What's Inside a Creative Director's Bag?

Can Advertising be Art?

I watched a great movie last week, smartly named "Art and Copy".  As you might have guessed, it's a documentary about the advertising industry that features a few of the creative giants and iconic campaigns of our recent history.  

Lee Clow is the creative genius behind Apple and his work goes all the way back to the game-changing "1984" Superbowl ad that introduced the first Macintosh.

(I'm distracting myself. And you.  Watch it now!)

Together, Mr. Clow and Steve Jobs changed the way advertisers were supposed to tell their story...they didn't use lots of color or taglines and didn't even show the product - instead they captured imagination through intrigue and relevance. That Superbowl started the craze for commercials being just as fun as the game. Pretty cool, eh?

Ok, back on point.  Mr. Clow made a great observation in the movie - to summarize, that if you do your job well enough, advertising could and should be an art form. We, as the creative-left-brain of advertising, must try to stay true to our intrinsic nature as artists when the clients tell us to make the logo bigger and focus on the product and the product's features in a bulleted list.  It's a tough road to hoe, but it's definitely possible when you have an honest relationship with your client.  Mr. Clow pointed out that much of the famous artwork of Frenchman Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec were actually advertising posters for places like Moulin Rouge and other notorious nightclubs (and girls) in Paris.  And now those posters adorn coffee table books and museums.  It was advertising, by an artist.  And it was, and forever will be, beautiful.

So what advertising have you seen lately that may be considered art now, or in the future?

Shutting Out the Noise

I have a bunch of personal goals for 2011, but so far the one I’m having the most trouble with is cutting down on my reading.  I’m eating better, exercising, trying to be a better parent….but this reading thing has got it’s teeth in me.

A Weird Goal.
Reading is generally viewed as a good thing, right? Feeding your brain, acquiring knowledge, nothing wrong with that. So making an effort to read less seems kind of odd. However, it’s a necessity in my case. I need to read less and create more.

Information Addict.
I’ve got it bad.  I admit it, I’m a copious consumer of content.  I’m not much of a book reader, but I’m voracious otherwise. I read pretty much an entire newspaper everyday, and then there’s the INTERNET.  News aggregators, blogs, Facebook , pop culture/technology sites and the mother of all time-sucks - Twitter. I devour them all religiously.

Missed Opportunities.
The thing is there’s just so much to learn, especially in my business where social media and tech tools change daily. If I’m not reading, staying up to date, and using these new tools, then I’m falling behind, right. How do I know that Quora is changing the way people find answers if I’m not reading Mashable everyday?  That, my friend, is the conundrum.

Enough.
The problem is that all this consuming is killing my creating. Sure, I need to know what’s happening in this space, but if I’m not contributing then I’m just a voyeur. Creating, adding and executing are really where it’s at. I’ll get enough news even if I cut down, I know I will.  I’ve tried a few tactics to slow down the flood of info; only checking in to certain sites at certain times of the day, waiting until I complete certain tasks before I hit up Twitter. But like I said, I haven’t been real successful yet. I’ll keep working at it though.

Advice?
Do you, or have you had a similar problem? Any advice you can give me? I’ll gladly read any tips and tricks on how to shut out the noise…..after all, it’s reading right?