Art & Copy (***)

It’s no coincidence that American advertisers started rewarding themselves in 1959, when the first Clios were presented. The year approximately represents the dawn of the new era of advertising this documentary chronicles. Two years earlier, Vance Packard had published his exposé The Hidden Persuaders, and one year earlier the United States Congress had banned subliminal advertising amid public hysteria. The next year Volkswagen and its agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, would introduce the successful and influential “Think Small” campaign.

Similarly highlighted in the TV show Mad Men, this was an era in which creative copywriters would become almost as celebrated as CEOs, and in which an ad could shape the product as well as the other way around. (An ad agency first suggested putting a logo on Braniff jet planes.) It was an era in which products, and not just fashions, became increasingly seen as lifestyle choices rather than practical ones, and campaigns focuses as much on creating an image as touting practical virtues of products. Thus, Apple’s famous “1984” ad, rather than touting the Macintosh computer’s ease of use, implied that buying one was tantamount to striking a blow against totalitarianism. Even Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign’s centerpiece was not lower taxes or a robust foreign policy but rather the vague but effective slogan “Morning in America,” though the other things got mentioned.

Whether this mode of advertising represented a true advance for consumers over traditional, dull snake-oil peddling is a question hinted at, but not really touched on, in this mostly celebratory film. Instead, director Doug Pray highlights and interviews the men and women who were the creative forces behind some of the landmark ad campaigns of the last 40-something years, including the self-aggrandizing George Lois, who coined the “I Want My MTV campaign,” Mary Wells, who put paint on jets, and Lee Clow, who helped birth the Apple ads and the Energizer bunny. While most advertising is dull and uninspiring, the work of these masters is, Pray tells us, worth celebrating. Whether or not this is true, this will be of worth to those interested in the creative process and its practitioners.

IMDB link

reviewed 11/10/09