Tacky...

Not tasteful or fashionable; dowdy.

When I was in college, I had a great advertising class at Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern.  I wrote a paper comparing art and advertising.  I thought it was pretty good.  I can't remember the particulars, but I'm sure I argued there is artistic value to ads.  Admit it, some are downright beautiful.  Think print ads from Absolut.  Worthy of a gallery, right?

Will digital advertising destroy any sense of artistic value in advertising?  The reason I've wondered is obvious.  We're assaulted on a daily basis with thousands of flashy, ugly words and images.  True, some get our attention and sell stuff.  Sometimes a lot of stuff.  Reminds me of the days of direct mail.  But can digital ads be both beautiful and effective?

Josh Quittner is the editorial director at Flipboard.  If you're not familiar with Flipboard, you should be.  Then you'll be addicted to it like I am.  Flipboard is an iPad magazine that curates social media and magazine content and renders it into gorgeous magazine-like pages.  There's a great Advertising Age article today in which Quittner, who comes from the traditional magazine world, claims Flipboard is fighting a "war of good taste" with digital advertisers.  They often turn down ads because they're unappealing.  Really.  Quittner envisions smarter, better digital ads with content users want to consume as an inner-magazine with photos and video content of its own.  Thinking about a new car?  Why wouldn't you follow a fun link about the new Beetle?

An old 1788 definition of tacky has it as "sticky; an act of attaching temporarily."  Now bring that forward to our time, to websites and to our desire for visitors to linger, click through and stay for a while.  In that sense, we actually do want our digital ads to be tacky.  They just need to look nice, too.

--Dave

Comments

[Tina]

Glad you are back here :)