Volume 1, Issue 1, 2011

Truth, Art, and Advertising: Considering the Creative Perspective of the Poet, the Painter, and the Advertising practitioner.  Lee Earle
 

Abstract
 

Creativity is at the heart of the advertising industry, and scholars have written extensively on this subject for the last twenty-five years. But, in reviewing this literature, one word is hardly mentioned, a word that award-winning advertising art directors and copywriters feel is essential to their work, a word as simple as truth. Therefore, this essay looks at establishing truth in advertising, not as an ethical consideration, but, rather, from the creative practitioner’s perspective in creating marketing communication. In order to understand this connection between truth, creativity, and communication, this discourse will have two parts. First, by drawing on the writing of art philosophers, there will be a better understanding of the relationship between truth and creativity. And second, by reviewing the writings of agency practitioners, this paper can establish how truth is fundamental to creating advertising; how these truths, while self-evident to many agency practitioners, can be seen by an outside observer in three distinct ways: as a truth about a product, a consumer, or a way of life.  Full Article