Art & Copy by Doug Pray

Just caught the new Doug Pray (Scratch, Hype, Infamy) documentary Art & Copy. It chronicles the rise of the advertising industry in the latter half of the 2oth century.He doesnt delve too far into the broader biology of advertising, but instead focuses on some of the stand out agencys from the last 50 years including Chiatt Day, Goodby & Silverstein and the legendary Jack Tinker Associates (which Mad Men is loosely based).

Pray's subjects are most times a pretty broad subject, and advertising is no exception. While it's interesting and inspiring to see the names and faces behind the slogans that have been burned into our subconcious as youth, some of the bravado and self importance proclaimed by some of the notables gets a bit tiresome. Sure, we might remember your ad campaign, and it might have been legendary, but ultimately it., like most other ads gets discarded into the waste basket of 'market clutter' that we're bombarded with nowadays.

While an interesting subject (especially to us in the business) it does cast a pretty wide net. He covers as much as he can in the hour and a half, but, you can't help but think that there's a bit more to this subject than what we're being presented with here. But maybe hat's another movie entirely. Recomended.:


"We're selling people what they wish their lives would be"