Every advert wants something

Every piece of work made for an audience exists to change something. A film, a song, a painted wall, and also an advert on the side of a bus crossing Nasr City. It wants someone to feel, think or do something they would not have otherwise.

The question worth asking is what it wants.

Some work wants nothing much. It fills the space, borrows the look of whatever was popular last year, and repeats the same tired pictures of who buys what: the mother in the kitchen, the man holding the car keys. It amuses for a second and leaves everything exactly as it was, which is a small harm of its own, because keeping things the same is a choice too.

Some work wants something only for its maker. It tricks, it pressures, it borrows a feeling it has no right to. Now and then it works for a while. When it does spread, it leaves everyone a little more suspicious of the next message.

And some work is generous. It wants the viewer to notice something they had stopped noticing, about their street, their habits, their assumptions. It may not see things the way you do, and that is precisely what makes it useful. It sets up a small tension and trusts you to resolve it.

It hardly matters what the people behind it meant when they began. The finished work carries an intent of its own, and viewers feel it within seconds.

Advertising is usually treated as the opposite of art. It is not. It is art whose intent happens to be obvious, and the only open question is whether that intent is generous. Whoever makes it gets to choose.