Creativity and Advertising by Andrew McStay

Author:Andrew McStay [McStay, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies
ISBN: 9781135045302
Google: EH1wqIcus18C
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

Heterogeneity in the market

Unsurprisingly, Bataille is scathing of consumerism remarking that, ‘The advantages of civilization are offset by the way men profit from them: men today profit in order to become the most degraded beings that have ever existed’ (2008 [1936]: 179). However, the critique of the marketplace is not evident in all heterogeneous accounts. Bakhtin (1984 [1965]) in his account of the Renaissance humanist François Rabelais, the Middle Ages, and folk culture, locates heterology as being intimately connected with the market. While this is a different conception of the market from ours today ruled by global companies and abstract financial structures (and breakdowns), there is some applicability to creativity and advertising. This is predicated on Bakhtin’s discussion of carnival and folk humour that is not entirely lost on advertising today. For Bakhtin this folk culture was made up of ritual spectacles, such as shows at the marketplace and carnival pageants; comedy, that parodied oral and written Latin; and, the use of obscene language or what Bakhtin designates ‘genres of billingsgate’ (1984 [1965]: 5).

This irreverence finds echoes today in popular culture and some of its advertising, for example with the use of comedian Peter Kay by TBWA as the award-winning ‘No nonsense bloke’ for John Smiths beer advertising. A wide-ranging campaign, it sees Kay representing Britain in a diving competition, where he does a dive-bomb into the pool, and another where he tells his daughter that she should be worried about burglars and not monsters. Catchphrases to have caught on in the UK as a result of these include ‘’ave it’ and ‘top bombing’. The idea of carnival is that a second world is created outside of the worlds of officialdom, politics and ecclesiastical affairs in which all mediaeval people participated. Being outside of religious affairs, carnival is strongly playful, festive, spectacular and sensuous. It is the same too for Bataille who characterises it as unrestrained consumption, laughter, absence of work and violation of sacred laws, and which temporarily goes against dominant orders. For Bataille laughter is a key dimension and represents ‘the whole movement of the festival in a nutshell’ (2007 [1976]: 90).

For Bakhtin, it is based on the culture of the marketplace that, ‘to a certain extent became one of its components’ (1984 [1965]: 7). The popular culture of the marketplace in Bakhtin’s account existed outside of the official sphere and acted as a space for carnival and festivity. While few advertisements themselves enter territories of transgression, carnival and excess, unsurprisingly those that do stand out. Interestingly too, they tend to win awards for creativity. This is a highly playful conception of life (and the marketplace), where carnival exists somewhere between art and life. It is predicated on participation and while we might see creative advertising as the creation of spectacles to be consumed by audiences, popular culture is not just something seen, but far more importantly it is something sensuously lived in (by those who work in advertising agencies as well as those who do not). It

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