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by Somachandre Wijesuriya

Every person will have something to say about advertisements they see or hear. That is because in modern society, you cannot escape from advertisements. A normal consumer in this country, who is exposed to average media, get to see or listen to more than one hundred ads per day. Therefore, it is a social phenomenon, which concerns everybody. Yet, complaints about advertisements are much. They are a nuisance, not creative, unbelievable, exploits women and children to mention a few.

There is also a school of opinion that if one has to undergo the agony of exposing oneself to advertisements the ads should be at least pleasing to watch or hear. Advertisements can be taken as an art form like pop music or break dancing. Not everybody wants to involve themselves in break dancing. Unfortunately, advertisements do not give any such choices to the average citizen.

What can be done to make the advertisements more pleasing to the ear or eyes? The answer to this is not in textbooks written on advertising or marketing. One can employ ad research to evaluate advertising campaigns but such research will not answer inquiries on beauty. What is pleasing to oneself has something to do with aesthetics. Textbooks on marketing or advertising, unfortunately, do not have chapters on aesthetics.

Definitions of beauty, the subject matter of aesthetics, have been a topic from the time of Aristotle, which are valid even today. Yet, there are changes in thinking in this subject. The human society has undergone much transformation since the time of Greek civilisation. The Greeks knew only of two procedures of technically reproducing art: founding and stamping. Bronzes, terra cottas and coins were the only art works, which they could produce in quantity. However, with the onset of Industrial Revolution, things changed from this simplistic artistic approach to a complex process where human labour was substituted with machinery and it was possible to reproduce art mechanically.

Photograph replaced, paintings and cinema replaced theatre. This led to new approaches to aesthetic principles. The advertising industry is practising mechanical reproduction of art in our age.

The man who brought into light this unique development in art is the aesthetician Walter Benjamin, a rare individual, who was born in Berlin in 1892 and lived until 1940. His brilliant essay 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' brought into focus the new developments in fine arts. Walter based himself on observations of Marixsits like G.V. Plekhanov who identified that the cultural superstructure of a given society is based on its mode of production. When the latter changed from feudalism to capitalism the cultural patterns changed. At the beginning of twentieth century, a mass culture was born mainly based on radio, cinema and print media, which were forms of mechanical art, which is the result of capitalist mode of production. Walter Benjamin identified some aesthetic problems connected to this mechanical art, which forms the basis of advertising.

Walter maintained 'Even the most perfect reproduction of work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in and time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject to throughout the time of its existence'. Theatre in contrast to films has this uniqueness. There is a world of difference between a performance on stage and a film.

The aura created on a stage is different to watching a telefilm at home. The artistic experience an audience undergoes in the theatre or concert hall is different to watching a home movie or listening to a CD recording.

Drama

Professor Sarachchandra's Sinhabahu or Maname is considered momentous events in Sinhala theatre. Viewing it at Lionel Wendt Theatre live is different to seeing it on the TV. The artistic performances of a stage actor in person is not mechanical and he may have the opportunity of adjusting himself to the audience who are undergoing a group experience. The appreciation of such a drama in company has different vistas of artistic appreciations. In good society, such a viewing is followed by a dinner, wine and discussion of the performance that one watched. The depth of appreciation is such the conversation on contemporary drama and other art forms may go until midnight. That is one way of appreciating theatre. The other options to see a home video can eat a packet rice and curry, hurriedly purchased from a food outlet, and go to sleep.

"Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of masses towards art," maintains Walter Benjamin. The masses become instant critics of works of art. Mechanical reproduction of art also transforms quality into quantity. For example, Sarachchandra's Maname on CD is a transformation of quality drama into quantity. The masses undergo a direct emotional and visual enjoyment, which is the intention of mechanical reproduction because such reproductions cater to a market.

In advertising too, masses look forward to this emotional enjoyment. If it is not there, they become instant critics. Apart from these aesthetic considerations, such advertisement may fail to deliver the intended message to consumers. Bringing this fusion with the masses, which is their visual and emotional enjoyment, means creating beautiful advertisements.

This idea itself could be highly unacceptable to conventional marketing practitioners or ad agency personnel. The whole idea of an advertisement is to produce or aid sales and not to create beauty, they will counter. Yet, I am advocating it as an aesthetics postulation, which may help to produce good advertisements. What is a good advertisement?

The traditional definition of a good advertisement is that it should be full of the features of the product or idea it is trying to propagate.

That is from the point of view of the advertiser but not from the masses point of view. These are naturally opposite poles. The masses ask only one question. What is in it for me? The forms of mechanical reproduction of arts are such that mass participation is instant. Therefore, how to create beauty to appeal to masses? A complex question which needs a philosophical inquiry in aesthetics. What is relevant here is that the beauty created in an ad is limited in scope. It is limited to the sales message. Yet, the concept of beauty in an ad of one advertising agency (creators of beauty in ads) may differ from another. Limitations to create beauty may come from the client who believes that his brand name must be mentioned five times in a 30 second commercial. A broad definition of beauty of ads is what is cognised by the masses.

Beauty

Defining of beauty is an exhausting subject. Instead of trying to define, beauty let me give an example of beauty as I perceive in an ad. Due to lack of good examples from local ad industry, I am compelled to take an example of a foreign ad. A paint company is currently running a TV advertisement, which shows a scene inside a double decker bus running in London. A woman enters a bus and notices a man wearing a yellow coloured jacket. She sits in a back seat but comes forward, possibly to observe the colour of the jacket. The scene ends when both get out of the bus. It is drizzling.

The woman opens an umbrella and goes away. The man puts the jacket wind cover over his head and walks away. The last scene is the woman painting her wall with the particular yellow of the jacket. The ad ends with the message that the company is ready to match any colour that you can find. Not a word is spoken during the commercial and the ad creates a mystique to hold viewer attention.

The same company is telecasting another ad, which shows a man stealing a woman's blue coloured underwear, and this ad has met with objections in the daily press. Beauty is a category here and loses its universality. Therefore, beauty as cognised by masses is relative. Any advertising campaign, which undergoes pre-testing, can narrow the elements of beauty as aspired by masses, which is an aspect that separates advertising as art from other forms of fine arts. The masses of Sri Lanka cognise beauty different to the ones in U.K. Ad agency may have a philosophy about the beauty of ads created by it.

Leo Burnett was one of the developers of what has been called the "Chicago school of advertising." Its objective was to build an advertisement around the inherent importance or appeal of a product itself rather than around clever copy or a catchy slogan. He deployed models that looked like ordinary people instead of movie stars, and this approach led him in 1954 to the cowboys in Marlboro cigarette ads for the Philip Morris Company, a campaign that turned a minor cigarette with a famine image into a major brand with a rugged male image. Creating beautiful advertisements and delivering the sales message could be harmoniously achieved. This article is only a contribution to provoke thoughts on the nature of beauty in advertisements, a subject that needs aesthetical inquiry.

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