Tag Communications

Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had lately start with just 140 characters. The other day, my friend @YoungImpact (Stephen) had referenced in a tweet the phrase, “toilet as canvas” in relation to a venture capitalist start up event in Washington DC. Just to show you what type of rabbit warren the tangents in my head resemble, his tweet immediately reminded me of Marcel Duchamp and his pivotal work, Fountain.

Subsequently, we had a brief conversation about venture capitalists, art and Hugh Jackman …and you’re about to read the final result of that exchange.

When Fountain was submitted by Marcel Duchamp to the Salon in 1917 under the pseudonym of R. Mutt, it was not displayed.  The board members, for whatever reason, did not see fit to include the work among “real art.” Whether or not a urinal with a signature is art is academic for the purposes of this blogpost. More important is the upending and redefining of what art is/was.

Simply by elevating any “found object” or “readymade” to the status of fine art by decreeing it to be so, Duchamp had inverted the traditional patron-artist relationship. Together with Picasso, who also redefined what art could be and for whom, Duchamp had put the power in the hands of the artist. The artist’s vision was the commodity.

Applied to the construct of an advertising agency: why do individuals, organizations and businesses hire us? Is it because we’re snappy dressers? We’re fun at parties? Yes to both, but again, academic for the sake of discussion.

Advertising and marketing firms are in the business of alchemy. We take data from market research, mix it with ink and celluloid, bytes and keystrokes and transform it into a message. The people who work at firms like ours are artists. We can kern letters just so. We can take your message and marry it with technology to render it memorable.

Our vision is our value. Our audience perspective is where it all pays off.