How do you turn an ad into a work of authorship?
In terms of craft authorship, television advertising is a discipline similar to film or television series. It differs, of course, in the subject matter and the purpose for which it is created, but the creator must go through a de facto comparable process. As a result, a television advertisement communicates its main message in the same way as any other work. And, logically, there are three main channels of communication.
- Content. In the environment of television advertising, this factor is absolutely essential, because the main objective of the spot is to convey filtered information to the end user, i.e. the viewer, who is also a potential consumer. The authors therefore place increased emphasis on the facts and additional information offered and the ways in which they are conveyed to the user. It is logical that far greater immersion is achieved by direct address, which can be implemented in the form of voice-over or with the help of a protagonist. However, individual choices should keep in mind the central claim towards which the presentation in all respects inevitably leads. And don't underestimate the power of the unspoken - the omission of some information can frame an ad as much as the explicitly stated. Every advertisement is therefore, from the author's point of view, a mix of factual, specific and subliminal perception.
- Word choice. While the content is the basic pitch, the choice of specific words achieves the overall message - the appropriate choice of words can create an interesting contrast, stand the entire presentation on its head, and exceed the audience's expectations. Successful advertising usually has a surprising punchline, which is why words are often the essential bridge between the ordinary and the extraordinary. If you don't underestimate them, you can use them perfectly to create the desired tonality and atmosphere. It's in every writer's interest to create a natural interest in the viewer's denouement, and in TV advertising it's no different. Claim is also in this respect the imaginary finale of the whole presentation, i.e. the whole process of putting words into sentences and their mutual continuity. Emotional memory plays a key role here, because quite naturally you will remember a spot that evoked intense feelings more than a generic commercial that you immediately after watching you will evaluate as dull and unworthy of inclusion in your brain storage.
- Format. Some ideas look good on paper, but the real result may not be nearly as amazing. After all, a great idea molded into an inimitable word sequence isn't enough to create a memorable original ad. The format elements are just as important, and there are many more, and your concern is to create a compact whole that the viewer will evaluate as a thoughtful composition, not a jumble of disparate elements. So what do you have to reconcile? Font, style, colour, visuals, illustrations used, music and sounds, transitions or gradients - all these factors matter. It pays to work on making your overall style a brand in itself. If you master working with all these elements and put your own stamp on them, you can consider yourself a true author. And it doesn't matter that it's a process that was originally used mainly by filmmakers. Times are changing and even great directors have something to say about advertising.
Famous directors of the film world in television advertising
As a result of television becoming an environment that in many ways competes with "highbrow" filmmaking, it is not surprising that the small screen has begun to attract many of the film world's creative luminaries. Although the relationship of many of them to this medium on the rise is rather ambivalent, many of them have left their mark on the history of television advertising. This is a very significant mark, which is also related to their status as auteurs. Auteur theory is a French film theory that was first popularised in the 1950s. At its centre is the distinctive personality of the director (usually), whose approach to the work is so personal and intense that he can be regarded without reservation as the real auteur, no matter how many crew members are involved in the whole process.
You can recognize Auteur by his inimitable handwriting. If you're intimately familiar with a particular filmmaker's work, you're not likely to mistake him for someone else. On the contrary, in subsequent works you will tend to recognize that a particular filmmaker was inspired by the techniques traditionally used by these greats. Auteurs have their own specific mise-en-scene, their favourite themes and narrative practices. If they contribute their little bit to the pool of advertising, it is not surprising that they are in a way a kind of cinematic micro-works that are very easy to remember, even if their contribution to a particular brand is quite debatable. But of course the name of the auteur is a sensation in itself, so it doesn't hurt to remember some of these works.
This year marks exactly 40 years since perhaps one of the most talked-about auteur commercials hit the TV screens. From today's perspective, it's also eerily prophetic, and it's actually not surprising that Steve Jobs' young tech company Apple Macintosh had already usurped this quality for itself by then. In theme and atmosphere it is of course a paraphrase of George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984. The involvement of the famous director Ridley Scott was therefore a masterstroke on Apple's part. The heroine of the advert fights against a totalitarian regime whose main goal is to unify the thinking of the whole society. The heroine, however, resists the brainwashing and smashes the television that broadcasts the message with a hammer. This is the moment when the slogan that Apple still uses today - 'Think Different' - first appears. The ad is very thematically true to Scott's style and has not lost its relevance after all these years. It also raises the question of whether Apple is really still giving us the opportunity to think differently enough with its products today.
Video: Apple MACINTOSH – 1984 (1984)
If you can't help feeling that you're not watching a TV commercial, but rather a short film, you're not far from the truth. This, of course, is also the result of the involvement of a famous director who normally has a habit of telling epic stories with elaborate plots. You'll probably get the same feeling if you watch Chanel's three-minute presentation for its 2004 No. 5 perfume, in which the company joined forces with Baz Luhrmann, the master of glittering decadence whom most viewers will probably remember as the director of the cult films Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby. That there's something rotten in the kingdom of Denmark is often the most obvious message in Luhrmann's work, despite the fact that on the surface the director's worlds are truly a magnificent display of exorbitant luxury. Chanel No. 5 has a similar reputation in pop culture, so as a subject it suited Luhrmann perfectly. But of course, his filmmaking style comes with a hefty price tag - which in this particular case was so high that we could be talking about possibly the most expensive commercial in history. The total price tag came to a staggering $33 million, $3 million of which went solely to fees for the director's court actress Nicole Kidman. Chanel, however, got his own Luhrmann burlesque in return.
Video: Chanel – Chanel No. 5 The Movie (2008)
In 2008, another very specific director, Wes Anderson, brought his dreamy worlds in pastel colours to television advertising. He is a typical example of a filmmaker whose work you either hate a priori or adore without further ado. His work is characterized by one-shot sequences in which a certain sequence of events unfolds, which build on each other or not, make sense or not, and are sometimes less, sometimes more absurd. He used this modus operandi for the advertising presentation of the Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank, in which he also involved one of the biggest Hollywood stars of today, Brad Pitt. The theme is based on a French film classic, to which Anderson often resorts in style and narrative, here specifically Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. Here, Pitt plays the role of a tourist in a French seaside town who is unsurprisingly assaulted by various sensations and is drawn into various situations. Does this make sense contextually? Often no. But stylistically? Without a shadow of a doubt.
Video: SoftBank – Commercial (2008)
When it comes to combining the concept of auteurism and television advertising, you'd be hard pressed to find a less likely candidate than the master of the eerie and disturbing bizarro, David Lynch. Yet this is an auteur who has done perhaps more commercials than anyone else during his career. The viewing experience is, however, a very contradictory one, as, like watching Twin Peaks, you often fail to understand what is happening on the TV screen in front of your eyes and why. One example - in 1997 Lynch made a commercial for Clear Blue Easy pregnancy tests. You could cut the thick atmosphere in a short spot, helped by the black and white design and the protagonist, who is full of anxiety about what she's going to get on the test. The numbers on her watch start to change into the words "YES" and "NO", all in proportion to her growing nervousness. That being said, if you want to feel uncomfortable about an artistic depiction of something relatively mundane, rely on David Lynch. As this ad confirms, if you're not feeling up to a feature film, even the half-minute format will do.
Video: Clear Blue Easy – Clear Blue Easy Ad (1997)
If you're not impressed by the sleekness and order of the creative styles of some of the directors mentioned above, you might be better served by someone who enjoys capturing raw aggressive energy and uncontrollable chaos. The right fit is Spike Jonze, who also has the extremely popular MTV prank-comedy series Jackass to his credit. This is another director for whom television advertising is no great stranger. Still, it's worth taking a look at the spot he directed for the clothing brand GAP, which gives you a pretty good idea of what such Jonze-esque chaos really looks like. Unsurprisingly, this ad may strike some viewers as almost reassuring - essentially capturing popular demolition experiences on camera.
Video: GAP – Pardon Our Dust (2005)
These are, of course, just a few prominent examples of how the concept of auteurism is making its way into the world of television advertising. Moreover, this trend is becoming more and more significant in proportion to the growing interest of specific directors in the television medium. It is therefore safe to assume that we will be supplied with similar masterpieces quite intensively in the future.
Authorship in times of AI
All of the above suggests that being the author of a TV ad is very much a creative process, which is not changed by the fact that the original motives are mainly commercial. Of course, TV advertising is not shunned by the latest trends - on the contrary, it is one of the areas that is shaped to some extent by them. That's why we are already seeing how advertising is changing at the dawn of AI technology. Back in 2021, GroupM published a study predicting that the dominant rise of AI would change TV advertising beyond recognition. GroupM's analysts drew on a broad definition of AI that includes technologies ranging from machine learning and computer simulations to neural networks and natural language processing and intelligence patterns. In doing so, they concluded that AI was already involved in some way in more than 45% of US advertising production at the time, and by 2032 that share is expected to grow to 90%, corresponding to roughly $1.3 trillion in market value.
To some extent, this puts the whole authoring theory on its head. In 2021, AI may still have played a role mainly to achieve greater efficiency, but since then it has increasingly been deployed directly into the creative process itself. It's being used both for creative optimization and to analyze audiences and related data, which then allows marketers to adjust their marketing strategies accordingly. However, until a few years ago, it was assumed that AI alone would not create advertising - the idea and theme still had to come from the mind of the human/author. But that's no longer 100% true today either.
"AI technologies excel in their ability to synthesize massive quanta of information, among which they can find complex interconnections and correlations. That's actually the core business when you're developing a creative strategy," GroupM's Kate Scott-Dawkins argued in 2021. She drew attention in particular to the phenomenon of generative AI, and now it turns out that those words were in many ways prophetic. "AI might spit out a hundred ideas and then it's time for humans to do what they're best at - filter and refine. The creative team picks the ten best ideas and lets the AI refine those further according to a more detailed brief. Then it picks its favourites again and specifies them further. And so on," she predicted. Needless to say, this is a typical mode of working with AI that, to date, many companies have adopted. So the role of authors is changing, but they are still needed, because without filtering, AI creations are still far from perfect. But can we still talk about authorship? Or are these the results of human-machine collaboration, and therefore technology should be given its due? These are the questions that are currently shaping the ethical debates of the 2020s.
But in other corners of the television industry, the influence of AI is already quite evident. This has been made possible, in particular, by the massive shift to so-called CTV, or Connected TV, which seeks to put the reins in the hands of the viewer in a corrected way, allowing them to become the imaginary author of their television experience. The fact that the consumer is no longer dependent on the programming departments of individual TV stations, as was the case in the era of linear broadcasting, strengthens his interest and enthusiasm. But this freedom is also to some extent an illusion because of AI. Of course, consumption is monitored at every moment, with AI evaluating viewing patterns and offering the individual exactly the content it thinks they might be interested in. So the answer to the question of whether the viewer is really shaping their own user experience may be more complex than it first appears.
Legal systems in developed countries often still do not cope with this transformation. For example, there are restrictions that certain products cannot be shown in film, television or advertising without the director's (i.e. author's) permission. However, artificial intelligence does not take these limits into account when creating, it does not turn to the director on its own to decide whether it can or cannot. We are therefore reaching a point where the real growth of AI is not so much hindered by technological impossibility as by heated ethical and legal debates. In marketing, this debate is particularly schizophrenic. The latest technology effectively drives down costs, which is actually one of the main goals of marketing; on the other hand, the industry giants, who already have access to a wealth of data manually, benefit the most.
In fact, this competitive advantage has given rise to a whole new business sector. Companies such as Google and Meta allow smaller businesses to access their data for a fee, for which it is a reservoir of valuable information for their marketing operations. "I believe that in the long run it will improve the position of especially those larger advertisers who view the media market more holistically than Google or Facebook," Kate Scott-Dawkins hoped two years ago. Today, we are already seeing that prediction materialise. But where this will leave authors - and author advertising in general - will be shaped by society-wide demand, which is currently excited by the possibilities of AI. However, it cannot be ruled out that it will also at some point reach the point of "too much is too much" and classic authorship will once again become a sought-after and valued marketing asset.
