Advertising is Poetry

Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it’s a paint-spattered canvas, its unwillingness to be defined or labeled has people stating poetry to be a lost art. While the modern era continues to become more technologically advanced it has lead to an increase in the world of advertising. Exciting, audacious, phrases and images that scream at you to BUY BUY BUY! Their critical and persuasive use of language and images leads us to believe that perhaps poetry and advertising share similar characteristics. Therefore the question is raised ‘Is advertising poetry?’ The poem ‘Furnhill’ and the advertisement ‘Embrace Life’ will be used as examples to compare these too distinctive art forms and the similarities they may possess.

The Advertisement entitled Embrace Life was part of a new campaign from Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. It tackles the issue on the use and non-use of seat belts in a very different way. Avoiding the use of blood, gore or shock tactics, Embrace Life is provoking an emotional response in all viewers. The commercial doesn’t depict people being thrown out of cars by force of impact or being hideously injured. Rather it shows a man in his living room who appears to be going through the motions of driving. He clearly has a loving wife and adorable daughter. Suddenly it becomes obvious that he is about to be in a accident of some kind. His family act as his seatbelt, keeping him from being thrown forward.

The ad demonstrates that one can both protect one’s self from serious injury and also protect loved ones from having to endure the pain of losing someone close. The audiences’ attention is captured by the slow-motion sequence to create intensity and anticipation of what will happen next. By drawing the viewer into an authentic emotional connection between a man and his family, it gave a ‘it could happen to you’ feeling. It links the creators and viewers, as they are both likely to have a family who are put in this situation everyday. The key element that created such a strong emotional connection with a global audience was the use of no dialogue and visual storytelling techniques combined with a haunting and beautiful score. The emotional impact was so powerful that traffic police officers at a preview were moved to tears when it was first shown to an audience

After watching the advertisement Embrace Life, the intense emotions that stirred within me were alarming. The pure shock and reality of ‘WOW that could happen to me or my family’ was startling. When someone shares an experience or feeling that we can relate to we often support it because we think of ourselves and the emotions that tie us to that particular situation. This ad is very successful as it gets the viewers personally involved by using a normal family seated within a living room as the setting. These emotions are very powerful as they go to the very core of someone and create a personal impact on them. It forces people to realise the danger of driving without a seatbelt.

Dylan Thomas’s poem entitled Fernhill, written in 1945 captures the realization of life and mortality that appears after an unexpected experience occurs. “Fernhill” represents the passage of one man’s life from boyhood to adulthood. Thomas uses expressive language and imagery to depict a tale of growing up.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

The night above the dingle starry,

Time let me hail and climb

Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

Trail with daisies and barley

Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

In the sun that is young once only,

Time let me play and be

Golden in the mercy of his means,

And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and

cold,

And the sabbath rang slowly

In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was

air

And playing, lovely and watery

And fire green as grass.

And nightly under the simple stars

As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the

nightjars

Flying with the ricks, and the horses

Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

The sky gathered again

And the sun grew round that very day.

So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking

warm

Out of the whinnying green stable

On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

In the sun born over and over,

I ran my heedless ways,

My wishes raced through the house high hay

And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

Before the children green and golden

Follow him out of grace.

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would

take me

Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

In the moon that is always rising,

Nor that riding to sleep

I should hear him fly with the high fields

And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Colour imagery is used throughout the poem to add life and character to the people and abstract ideas. Green is used to describe happiness experienced as a child. He explains his young days as “happy as the grass was green” and directly refers himself to being “green and carefree”. As a young boy he was vibrant and full of life. The poem takes a dramatic turn when he describes “fire as green as grass” The simile fire is used to show that something destructive has happened therefore altering his life. The concept of time, which is personified, claiming that it was time that allowed him to enjoy activities as a child saying “Golden...Time let me play”. The poem continues tracing the memories of what it was like to live in those surroundings “Happy as the heart was long, I ran my heedless ways”. Again he emphasizes his carefree attitude.

In the final paragraph, he demonstrates what he has since learned about being “green,” “easy,” “heedless”; he has discovered that all that freedom was somewhat delusive. He did not realize that at the time or else he just did not pay attention that while time was allowing him this idyllic space to romp and be carefree, that same product of time was running out. As he has realized this as an adult, he still retains the beautiful memory that even though “Time held me green and dying,” still because of youth, he can claim that “I sang in my chains like the sea.”

Dylan Thomas’s, ‘Fernhill’ creates a drama, portraying his youth and the farm where he spent it. His colourful language and metaphors such as ‘windfall light’, and similes such as ‘fire as green as grass’ describes the setting in such a way that it communicates true feeling without becoming sentimental in its execution. He draws upon the timelessness experienced as a child and the feeling of not having enough time as an adult. This gives intensity to the poem a sense of time ticking away. Dylan Thomas glories in life, in the wonder, beauty and mystery of living each day.

After reading Dylan Thomas’s, ‘Fernhill’ I was in awe of the descriptive language that he used to convey his interpretation of time running out. It has a personal emotional impact on people. Not having enough time is a huge stress point in today’s society especially within our own families that we may miss the most important years – parents watching their children grow up. The vivid use of colour and the farm as Thomas’s childhood memory provide a metaphor for many people who may experience similar emotions as to those portrayed in the poem – timelessness, the experience of being a child, responsibility as an adult and birth and death.

Sharp slogans and rhyming jingles are the centerpieces of advertising language, and they are made with the essential elements of poetry—compression and memorable patterns of repetition. Most poets would say, however, that advertising uses poetic language to serve the practical goals of commerce, while “real poetry” is made in search of a kind of truth that is nothing like a sale. However when looking at the emotional impact that both the poem ‘Fernhill’ and the advertisement ‘Embrace Life’ have on people it becomes clear that perhaps poetry and advertising are a closer art form than expected. The strong use of touching images, expressive language, and haunting music has a personal impact on people that experience them. Not only do they share the similarity in such strong images but also the underlying story behind them. They both depict the image of life and death, the consequences, and the realization of how it impacts upon the both the individual and the family. Both poetry and advertising carefully select words for conciseness and clarity. They consider a word’s and image’s emotive qualities, it’s musical value, and its aesthetic influence. Another example of ‘Advertising is poetry’ is the Advertisement Volkswagen Night Drive Golf. This advertisement seamlessly incorporates poetry using an exert from Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ combined with the video techniques of advertising.

Poems and advertisements, through innovation in both word choice and form, seemingly create significance from thin air.

My experience of poetry has led me to reconsider some of the popular ideas or perceptions I may have had about it. In advertising, and in business generally, the idea of creativity is associated with innovation or originality - to present products, ideas or services to the audience in a new way. Poems do generally strive to seem fresh and express things in a new light. But innovation while important isn’t the only factor in creating a great poem. One of the most definable characteristics of a poem is the choice of the language. Poets are relentlessly critical in the way they dole out words to a page - getting every detail right, getting the structure and rhythm and balance right, the shades and want of a better word, the artistry? I’m sure that this is just as true for ads as it is for poems. Yet we routinely devalue all this as a mere craft skill, and celebrate instead the originality of the a creative idea. I don’t think, however that great ads are just ideas dressed up to go out, any more than poems are. This thinking is based on a desire to reduce something complex and organic to a simple essence. There is no real definition to say what poetry is and if advertisements can be classified as poems because defining poems or advertisements is like grasping at the wind – once you catch it, it’s no longer wind.

#poetry #advertising