What is Pop Art Advertising? Pop Art Movement Overview

In the world of marketing, we’ve witnessed an evolution from traditional flyer marketing to digital advertisements. The same scenario applies to advertising as well. Advertising imagery have transformed significantly, from black-and-white typographic newspaper ads to vibrant, moving video ads. While brands invest substantial resources, time, and energy into advertising, it’s essential to understand different advertising concepts and designs.

In this article, we will explore:

• Pop Art Advertising: Pop art is a popular movement in the art industry, and it has also found its roots in advertising. We’ll examine how it became so influential in various ad campaigns.
• Characteristics of Pop Artwork: Pop art began in the late 1960s. You may wonder why it still holds such a strong influence over current trends. Let’s analyze its characteristics.
• Best Practices: We’ll review some best practices for running a pop art ad campaign that can make your brand stand out in today’s market.
• Popular Brand Campaigns That Utilized Pop Art: We’ll look at three examples of brands that incorporated pop art in their advertising campaigns.
• Personal Opinion: Here are some tips to help your brand leverage the pop art movement effectively.

The truth is that people are still drawn to consumerism, and advertisements continue to work if executed correctly. Pop art advertising is all about adding vibrant colors, modern art, playful icons, and making creativity pop, which can attract new customers to your brand. In this article, I’ve covered everything from the pop art movement to how you, as a brand, can maximize pop art advertising to attract new customers with unique and refreshing campaigns.

What is Pop Art Advertising?

Pop art advertising is inspired by the  pop art movement, which emerged in the United States and the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. It was a reaction to abstract expressionism, which dominated the art world. Pop advertisement leverages the power of pop culture and the emotional connection people have to it. I think you’ve seen multiple vibrant variations of Marilyn Monroe in many ads, and yes, you’re looking at pop art advertising.

Now, in advertising, American pop art is utilized to make the products and the message more visually interesting for the viewers. It’s a collaboration of mundane objects, products, vibrant colors, and patterns, along with typographic visualization. This high art is also infused with humor and irony and expresses excitement and celebration, connecting people worldwide. Pop art is one movement that was brought to the mainstream through advertising, and it’s seen in different visual mediums such as interior design, environmental design, street graffiti art, and more.

Pop art is used to display magazine and comic book advertisements, but there’s a sudden surge in ad visuals making their way into billboards, flyers, websites, and online ads. Other than advertisements, we also see brands utilizing pop art for creating packaging designs, logos, and other branding visuals.

Now, let’s look at how advertising has influenced pop art.

This form of mass media advertisement was mainly due to people’s never-ending obsession with famous people, mass culture, celebrities, and anything trending. After the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a high increase in consumerism, and pop art can be considered a playful marketing concept that can influence consumers.

One of the first pop art pieces that marketers noticed was done by Richard Hamilton in his “Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?” comic strip in 1956. Here, he took different magazine cutouts, everyday objects visuals and displayed them in a new composition to convey a different context of optimism. Hamilton is considered a British pop art icon, and in this way, pop art has expanded to different aspects such as fashion, music, magazines, television, and more. Another one of the first few marketing ads was done by Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup cans.

Pop Art Movement into Marketing

Just a brief about how pop art became a movement by American artists in the 1960s and ’50s. The post-war economic boom promoted consumerism, where consumer goods were mass-produced, so this movement came as an act against consumerism. U

At first glance, like many others, when I saw pop art ad examples, I felt it was too over the top, expressing way too much in a simple composition. But once you understand it, you can see why it has become so popular over the years. Where the style that captures Britain and America’s fame and celebrity culture using saturated colors, everyday images, and commonplace objects like Coca Cola bottles.

The growth of pop art can be mainly attributed to two factors. One is the influence of American popular culture on the art world and the rise of commercial and advertising art at that time. Yes, as you guessed, pop art is often considered American style because it was born out of American pop artists who utilize images and motifs from pop culture within America instead of using fine art like landscapes or portraits. Although pop art may borrow ideas and techniques from other representational art, it does not overlay with it.

Artists like Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol initially wanted to try out something new and figure out how to make their paintings look more realistic and connected to the viewers. They started painting famous pop icons like Marilyn and uses vivid colors to paint her face. For example, if you see Elvis Presley holding up his middle finger, you can identify it as pop art. Due to the surge in consumerism, people wanted things to make them feel better about themselves. Pop art makes these products and brands feel appealing by using cute characters and bright colors. This way, the product also stays memorable when using bold visuals and unique fonts.

Marketers use pop art advertisements due to their unconventional approach, which is different from what people normally see in advertisements. The ordinary audience can connect with it because of the pop culture references, colors, humor, and reality. This way, it engages and stimulates consumers and pushes them to know more about the brand. It also uses quirky compositions, patterns, shapes, and vivid lines that evoke emotions through such complex designs. You can use this to make anything stand out, be it a website with illustrations, product packaging, UI/UX, outdoor advertising, and simply everything.

Now, let’s understand the characteristics of pop artwork.

Characteristics of Pop Artwork

How can you distinguish pop artwork from the rest of retro designs that are also somewhat similar in the same category? Here are the characteristics of pop art and the recognizable styles of modern art to distinguish it.

Using images of celebrities: Artwork uses stylized illustrations of pop culture icons, relevant personalities, and popular trends.

Exaggerated visuals: You can spot vivid and neon colors, with prominent pink, yellow, blues, and reds always present.

Unconventional patterns: These kinds of artwork use dots, lines, and zigzags as much as they want to create unconventional patterns, shapes, and images to make the background or rest of the artwork stand out from the icon.

Collages: This way, the artwork is expressed with multiple cutouts that make an overall cohesive layout, including asymmetrical collages and magazine papers to make it unique and attractive.

Satire, irony, and humor: If you find hidden Easter eggs, irony, and satire in these artworks that poke fun at current events and people in a lighthearted way, then it’s definitely pop artwork.

Pop Art Advertisement Best Practices

Are you wondering how to incorporate pop art techniques into your next big advertisement? If you’ve seen the music video for “APT,” a song by Rose and Bruno Mars you can see that they’ve effectively used pop art for editing their video, making it more attractive than the song itself. Here are some practices a pop artist practices that you can consider when using pop art techniques to promote your brand and content.

Make Use of Popular Culture

This art revolves around popular figures, famous celebrities, and pop culture elements, so make sure you leverage these elements in your visuals. Picture Hollywood, movies, television stars, sitcoms, and even social media. It’s not stealing, but you can borrow design palettes, iconography, typography, and other design styles from these pop culture elements to make it have a familiar theme for the audience.

Promote Simplicity

Even when you’re trying to include big-shot celebrities in your pop art ads, try to keep it simple so that ordinary viewers can connect with it. One way to do that is by making sure you highlight ordinary objects and transform them into next-level content.

Focus on Materialism and Consumerism

One of the central themes of this artwork is consumerism and materialism, so make sure you focus on these themes while depicting your ad. Make it flashy and popular among the masses. Use materialistic themes by featuring popular products with minimal text.

Vivid Colors and Patterns

Pop art should pop out in between mundane works. So, to speak, you have to make use of optimistic color palettes with bright yellow, red, and blues— all primary colors—and even neons to improve the look. Besides colors, you should also utilize compositions of lines and patterns, including dotted arrangements to make shapes and figures that attract viewers with a simple glance.

Cutouts and Collages

Make use of repeated images from magazines, everyday newspapers, or normal illustrations. A big part of pop art is how it creates chaos within a medium, but at the same time, it attracts the audience due to the duplicated overlapping images that speak volumes about how pop art is basically made to stand out.

Use Humor and Satire

While repeating elements, you can also try to add humor and satire by converting original-context pictures to new ones by adding new elements. Like I said before, Elvis Presley seen with a middle finger is satire and humor. You can try to incorporate such images by enlarging or editing old images. You should also add minimal copy or typographic elements to make the pictures stand out.

Use Minimal Copy

As part of the pop art technique, the text should be used sparingly and only when necessary. Too much text can overwhelm the viewers, so just to get across the key message to the viewers, try to shorten the copy. There are ways in which pop art uses a variety of typefaces as well. When there are no images involved, the possibilities of creating pop art are endless.

Top 3 Popular Pop Art Ad Campaigns

Here are three ad campaigns you can check out for inspiration, where these top brands have leveraged the power of consumerism and pop art advertisement to create curiosity among their loyal customers.

1. Adidas’ “Here to Create” Campaign

Here in this iconic campaign from Adidas titled “Here to Create,” you can see the whole video is about flashy colors, patterns, pop iconography, and a great illustration of football legend and GOAT himself, Lionel Messi, in a pop art version of himself. This advertisement is catchy, and it doesn’t make the audience feel like skipping. The video is edited in a pop art style that makes everyone feel like watching it in a loop.

2. Coca-Cola

The iconic beverage company always utilizes pop art-inspired visuals in almost all of its marketing campaigns. You can see they illustrate Coca-Cola bottles in a contemporary art style, making it still relevant and appealing to younger audiences throughout these years. They always make use of their primary brand color, red, to make it pop out, and other elements such as Ben-Day dots and a small copy to make it feel authentic and more creative, catering to consumerist minds.

3. Spotify

Spotify uses pop art vividly in its marketing approach by mixing it with its UI/UX design. The app also has a yearly wrapped feature/campaign that showcases individual users’ listening history in a colorful way. This wrapped campaign, every year, becomes highly interactive and playful, packed with in-jokes and tongue-in-cheek references, also mixing in pop culture references. This user interaction marketing approach has given Spotify a significant name in the market, making it pop out and stand uniquely compared to its competitors like Apple Music, who uses a minimalistic approach.

Personal Opinion

I feel like pop art advertisements often reflect our consumer culture in a fun way. They can be both entertaining and thought-provoking, making us question our relationship with brands. There’s something nostalgic about pop art that resonates with me. It reminds me of a simpler time, and I think that’s why it works so well in advertising. I love how pop art ads use bright colors and bold designs. They really grab your attention and make the product stand out in a crowded market. However, it should be made in a creative and unique way, or else it would feel like the original art form lost its meaning. Pop art has been effectively used in marketing since the 1950s, so it should not lose its meaning or authenticity. If you want help with creating pop art advertisement ideas, connect with Graphically Unlimited Graphic Design today. We have professional in-house designers who can help your brand’s marketing stand out from the rest.

Conclusion

Most brands consider pop art techniques underrated in the marketing and advertising industry. But top brands have already leveraged this art style to attract their audience and maintain brand image and loyalty. Pop art works because it’s appealing to every age group; it’s fun and memorable when used to promote products and services. There’s also a high chance that it can become a powerful strategy for businesses and brands in the coming years, as pop art can grab the audience’s attention, especially as the normal attention span is decreasing day by day due to the over-explosion of content an individual sees each day. I hope this article helped you understand the idea behind the pop art movement and how to easily leverage pop art into your marketing efforts.

FAQs

1. What is pop art advertising?

Pop art advertising is a marketing style inspired by the pop art movement, which blends vibrant colors, bold patterns, and iconic imagery from pop culture, like celebrities and everyday objects. It’s all about grabbing attention with fun, eye-catching visuals that make products feel exciting and relatable.

2. What is art pop examples?

Art pop often features familiar consumer symbols and iconic cultural figures. A classic example is Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962), where he uses everyday objects like soup cans to elevate them into art. Another well-known example is James Rosenquist’s Marilyn Monroe, I, which portrays the famous actress in a bold, stylized way.