Is your brand clutter or art?

by Carolyn Kiser

Is the world looking more like a giant billboard to you these days? And in this world, do you see clutter or do you see art?

After returning from the 55^th Annual Boardwalk Art Show in Virginia Beach recently, it made me ponder the question – is advertising art? As an advertising professional and studio art major, I would love to believe that it is. But I’m not that naïve. While both use color and concept to convey messages and both share the goal of changing people’s behaviors, where do you draw the line between the two? Perhaps advertising is only art when the advertising is creatively executed in a way that would make you want to clip it, frame it, share it, or bookmark it. But if art is in the eye of the beholder, then maybe some people consider an ad with a giant red starburst art?

So who is to say what art is and what it isn’t? Let me attempt. The main discrepancy is that artists do not worship audiences in the way advertisers do and they don’t tailor their art around other people – I would like to think it is more personal than that. So I would classify advertising as a targeted, emotional art. And to develop advertising that can be considered an emotional art, you truly have to understand your audience. Rather than grouping consumers into demographic buckets based on age, sex, and income, we should consider how it will make them feel based on their attitudes and beliefs. It needs to evoke the emotions that we are all programmed to value. When you create an ad (minus starbursts and disproportionally sized logos) and the message in the ad speaks to a single consumer insight that will drive desired purchase behaviors, then you have crafted emotional art.

In summary, it’s not necessarily the reach and frequency of a media buy (think Head-On of Free Credit Report dot com commercials) but the power of an insightful, consumer-driven message (think Got Milk or Get a Mac campaigns). Is your brand in the hand of a Picasso?