Advertising as an End in Itself

The ads are more interesting than the programs

When the American comedian Jerry Seinfeld announced that he was going to end his TV sitcom "about nothing" in its ninth year, the New York Times thought the story sufficiently important to place it at the top of its front page. Seinfeld's program is the most popular on US television; its end threatens the fortunes of the NBC network and its owner, the giant General Electric, Inc. One reason why: for the final program, NBC is charging $2,000,000.00 for each 30-second advertising spot.

What will Mr. Seinfeld do next? This is an important question for the media. One strong rumor is that the gifted writer-actor-producer is considering starting his own advertising agency. Apparently, he shares a view of television I have long held: the ads are more interesting than the programs. That being so, why burn yourself out making a year's worth of weekly half-hour shows, when you might get as much attention with a few half-minute spots, created at leisure?

Of course, it is no accident that the ads must outshine the programs - how else can a seller of soap or gasoline or credit cards keep the audience attentive long enough to find out what is being sold? This was always a problem, but today, when every viewer has a remote control in hand to switch channels in an instant, the pressure on ad creators to hold interest is higher than ever, while the products they advertise, are by-and large no more exciting than in the past.

The ad on TV, and also in other media, now becomes a tiny, complete production, a story that draws attention, but to what? To its actors, writers, producers and directors, certainly, just as with any program. Thus a TV or print (or Internet) ad can be looked upon as a "pure" work of art, drawing attention to itself necessarily, and through itself to its creators. The products advertised can be merely the excuse, a necessary one, perhaps, to define the form, but in reality purely incidental. In a huge number of cases one could substitute a competing product, or even something entirely different, without much changing the commercial as an artistic whole.

The companies that pay for the advertisement have little choice; they must seek attention for their products or they certainly won't sell any. Thus they constantly and increasingly must compete for attention with everything and everyone else trying to get it. Today you can find ads stuck on pieces of fruit in the supermarket, on T-shirts handed out free to potential customers, when making a public phone call,(instead of having to drop in coins) and just about anywhere else anyone can think up. And of course, the more ads there are, the more ads there have to be, for any particular product to get noticed amid the din.

Thus, there is more and more scope for the artistry of ad agencies, and others involved in creating them ads. Ironically, though, both the semiotics and the technology for doing ads themselves become more and more apparent, more and more available, especially insofar as they can be put forward on the Internet. We can all now use the language and techniques of ads, to advertise not products, but ourselves.

In the mid nineteen-sixties, the novelist Norman Mailer published a collection of essays under the title "Advertisements for Myself." Because any form of expression, to be successful must draw attention to itself, and through itself to its originator or originators, it makes sense to regard all our burgeoning variety of expression, all the exponentially growing demands on our attention as advertisements, not for mass-produced products but for whoever wants attention for its own sake. We are all would-be Norman Mailers now. And what is officially called advertising is just one more means of achieving that.

The reality of advertising as an art form in its own right is widely recognized, in practice if not explicitly. For instance, American TV viewers are as interested in the ads that will appear in the midst of the most popular program, the (American) football Superbowl every January. Later the ads are subject to newspaper criticism, just as novels, movies, concerts or art exhibits might be. And of course there are prizes for interesting ads, among these being the "Cleos" awarded each year.

If Seinfeld does indeed start his own agency, his ads are sure to draw comment just because they come from him. At present, other ad creators are not quite as well-known to the larger public. But in short order the World Wide Web should change all that. It will be as easy to set up fan sites for ad creators as for movie directors or rock stars. Ad "auteurs" will be common cultural knowledge. That will help transform the way we see ads ever more towards the artistic expression of their creators, for whom the companies that pay for the ads, ostensibly commissioning them for their own purposes, simply turn into "patrons" of these artists, exactly as they have become patrons of art exhibits or opera productions.

Inevitably, more and more of the money spent in buying an advertised product will end up in the hands of the artists of the ads, following the path of attention. This repeats the trend for an ever larger fraction of the prices of movie or opera tickets to end up with the leading stars in those fields, a tribute from their fans, as it were. Despite the firm intentions of advertisers to keep their products in our consciousnesses, what they will increasingly achieve is that their products will be taken as nothing more than random mementos intended to remind us of the stars associated with them through ads.