Art is power
01 October, 2025 Reading: 2:19 mins
By Sarah
From Banksy’s subversive murals to Black Panther salutes to graffiti on the Berlin Wall, art has always been a powerful tool for protest and change. It grabs attention, cuts through noise, and makes us stop, think, and feel. The best art doesn’t just speak – it demands a response.
Great artists can distil complex ideas into a few bold strokes, and those images spread like wildfire.
Why? Because we connect with them on a visceral level. They stir something deep inside us. Ai Weiwei’s "Remembering," which helped expose government cover-ups after thousands of children died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, is an immensely powerful piece – and the government harassment his works provoked eventually led to him moving here to Cambridge. 2017’s Fearless Girl caused quite a stir when she was commissioned by a bank and placed in front of Wall Street’s famous bull statue. In Israel, where public displays of the Palestinian flag are regularly banned, people use images of cut watermelon to symbolise resistance (red, black, white and green are the flag’s colours) – a quiet act of defiance so potent that people have reportedly been arrested for wearing or carrying one.
And of course, a salute to my fellow Bristolian, Banksy, whose fearless creativity and subversive humour is found everywhere from suburban streets to the walls of Palestine and the auction houses of Sotheby’s. His work is a reminder that great visuals transcend platforms—they provoke, they endure, and they can drive real change: just look at the rection to his recent artwork being removed from the wall of the Royal Courts of Justice in London!
The lesson here is simple
If you want to reach and move people you need to be bold and memorable. In marketing, this means on-message, impactful creative. We are in the motivation business. Your buyers are busy and distracted – if you don’t capture their attention quickly, you lose them. No fact sheet or corporate jargon can match the power of a striking image and a few well-crafted words.
Some people may wonder about the value of ‘creatives’ but I don’t – because at KISS, this work is the cornerstone of what we call the ‘multiplier effect.’ One unforgettable image. One sharp video. When executed fearlessly, these can be re-used for years, building your brand by cutting through the clutter to stick in your audience’s mind. There’s no doubt that the advent of AI is changing the way we work, but this work still demands human creative ingenuity. Your buyer’s brain and the way it works hasn’t changed, and it probably never will.
Give us a clear brief, and we’ll deliver creative that doesn’t just communicate – it moves people.