Advertising and Art

Simon Howell began his career covering the arts for many years. He decided after many years that he wanted to make a shift, a cleansing of his professional palate. Simon choose the field of advertising and  soon discovered that our culture and language were being manipulated by large advertising agencies. Today advertising agencies are attempting to relate their brand and products to a story. This story uses emotions and attempts to invoke certain feelings in order to sell their idea. Simon elaborates on this idea by using the example of a Tim Horton's commercial. The commercial depicts a father and his son together at a hockey rink reminiscing on childhood memories of growing up in Canada. The father appears to be an immigrant to Canada and his son now has a child of his own playing hockey. The commercial on the exterior appears to emulate a heritage moment relying on a certain amount of sentimental feelings in the development of their story. I found myself viewing this commercial not as an avenue to sell coffee, but rather feeling some sort of cultural connection and understanding of this family's hardships and experience in being immigrants to Canada. Simon points out this is often the goal of advertisers to use the story as a platform for commercials.
        Today it is often very hard to look anywhere in society and not be bombarded with an advertising pitch. Company's are beginning to employ artists, who are  creating collaborative works to be displayed in public spaces in order to pitch their product. This tactic I find particularly disheartening because society is being coerced into believing these images, sculptures, or performances have no ulterior motive. The phrase "a wolf in sheep's clothing" comes to mind while I was listening to Simon discuss this new form of medium advertisers are embarking on. 
        With the advent of social networking sites and  the Internet becoming more of a conversation of opinions and shared information, advertising is attempting to use this platform to their benefit. Simon states " people want their commercials on their own terms...they also want to share and post ads" Taking advantage of this constant sharing of information by advertisers is important, because today most of the time company's would spent to inject their content into main stream society is being done by us. Simon uses a great example of the "old spice guy" commercial. This commercial was so well received, that it spawned its own Facebook page, was shared by millions of people and created a subculture of people doing parody's. The events and content that was created after the release of the commercial on television shows just how effective the sharing of information within a community can be in promoting a brand. Essentially this effect is an advertisers dream, almost like a virus, the story within the ad becomes part of our contemporary culture. Simon affirms this idea by stating " companies are finally realizing that their brands do not belong to them rather they exist in the experience each one of us shares with the product." I find this point particularly interesting because we all associate experiences we have in life with the products we associate with.  In turn we pass judgment and make choices on purchases based on these experiences.
      With the increased push in many countries towards globalization, Simon asks " should there be some sort of government regulations with regards to content in commercials?" I feel that regulation with respect to the ethical and moral portrayal of content is necessary. Otherwise I think we will find ourselves  turning into a society whose culture is defined by the advertising agencies that disseminate this content. As advertising continues to infiltrate our everyday lives I feel our society will find it harder to define values and cultural heritage and that they are not simply stories told by advertiser in an attempt to sell us their product.