People use art for commercials and marketing purposes

The argument

Artwork and artists are increasingly becoming a big part of the advertising process, and the reason is that advertising is a communication problem before it is anything else. Art for marketing purposes helps create awareness of and interest in a company, product or service, and it helps engage buyers to purchase or use what is offered. Businesses use visual art to communicate their products and offerings and to strengthen bonds with their target audience and their established customers — two tasks that both depend on getting something across to someone who was not seeking the message out. Visual material is suited to that task in a way text is not. Images are generally easier for people to remember, so an advertisement built around one survives past the moment of exposure, which is the minimum an advertisement has to do. Using visual sharing of information as a mode of communication also makes for a better connection with customers, since it works without requiring the attention that reading demands. The same skills apply beyond advertising proper: artists help design products and websites so that customers can easily navigate them and find the services they are looking for, which is communication of a practical kind rather than a persuasive one. The effect is not confined to how the message is received, either. Researchers found that people evaluate the exact same product substantially more positively when the advertisements include art and visuals — the product being identical in each case, so the difference in judgement is produced entirely by the art surrounding it. That is a striking demonstration of art doing the work the argument attributes to it, and it is why art significantly helps in marketing, and why marketing is a genuine instance of art's communicative purpose.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Visual art is not always beneficial in marketing. There are instances where delicate design distracts the consumers from the functionality of the product or introduces complexity and confusion. On the other hand, some products that look less attractive may look more superior in function in the eyes of consumers. For example, people think that Dyson vacuum cleaners are unattractive in design but attribute to them high functionality. Similarly, some websites with unattractive or basic design may have a functional advantage. It is not always the case that purposing art for marketing is useful and therefore, are may or may not serve marketing.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That art is used to communicate in advertising shows one use to which it is put, which is a claim about marketing rather than about art's purpose — the same reasoning would make the purpose of language selling. [Rejecting P2] The research finding is given without a source, and the counter's examples of plain design signalling function cut against it; in any case an effect on product evaluation establishes persuasion, which the sibling positions on expression and on function would each read differently.