There’s always been something sexy and alluring about the advertising world, even if you’re nothing more than a Johnny-come-lately to the Mad Men bandwagon. There’s a certain magic in being able to be predict what will turn people on and grab the attention of the general populace. Think about it: We live in a society bombarded by advertising in our most public and private quarters. So, when it’s done poorly, we just ignore it. And when it’s done well, it can actually move us.

In the film Art & Copy, filmmaker Doug Pray (Surfwise, Hype!) highlights some of the biggest names in advertising in the last 50 years, using a series of interviews and anecdotes. Take for instance Lee Clow, the hippie surfer dude who heads up TBWA/Chiat/Day, the American division of a powerhouse international firm. His groundbreaking 1984 Superbowl commercial for the Macintosh computer is still considered one of the greatest product launches of all time. Piggybacking on the symbolic George Orwell novel 1984 and employing cinematic techniques never used before in North American commercial-making, Clow's ad featured one of the biggest novelties of the time: not a single mention or shot of the product in question. Clow and his team are also behind the iPod campaigns of the '90s and a slew of other high-profile spots.

Then there’s the foul-mouthed George Lois, a self-proclaimed fighting Greek from the Bronx who epitomizes the very essence of what we love about the renegade ad man persona. From 1962 to 1972, he was behind some of the most controversial Esquire magazine covers, pushing the envelope and societal mores in a way that we could only hope to do in our PC era. It's this combination of bravado and fearlessness that helped Lois transform Tommy Hilfiger from a fledgling new designer jockeying for position among Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, into one of the biggest names in fashion. The success was so sudden and the hype so great that Hilfiger is even quoted on film as saying the he was actually embarrassed by it. But you wouldn't expect less from Lois, a man who coined the “I Want My MTV” catchphrase, and thereby helped launch that ultimate advertisement: a television station made up of perpetually rotating commercials set to the youth beat.

Pray's film argues that advertising is so much more than spin-doctoring. Years from now, we might just see Terminator movie posters and fast food billboards revered as art in the same way that Toulouse-Lautrec’s ads for the Moulin Rouge are now packaged into coffee table books. Advertising is just another cultural artefact and millenniums from now, when archaeologists dig them up, they’ll draw conclusions on who we were as a people -- for better or worse. And, as lofty and frivolous as it may seem to us, remember: We all drink Diet Coke. We all eat at McDonalds. We all “Just Do it.”