Henar´s Blog

The image "Commercial War" by Chinese artist WANG Qingsong focuses on the power of ads and the misconceptions that ads can create. He presents this fight for advertising as a war between enemies, a struggle over financial power and business gain.

There´s a big struggle between companies to position their ad in the most optimal placement in public places. All kinds of slogans and images bombard us every day. The agencies with more power and influence usually get the best spaces, and spend huge ammounts of money "renting" the best places. In fact, sometimes they spend more money in the "space" than on the actual billboard advertisements.
Nowadays, everything is advertised. If a product is not, then it seems it doesn´t exist.

In his photo, old ads come down as new ones occupy their lost space on the huge wall. It´s definitely an interesting photo, which makes me think about the the power ads have over our daily life. We don´t really notice anymore, but we see an amazing ammount of different ads every single day, on TV, a bus-stop, magazines, internet. These words and images exert so much power on our mind and eye...

Which ones do we remember at the end of the day? Which are the best ones? I would say, the ones that catch my eye are usually the ones with a simple and original message and a clean and simple design. I love ads which make me smile when looking at them, and think "I wish I had designed that!"