000 bouncy balls flying down a hill at 100mph. It's a cool sight. It's something that, if I was 10 and had access to that many bouncy balls, I'd be plotting myself.
Where do you draw the line on consumerism for physical to digital experiences? Is it worthwhile to experience the web given the high cost to build, maintain, and access it?
I've bought one TV in my life (I'm pushing 43) and it's a Bravia. Ten years old, too, and I have no intention of replacing it while it works. Sony makes nice stuff. Expensive, but nice. I still remember the ad fondly.
OP is not talking about this ad in particular being cancer.
He's talking about a couple million roadside billboards, ads on busses, ads in TV services you pay for, drug companies spending more on advertising than R&D, political machines driven by 24 hours news cycles that are funded from ragebait, social media companies that have us literally addicted to our screens due to their advertising-based revenue models. It goes on... ad infinitum indeed.
It's a fucking cancer and it truly is the root of so many of our problems and we are running out of time to start thinking clearly about the damage the industrial advertising complex causes.
As we speak, there are large groups of people literally shooting each other to death. Advertising might be annoying, but not even on the top 100 list of major world problems.
I hate to say "go touch grass" because it sounds condescending. But please, go outside and have some fun! The dumb billboard isn't stopping that.
> As we speak, there are large groups of people literally shooting each other to death. Advertising might be annoying, but not even on the top 100 list of major world problems.
See, I'd contend that the business models and businesses enabled by advertising, and the combined social impact of ads plus those business models very much are one of the world's top problems.
Taking your question at face value, I would much prefer information be "pulled" rather than "pushed". In other words, I don't want to be informed - I want to search when I decide to search, get reviews when I decide to get reviews, etc. I don't want someone else deciding how my attention is diverted or what they would recommend for me. A notable exception is that I am happy to take unsolicited recommendations from friends and family, but that's because there is a critical distinction: they want to inform me of something for me, rather than for the product manufacturers.
This argument for the theoretical benefit of advertising (being informed about products/services) was probably true at the point in time when advertising genuinely consisted of a dispassionate listing of the features of a product, and maybe a picture of it. Take the commercial being highlighted here for example. It's 2.5 minutes of a very cool visual image of the toy balls bouncing en masse. But how does a zillion balls bouncing down a hill convey anything meaningful about the television model it's an ad for? How do sexy models in a commercial for beer, perfume, etc inform the consumer about the product in any actual sense?
It might benefit you to take some marketing courses to understand why these sort of ads are effective and useful. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean there's no rational explanation for it.
(In general, it's a good rule of thumb to assume that the widespread existence of something suggests there's a reason for it, and to be inquisitive as to what that reason might be.)
He didn't ask how these sorts of ads are effective or useful. He asked how they inform consumers, which was the point someone else previously brought up as a defense.
At this point in my life, I've realized that anything they advertise that is actually a new thing (not a TV or a toaster with slightly better features) is just going to be some consumable or gadget that I don't want or need. Most advertising I see is just for some soda or electronics brand which I already know about and do not want to buy. I don't think I could name a single ad that I've seen that is for a genuinely new product or service that was useful enough to me that I thought, "thank god they showed me this ad!"
I've actually seen multiple such ads in the past year on Youtube. I found myself surprised to actually want to see it to the end while hovering over the Skip button. One was a bed Heater/Cooler gadget, another an ultrasonic cutter. There were also some doozies, like these "model v8 engines" that work very hard to hide the fact that they are powered by electric motors. We'll see how this year goes.
And for literal centuries, you could flip through magazines to look for those neat gadgets when you want to look for them, where they usually had a fairly simple ad that wasn't trying to trick you or play with your emotions or anything. Usually a spec sheet.
When I want to know what kind of neat electronics I can play with my raspberry Pi, I don't sit around and wait for Youtube to show me ads, I browse the fucking store.
When my dad wanted to start a pressure washing business in the early 2000s, he didn't wait for an ad on the radio, or see a billboard, he ordered a catalog from some pressure washing companies and browsed their offerings at his leisure
In the 60s, if you ran a electronics lab, and you needed a new instrument to calibrate your new atomic clock, you would order an HP catalog and flip through their offerings, which included a basic description, a picture sometimes, and some specs.
Notably, the old way primarily required you to start from a point of dissatisfaction, intentionally seek out information, and purchase a solution to an actual problem you have.
The current days, advertising is all about convincing us with evolutionary brain tricks that we actually have so many problems. I'm tired of it.
I like informative ads. Like old newspaper or magazine ads that are just a picture of the item and a few bullet points about what it offers. Ads like this post are manipulative and they weaponize psychology to make people buy things they wouldn’t want otherwise
> People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. (…)
