Advertising Week - a time to be social

Trevor Beattie opened the Advertising Week conference yesterday with an announcement that the 30-second-ad is dead.

You can get involved in the event by joining the advertising week social club; through the blog (check out the student area) and/or facebook and linkedIn.

The blog gives you access to many of the sessions and the AWSC  linkedIn enables you to join in discussions.

Go on, be social and maybe even leave a comment about something interesting you come across...

Where does 'creativity' come from

I don't know if you watched this Horizon programme, but you should.

A fascinating insight into how the brain works and how and where 'creativity' happens.

A few great examples of how we can harness the power of creativity and make it work for us.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mgxf

Advertising is not an Art form

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs - Marlene Dietrich

Tiffiny Jenkins, asserted last night that advertising is not an art form. Jenkins was part of the panel which eloquently presented the What is good Art? debate at Leeds City Art Gallery.

A truth

Jenkins began the debate outlining that contemporary art critics and commentators are resistant to exclaim their judgements on what is good. Progressing to outline three aspects that judgements entail; a contextual understanding of art, contemporary experience and knowledge  and an understanding that good art speaks a truth. Immediately, I recalled Hegarty during a talk at LCA (2010) stating that creative advertising tells a truth in an interesting way - which is the first point I want to make in support of creative advertising being an art form.

Creative circle

Nigel Walsh unpacked the importance of context to aesthetic judgements, through reflecting back to postwar NY (Tom Wolf, Barnett Newman) and the role of the creative circle. He then pointed at an interesting paradox; our contemporary obsession with celebrity culture (artists) that's resulted in the democratisation of art (diminishing the creative circle) -qualified with the success of Tate Modern, -incidentally a brand judged as 'cool', [good ] by a panel of '39' creative professionals Campaign (2012).  The criteria they used was 'innovation, originality, style, authenticity, desirability and uniqueness' - themes discussed in the debate. 

 Negative Knowledge

Ken Hay, unpicked more complexities regarding criteria and summarised that the interaction between creatives and audiences give meaning to art and that it is this that decides what is good. A view in harmony with this IPA publication. Hay ended with an interesting assertion 'art is the negative knowledge of the world'.  Which again - made me recall Hegarty, who states that Advertising is an Art not a Science -around the time he picked up the Lion of St Mark at the international festival of creativity at Cannes.

Transcending qualities

Antonia Stowe an artist involved in the Trinity Leeds development - (congratulations again Jacob as event manager) asserted the qualities of good art, in transforming Leeds. The transcending qualities of great work such as think small by DDB - springs to mind. Our (Chris, Jane & I) contributions to the debate included are can advertising be good art? and does the creation of good art depend on a particular 'process'? You already know Jenkins' response, adding that advertising cannot transcend time - old adverts are just something to laugh at and are some low form of art -a rather habbitual view I feel. Therefore as a remedy, I recommend a read of Art and Advertising by J. Gibbons who points to creatives such as Tony Kaye who employs methods and themes often associated with high art. I also recommend that we put the panel members on the invitation list to our forthcoming exhibition; 19 degrees from 17th June.

Creative Advertising is an art form

Project manager Alex and partner Zoe (placement RAPP UK) will be pleasantly surprised with the renewed buzz surrounding the final year exhibition, which is to have a presence at New Blood. The proposition for the exhibition 19 degrees; Creative Advertising is an art form is a result of a meeting yesterday. 

Coincidently, on Tuesday, 12th March, 2013 there is a talk at Leeds City Art Gallery which revisits questions that surround aesthetic judgement. Critical awareness is one of those lovely learning objectives on all our briefs and is a skill required of Creative Directors, panels of judges, art educationalists and students - in critical evaluations.

Therefore, the Creative Advertising team intends to attend the talk - run by Leeds Salon and recommends the event to the CA community (alumni and partners). So, time to skim read a bit of Kant and purchase a ticket! That's if your not on the train to the Creative Circle event, which seems to be where most of Level 6 are heading - make sure you don't end up like the Bellarmine (image above).

The talk is connected to the Dawn Chorus exhibition at Leeds City Art Gallery and speakers include cultural commentator Tiffany Jenkins; Curator Nigel Walsh, Deputy Head of the School of Design, Univeristy of Leeds Kenneth Hay and Artist Antonia Stowe.


Image above: Renee So, Drunken Bellarmine, 2012. Wool, acrylic, oak tray frame.
Courtesy Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London © the artist

Hospitality

Creative Advertising is host to many visitors recently, starting off with Neil Wallace (Art Director, Brass) who kindly came to our studios to give a final crit to Level 5 - Thanks Neil. Then there was Paul from Face, whose talk included some advice about working in creative (online collectives). Then Joel from Link Communications, gave us some interesting insights to experiential marketing. We are also looking forward to a visit from Trevor Beattie, in April who is setting a 24 hr brief to our L5 & L6 creatives.
Hospitality was the theme of Liverpool Biennial 2012 exploring tourism, immigration and being a host. these topics continue through recent visits to York, Liverpool, New York and L'Aquila (well virtually anyway).

Our tourist behaviour includes visiting the NRM to see 'Whatever the weather, selling train travel in winter and  the York Chocolate Story.  More recently during an annual visit (18th Feb), to Liverpool Tate / Albert Dock and  Port Sunlight we came across Thresholds an exhibition that continued the hospitality theme '...throughout all the works ...runs a question of place and identity, name and belonging.

A piece that caused some interest was Royal Ascot (1994) by Mark Wallinger - The video depicted the royal carriage at different years of the races, where the Queen replicated her movements where the BBC seemed to use the same editing formula year-on-year. The repetition explored British identity, class, rituals and history. Interesting stuff for those that need to target audiences with creative ideas...