When you hear the words marketing, you think of facebook ads, SMS, hoardings and of course an inbox full of emails from brands. More often than not, marketing materials are deemed to be promotional, spammy and just a bunch of perishable salesy material meant to sell something or the other.

But what if I told you that sometimes marketing itself can be a work of art? It’s not exactly a revolutionary idea and if provoked, everyone can think back of an ad or a banner or an image they thought was exceptionally aesthetically pleasing and arty!

A few years ago, a viral post that was doing the rounds had an image that was a digital painting that hid 40 classic Indian ads from the 90s. Sure enough, the post took off soon and had the netizens jogging their memories and trying to guess as many ads as they could find. Sure enough, ads of today can be art of tomorrow!

You’ve of course seen the vintage print ads of iconic brands like Cambell’s soup and Coke from the 60’s and 70’s used as retro art in the modern home decor design.



Sometimes, it’s not so much the material, but the aesthetic of a marketing material that’s good enough to be classified as art.

For example, look at this beautiful email designed by Hustler Marketing, an email marketing agency. One is compelled to keep looking and coming back at this email just for the artistic value, a holy grail for a brand!



Talking of video, Apple’s ads have always told stories, spoken to important issues and impacted people beyond the norms of conventional selling.

Why, this home decor blog, even talks of using product packaging and brand ads as wall art on a budget!

Why’s marketing art?

The end goal of art is to visually delight, to evoke feelings, and to add soul to a physical space. Advertising similarly purports to do the same, just with an end goal selling the product, much like art itself.

An artist uses the medium of a canvas and colours or digital tools like Photoshop to create art. Similarly, some of the best marketing comes from hours of conceptualization, brainstorming and execution by a team of people including the best of graphic designers, and sometimes even created on traditional mediums like canvas and paints, like this iconic ad. Art like the times also

changes form, shape and platforms. While conventional art is usually synonymous with canvas and paints, art really can be so much more, and who’s to say whether art is used to promote or sell a product, rather than itself.

Author Bio: Monica Bansal
Monica is a digital marketer with 12 years of experience working with big tech like Google and Ola and ecommerce companies. She currently heads marketing at a retention marketing agency. She's also an avid dog lover, a trained yoga instructor, backpacker and home decor blogger.