Can Advertising Become Art?

Apparently, according to most research that I have some across on the subject, people living in a city will see up to 5,000 ads a day. This clutter and high concentration of messages often leads to  consumers who have become very good at blocking out this constant barrage. At the same time it means that brand have to try even harder with their messaging to rise above the noise - often just to get someone to look.

Increasingly iv seen advertising that is attempting to come across as art - and although I do not believe advertising can ever be art, (artists dont force an interpretation, advertisers try their hardest to convey a single message) I do think there are some brands out there who have risen above the clutter by trying to become art. If this means that they get noticed amongst the 5,000 other messages they are competing with then they must be doing something right - right? Here are a couple of ads that border on art that defiantly got noticed.

Fisch Franke "The Living Poster"

To promote the outstanding freshness and quality of Fisch Franke´s Restaurants they created a "talk of the town" citylight poster which contained real live fish. The ad is very striking and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would not take a closer look. I think there was a bit of risk involved to - imagine a situation where one of the fish decides to die and go belly up! Although apparently "The living poster was built according to the recommendations of the federal veterinary office and the animals have been provided with sufficient air, food and cooling."

BMW "An Expression of Joy"

This public art installation features a 30-foot by 40-foot art work called "Expression of Joy" a painting by Robin Rhode. The contemporary artist used a 2009 BMW Z4 Roadster with paint dispensers mounted behind its wheels to create the football-size painting. Ultimately the idea is that the car is no longer just a stunning model, but itself executing artist. "This work is an expression of painting in action - my hope is to communicate the power and thrill inherent in the creation of art", says Rhode. "For me, the use of an untraditional paintbrush like a high performance car is a great way to investigate the relationship between emotion, technology and industrial creativity."



Obscura Digital & The Old San Francisco Mint

Obscura Digital recently created some amazing high definition 3D animated projections on the Old San Francisco Mint using 7 HD projectors. This project was displayed during the RSA Conference in San Francisco and was intended to promote McAfee anti virus software. “Our vision is to develop our technology into a whole new medium—one that’s not dependent upon a device such as a phone, television set, or computer, but that allows people to tap into the vast cloud of digital information and interact with it in new and meaningful ways from any surface, any place. “ - Obscura Digital

Papa John’s Crop Art:

Looking to cash in on the media frenzy surrounding the Democratic National Convention, the third-biggest pizza chain in the US Papa John’s Pizza roped in artist Stan Herd to create a bunch of crop circles in a wheat field near West 128th Avenue and Pena Boulevard below two flight patterns outside Denver International Airport.
The artist used cedar mulch to make the pizza’s “pepperoni” with cornstalks filling in for green pepper, black mulch standing for olives, and flattened wheat stalk for cheese. The pizza crop circle stands at about the size of six football fields. How many people actually saw it from the air I would love to know.

Amnesty International & Domestic Violence

Amnesty International have installed a new anti-domestic-abuse ad fixture in Hamburg, Germany which is equal parts clever and shocking: when you look at the photo, it's a smiling couple; when you look away, a bit of domestic abuse happens. The billboard works by scanning its proximity with an eye-tracking camera, which triggers an image switch on the display panel when it senses someone looking at it. The change only occurs after a brief delay, so that observers understand what's going on, and get the message. Although the exmple that is the furthest way from being an 'art work' I think it is the most effective advert of them all.