When Advertising Becomes Art

Absolut-Art-Collection-Britto

Advertising can sneak up on you in the most unexpected ways.

Recently I visited the Minneapolis Institute of Art for the simple pleasure of discovering art. For hours, my family and I got lost in an exploration of well curated paintings, sculptures, and immersive rooms, such as a recreation of a reading room from Jane Austen’s time. On the third floor, tucked away in a corner near a Georgia O’Keeffe painting and a Frederic Remington sculpture, I noticed three oil paintings that captured a long-ago era of the western frontier: a bear pawing its way through an empty box discarded in the snow, a grizzled cowboy on horseback delivering mail to a makeshift mail box, and a bronco buster dressed in a bright red shirt, brown vest, and chaps trying to master a wild horse while spectators in cowboy hats cheer him on:

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A “Bear” Chance, by Philip R. Goodwin

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Rural Delivery, by N.C. Wyeth

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Bronco Buster, by N.C. Wyeth

Like good art so often does, these paintings engaged me by telling stories. They also advertised the Cream of Wheat brand. As it turns out, from 1902 to 1926, Cream of Wheat commissioned artists to create more than 400 original works of art for an advertising campaign centered on the theme, “Cream of Wheat: As American as Apple Pie.” The paintings, depicting scenes of Americana, appeared as full-page ads in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and Saturday Evening Post. Today, these paintings endure as works of art and advertising. Why are they effective advertising in addition to art?

The Paintings Are Engaging

Cream of Wheat commissioned highly regarded artists to create these images of frontier life. N.C. Wyeth, a renowned interpreter of the American West, painted Rural Delivery and Bronco Buster. Philip R. Goodwin, who painted A “Bear” Chance, had a reputation for painting wildlife scenes and illustrated Jack London’s Call of the Wild in 1903. The artists delivered memorable scenes that convey the loneliness of the prairie, a wild animal encountering the existence of humanity (through a discarded box), and a broncobuster fairly exploding off the canvas. These are works of art that stand alongside Remington and O’Keeffe.

The Branding Is Natural

The painters integrated the Cream of Wheat name organically into the art — a natural form of product placement. A bear paws through an empty Cream of Wheat box. The makeshift mailbox in Rural Delivery is fashioned out of a Cream of Wheat box, and the broncobuster bucks and twists in front of a grandstand wall covered with a Cream of Wheat ad, a natural element in any American sporting venue. These are not random product placements. The product is part of the story. Similarly, over the years, Absolut Vodka has emulated Cream of Wheat’s approach by commissioning artist Romero Britto to reinterpret the iconic Absolut Vodka bottle in his own colorful way:

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And Prada teamed with director Wes Anderson to present the short film Castello Cavalcanti. The 7-minute movie stars Jason Schwartzman as the racecar driver who discovers the joys of slowing down after being stranded in a small Italian town.

The Prada branding in Castello Cavalcanti occurs as a subtle product placement. When the storyline takes hold, you have to look closely to catch the Prada name appear on the back of the uniform worn by the driver.

Prada and Absolut Vodka are just two examples of many brands that have collaborated with artists either to create advertising outright or to do more subtle forms of content co-creation. The more successful partnerships focus on creating great content, period. When people are immersed in engaging content, they don’t care whether they’re watching an advertisement. An ad only becomes annoying when it feels irrelevant.

The Art of the Brand

It seems fitting that you can find the Cream of Wheat paintings not only in a museum but also on the Cream of Wheat website, which contains a representative sample of artwork from the campaign (along with little tidbits of trivia, such as the fact that Cream of Wheat’s advertising budget in 1902 was $10,000). Today Cream of Wheat tells its story through the benefits of healthy living. The Cream of Wheat blog urges site visitors to integrate Cream of Wheat into a healthy diet for kids and describes the advantages of adults pumping up their daily iron intake with Cream of Wheat. All of the blog tips are well and good. I expect that kind of information from Cream of Wheat. I did not expect Cream of Wheat to enrich my understanding of art.

What are your favorite examples of advertising as art?

 

GE Combines Content Marketing & Advertising with “Enhance Your Lighting”

GoldblumConventional wisdom says that content marketing needs to be useful to be effective. Creating utility builds credibility and separates content marketers from advertisers. Hence, Intelligensia Coffee offers Brew Guides to teach consumers how to brew the perfect cup of coffee, and Birchbox creates how-to videos with beauty tips, such as how to get beach waves for short hair. But publishing how-to information is not the only way to be useful. As the new GE advertising spoof “Enhance Your Lighting” demonstrates, a brand can be useful by entertaining its audience.

“Enhance Your Lighting” is brilliant content marketing. The two-minute short consists of a mock infotainment segment starring Jeff Goldblum. Portraying “Terry Quattro, famous person,” Goldblum delivers an over-the-top pitch for GE Link LED bulbs that pokes fun at our cultural obsession with celebrities and meaningless product endorsements. With a combination of smarminess and arrogance, Quattro extols the virtues of “really great lighting” in building his celebrity image (and in doing so makes a self-deprecating joke about Goldblum himself being 62 years in the land of youth). Then he pitches the cost-effective GE Link light bulb (which costs “less than what I tip the guy who tips people for me”).

The segment is also a clever work of Trojan horse advertising: Goldblum hooks you with his jokes and, voila, the next thing you know, you are watching an advertisement for the GE light bulb. You hear everything you would expect in an ad: product features (it is smart-home friendly), benefits, and price. Yep, just like an ad . . . and yet “Enhance Your Lighting” is also content marketing.

“Enhance Your Lighting” is also significant for two other reasons:

  • The video is an example of how copmpanies are engaging audiences with branded entertainment. For instance, in 2013, Prada created tremendous PR for its brand by teaming with director Wes Anderson to present the short film Castello Cavalcanti. The seven-minute movie stars Jason Schwartzman as the race-car driver who discovers the joys of slowing down after being stranded in a small Italian town. (The Prada branding in Castello Cavalcanti occurs as a subtle product placement. When the storyline takes hold, you have to look closely to catch the Prada name appear on the back of the uniform worn by the driver.) Branded entertainment has existed for quite some time. In the digital age, branded entertainment helps create engagement: seven minutes of anyone’s time on a digital platform is worth gold for a brand like Prada.

  • The segment also helps GE continue to change perceptions of its company from that of ever-present utility to a cool brand. GE has earned accolades for innovative forms of content marketing such as its Tumblr site, which incorporates GIFs and images to visualize the “changing worlds of science and technology.” For instance, the site uses dramatic, in-your-face images to help you appreciate the dramatic scale of industrial technology. With “Enhance Your Lighting,” GE shows us that a $146 billion corporate conglomerate can be funny.

“Enhance Your Lighting” is the latest collaboration between BBDO New York and GE. Other productions include spots such as the weird “Ideas Are Scary” and wistful “Childlike Imagination.” With “Enhance Your Lighting,” GE delivers on its “imagination at work” positioning. Indeed, it takes a lot of imagination to make a daring mock commercial work, and GE succeeds. What do you think of “Enhance Your Lighting”?

Prada and Kenzo: Brands as Entertainers

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Brands often think of content marketing as the art of being useful. Betty Crocker teaches us how to cook through the iconic Betty Crocker Cookbook. Verizon publishes useful ideas about apps through its Recapp blog. But content marketing can also be about entertainment, as demonstrated by two recently released short films from luxury fashion brands Prada and Kenzo. Brands can be film entertainers.

Castello Cavalcanti

In November 2013, Prada teamed with vaunted director Wes Anderson to present the short film Castello Cavalcanti. The 7-minute movie stars Jason Schwartzman as the race-car driver who discovers the joys of slowing down after being stranded in a small Italian town. The Prada branding in Castello Cavalcanti occurs as a subtle product placement. When the storyline takes hold, you have to look closely to catch the Prada name appear on the back of the uniform worn by the driver.

Castello Cavalcanti has been a PR boon for Prada, generating strong buzz in publications ranging from Creativity to Rolling Stone along with the more predictable fashion publications. The movie has bolstered Prada’s crossover reach across multiple industries in fashion’s orbit, including media/entertainment. The Hollywood Reporter said that the move “rivals Ron Howard’s Rush for best Formula 1 racing movie of 2013.” And, this is not the first time Prada has joined forces with a legendary director to produce a short film. In 2012, Prada presented A Therapy, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Helena Bonham Carter and Ben Kingsley.

Automobile Waltz

French fashion house Kenzo, founded by Kenzo Takada, has teamed with Hala Matar to present Automobile Waltz. The romantic short, released on Valentine’s Day week, is a more conceptual affair. The plot, which unfolds as a series of vignettes, centers on a young estranged couple rediscovering each other on different southern California locations in a stylish cherry red Mustang convertible. Amid the vignettes, a child drives off in a Continue reading