… The Poet Behind Coke’s Super Bowl Spot Wants All of Us to Bring More Art to Advertising – Adweek. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As I told Dave in an email, I have no beef against advertising. Both Dave and I are admirers of L.E. Sissman's poetry, and Sissman worked in advertising. Dana Gioia, one of our premier poets, revived the fortunes of Jello when he worked for General Foods. Ad copy done in verse sounds like a promising idea. But I don't want my Coke served with "inclusiveness, identity, individuality," and I don't like my poetry soiled with politics.
As I told Dave in an email, I have no beef against advertising. Both Dave and I are admirers of L.E. Sissman's poetry, and Sissman worked in advertising. Dana Gioia, one of our premier poets, revived the fortunes of Jello when he worked for General Foods. Ad copy done in verse sounds like a promising idea. But I don't want my Coke served with "inclusiveness, identity, individuality," and I don't like my poetry soiled with politics.
In an interview L. E. Sissman was asked “Were there similarities in writing ads and writing verse?" and he said:
ReplyDelete“You bet! Copywriting is evanescent and poetry is, the poet hopes like hell, perduring, but there are a lot of similarities otherwise. Copywriting teaches you to say exactly what you mean in the fewest possible words the first time around and under pressure of time. This is a valuable lesson for the poet. The only other main difference I can think of is that in advertising you’re externalizing by using your own tone of voice as the carrier or radio wave to reach the ear of the prospect with the facts about the product; in poetry you use the same tone of voice to internalize or express your own reaction to character and event to the ear of the reader.”
For more from this interview see:
`Mustering the Best Words'
Thanks for that, Dave.
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