With the image-heavy volume »All-American Ads of the 2000s«, Taschen takes a comprehensive look at a decade that fundamentally changed advertising culture: The 2000s marked the turning point from the analog to the digital age. As a visual record of a changing era, the 620-page illustrated book shows how advertising had to face up to new demands—in the midst of a phase of profound social, technological and media upheaval.
In the foreword to the book »All-American Ads of the 2000s«, Steven Heller, co-founder and co-chair of the MFA design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York, describes the 2000s as the period in which the creative decline of the advertising industry began. According to Heller, this period represents a last gasp before advertising as we knew it morphed into something »different« across media. Form, content, distribution and perception were slowly but permanently changed by the first big wave of social media and the harbingers of artificial intelligence. Tastes and habits became more fickle, advertisers and their agencies were forced to focus on untested new markets—it was not the ideal time to take creative risks.Suddenly, it was no longer just about individual ad visuals for product XYZ, but about consistent branding, product-focused campaigns, and a clearly defined corporate identity—in short: it was about the big idea.
While traditional print and TV advertising became increasingly less important, brands experimented with new visual codes, digital formats and interactive storytelling. An outstanding example of this new, holistic creativity is the triumph of the iPod and iPhone—both commercially and in terms of design. According to Heller, the TBWA\Chiat\Day campaign for Apple is one of the most progressive milestones in the advertising world of the 2000s.
In a decade in which the world went online, campaigns suddenly had to work across platforms, react flexibly and at the same time appear personal. A look at the book shows how difficult this often proved to be—in the truest sense of the word. One could cautiously say that there was often still a lot of room for improvement. The great leap in technology required a new approach to advertising—whereby the term »advertising« in its classic meaning definitely falls short, especially as the scope of the measures took on an ever-increasing scope, not least because of the triumph of social media, which pushed brands to a new level of interaction with their buyers. The demands became more individual, more fragmented, more intimate, in which the break with the old advertising world also became noticeable: The »big idea« suddenly had to be broken down into many small narratives.
Consumers increasingly demanded personalized experiences and positive ethics. Brands such as Whole Foods understood this zeitgeist early on and presented themselves as responsible, transparent alternatives to conventional food retailers. In the fashion industry, labels such as Calvin Klein responded to the increasingly visual internet age with a new design language: provocative aesthetics became a trademark, while the classic slogan faded into the background.
The advertising world of the noughties in America was characterized by a tense relationship: the desire for consistency on the one hand and the need for radical renewal on the other. »All-American Ads of the 2000s« documents this transitional period with a nostalgic view, but also shows how much the industry was in upheaval—between iconic individual campaigns and the incipient loss of collective advertising aesthetics. [DM]
All-American Ads of the 2000s
Jim Heimann
Hardcover, 19.6 x 25.5 cm, 2.08 kg, 640 pages
taschen.com
