Advertising: Art, Science and More

"Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK."

The above lines from the Mad Men could be a timeless classic in beautifully expressing the essence of advertising. Advertising is indeed all about happiness, of being assured, of being worth it, of being taken care of, of being valued and of being loved.

Love of Advertising

Ask any advertiser, what do they love about a job where work hours a tiresomely long and the pressure to come up with new ideas consistently, is high? Whether or not they answer you, their answer would invariably come to rest on one thing - the thrill of creating something which could affect the minds of many.

Like the gloriously heady concept of 'Dream within a dream' in the movie inception, the power to affect the minds of others through your art and witticism, is a great one. It is not hard to miss for most advertisers.

Art of Advertising

Also, all advertisers are essentially artists who use their art for a purpose. There is no greater happiness than being able to express yourself through your art and getting paid for it, maybe even obscenely (yes but only if your 'art' is loved equally well by others, that is).

Being allowed to be able to be an artist for a career and not be a starving one at that (in fact quite the opposite) is what draws many talented people to advertising and also keeps many working in this line of work despite everything.

Science of Advertising

Any ad concept or a campaign is well researched before coming into picture. This research could be quite in depth and intricate which is directly proportional to the budget of the ad and the stakes involved.

The science of advertising is the complete planning which takes place before an ad comes in front of the audience. There is market research, target audience's psychology analysis, decisions with regard to place, product, pricing, packaging and people, understanding of the client's needs and goals plus so much more.

It is only by a proper understanding of the science of advertising that the ad creative's are briefed accordingly to take over the next step.

People in Advertising

There are several different kinds of people who work in advertising - right from ad visualizes to copywriters to filmmakers to graphic designers to art directors. Each has their own specific role in the advertising ecosystem like an ad director is responsible for how an ad will look like in terms of its visual appeal and a copywriter will be responsible for writing the content for the ad.

Advertising also has its set of mangers and client servicing people who may or may not be involved in the creative process. Normally the ad world creative's are known to be wild and wooly, bratty and sentimental, poised and wild, simple and complicated, normal and crazy and what-have-you, usually all together in one person.

The people in ad world are generally quite liberal in values and open minded as compared to people in other industries.

Atmosphere at an Ad Agency

Most of the times, an ad agency that you may work at may have quite a chilled out environment. Clothing could be casual on all days (not for the managers and client servicing people though) and more than average make up, revealing clothes, torn clothes etc may all be okay as long as you are producing good work.

Drinks may be easily available and most people won't mind you smoking. There may be some game room or some games handy that you probably will never have the time to play. Every day may seem to be like a high pressure party where you must keep working too hard to stay.

Architecture and Interiors of an Ad agency

An ad agency may have one of the most interesting architecture or creative decors. With over sized human dolls, interesting paintings on the wall, makeshift furniture, crazy curtains, cool office stationary, spray paintings, swear words, collages or other messages on the walls and what think you, things certainly feel quite crazy and creative in an ad agency.

One surely cannot comprehend what these creative's may fancy next and which may form a part of the decor. Things present in an ad agency may spell creativity out loud and make a creative person feel amply at home in their imaginative world.

The architecture may be equally interesting with completely round buildings, differently shaped ones or even a fusion of architectural styles.

New age advertising

With the advent of technology, advertising too has moved up the quarters. No more is the ad must sitting in the print or even in the television commercial. Today we find advertising having taken over the short message service (SMS) and FOBBED in the phones, social media networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, websites like YouTube and blogs with any content worth their salt. Advertisers make sure that anywhere there is human presence; there must be ads to call them to action.

Criticism of Advertising

And like all good things, the field of advertising has had its share of criticism too, chiefly among these, is that it is a field which makes money by fooling people.

While good advertising never writes lies but the whole profession of advertising works on highlighting the good. Sometimes it might happen that the good gets highlighted so much that it may make the consumer blind to other aspects which could be detrimental to them. In any case, too much of even a good thing is harmful.

Hence instead of blaming the sunshine happy field of advertising, it is the consumers who must exercise their own caution while selecting a product and learn to read between the lines.

Advertising is art and advertising is science and everything in between. With so much and more, advertising is still happiness and never ceases to be so for billions all over the planet. Cheers to advertising.