Creative advertising: Art or science?

We’ve seen them before, highly controversial and thought provoking. I remember a few years back when I was driving down the highway. I saw a billboard about the dangers of smoking and it showed a horrific picture of x-ray’d lungs in a microwave looking device and the lungs looking more like a pair of grilled steak.

Is this form of advertising art or science I wonder? You see, as an architect, I have always thought of advertising as a form of business, a hard science and nothing to do with art. But there are plenty of ads that display images for the purpose of education as opposed to the generation of corporate income. I spoke to a representative of an internet marketing company the other day and what they told me was that there is a growing trend of creative marketing where the purpose of an image is designed to capture attention and be thought provoking.

I can also relate to this trend as recently I had to design a building that represents “a ship sailing in the ocean” and it was supposed to convey a message of being dynamic and pioneering. I guess there is art in business after-all.