Advertising Through the Humanities, by Park Woong-hyun and Kang Chang-rae

In South Korea in the late 2000s and early 2010s, books about the humanities filled bookstore shelves. Among them were Lee Ji-sung’s Reading to Lead and Michael Sandel’s Justice.

There was a growing sense that a country shaped by decades of industrial growth could give more attention to questions about how people live together. Sandel’s lectures on justice reached a nationwide audience through the public broadcaster EBS.

Park Woong-hyun and Kang Chang-rae’s Advertising Through the Humanities

Advertising Through the Humanities arrived at a moment when a title invoking the humanities already had a ready audience.

For advertising creative Park Woong-hyun, however, the interest went deeper than the title. The book records an approach to his work that had been taking shape before the wider enthusiasm.

A conversation about making advertisements

The book grew out of Kang Chang-rae’s interviews with Park. Reading it can feel like sitting in on the conversation.

They begin by talking about what advertising does and what Park looks for in a good advertisement.

What makes a good advertisement?

Park’s suggestion that an advertisement reveals how a company sees its society and times stayed with me. So did his comparison of a good advertisement to a good poem.

An advertisement is a way of getting a message across. Take a broad enough view of literature, and some advertising belongs in the conversation. Reading good writing can teach an advertiser something about how much a few words can do.

Creativity and the humanities

Making an advertisement is an act of creation. Much of the conversation asks what the creative part of the work actually involves.

The two describe creativity as a way of seeing through to what matters, close to insight or intuition. Both see reading widely as a way to develop that ability.

Reading in that spirit means asking why a writer chose to put something a certain way and what those choices reveal about the work.

The starting point is the question “why.” Keep asking it and you may find that the thing you first noticed was a clue to something deeper. That habit of inquiry is where the humanities and creative work meet.

Ordinary life offers the same opportunity. A familiar object or a routine repeated every day can look different once you stop to ask why it is the way it is.

Why had I given advertising so little thought?

Before reading the book, I had rarely put the humanities, creativity, and advertising together. I had gone years without watching much television and had never seen any of the spots featured in the book.

The conversation made me look at advertising with fresh eyes. A line of copy, an image, or a short film can put the habits of attention encouraged by the humanities to work.

Why context matters

The idea that a good advertisement depends on context made more sense after reading the whole book. It takes some understanding of what people are looking for and which words will land at a particular moment.

That means paying attention to the mood of a society and how it got there. The better you understand the events and cultural habits people are responding to, the more precisely you can speak to them.

A short television spot can have only fifteen seconds to make something stick. The words need to feel right to the people hearing them, and that takes a sharp sense of what they already know and feel.

Campaigns featured in the book

The book discusses several campaigns Park worked on. Here are some of the examples worth looking up.

• A Guide to Modern Life
• Naver’s text-only spot
• Daum’s user-generated content campaign
• Beanpole’s bicycle spot
• Samsung’s campaign about the drive to come first
• KTF’s campaign on age, dress codes, and challenging discrimination
• Pulmuone’s campaign about using non-GM soybeans
• e-Pyeonhansesang’s campaign about building with care
• Maxim Cappuccino’s foam campaign
• SK Broadband’s “See the Unseen”
• Think different (Think – IBM, Think different – Mac)
• …

Book details

Advertising Through the Humanities

Authors

Park Woong-hyun and Kang Chang-rae

Published

August 27, 2009

ISBN13

9788992525633

View the book on YES24

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