Inspiration in 89 minutes

Art & Copy is a documentary film which explores the development of advertising and its influence on society, showing revolutionary campaigns and the people behind them. This was really inspiring for me as this is the kind of work I want to be able to create, and I can't know enough about this industry. In the film I discovered some really interesting facts:

• 65% of Americans believe they are constantly bombarded with too much advertising
• People are exposed to 5000 ads per day
• 7 billion dollars is spent on billboard ads per year in the USA

I found these facts fascinating because they seem so contradictory; how can so much money be invested into something which people don't like? That is the problem, I think, with how people view advertising; people don't like bad advertising, but as a lot of it is rubbish everyone lumps all ads together and claim to dislike all of them. To quote the film, 'people trash ads because most ads are trashy'. Many people (myself included most of the time) like to think that most ads don't work on them, but I think that it is more likely that most ads don't work. If they don't connect with people they have failed, like someone trying to call a phone with no signal, the message isn't communicated. 

Some of the examples in the film were amazing; the George Lois' campaign which launched Tommy Hilfiger's career as one of America's (and the world's) best known men's fashion designers in a week, which just goes to shown that good advertising can be extremely powerful, and I think that anyone who has a negative view on advertising or doubts it's effectiveness should watch Art & Copy. (After watching Art & Copy, I bought 'Damn Good Advice' by George Lois, which is a fascinating, funny and inspiring book which I would recommend to anyone.)

Core Principles

For this module, I have to choose a brand to analyse the ads of and create ads of my own. To do this successfully I have to look at the core principles of the brand; what they consider the most important aims of the brand. My chosen brand is Nivea, as I think skincare ads have become very dull and samey, and I would like to try to something different with them, and I am interested to see why they don't seem to connect with some people. From the information I have gathered about the brand, Niveas core prinicples are:

• Trust
• Expert skincare
• Quality
• innovation