This critical introductory text explores the role of advertising in contemporary culture and its connections to larger economic, social, and political forces. Written in an engaging and accessible style and incorporating a wide range of examples from around the world, the chapters introduce the key concepts, methods, and debates needed to analyse and understand advertising.
From an investigation of advertising’s crucial function in media economics and our wider capitalist system to a consideration of the people who both make and watch advertising, this insightful text enables students to: make sense of advertising’s powerful influence as both an economic force and an artistic form; assess the various claims of these two perspectives on advertising; and understand how they challenge and complicate one another. This revised second edition includes a new chapter on branding and promotional culture, and substantially updated content on topics like digital and online advertising, surveillance and empowerment, as well as brand new topics like self-branding/influencers and using technology to evade advertising.
Equipping students with the skills needed to partake in this lively discourse, the text is an invaluable resource for studying advertising critically. It is essential reading for students of advertising, media studies and communication studies.
Author(s): Nicholas Holm
Edition: 2
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 236
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface to the Second Edition
Part I: The foundations of studying advertising
Chapter 1: Introduction: Why study advertising?
Why study advertising?
Reason one: advertising is everywhere
Reason two: advertising is weird
Reason three: advertising is where the money is
Reason four: advertising is beautiful, inspiring, and entertaining
Reason five: advertising is political
What this book is about
The foundations of studying advertising
Advertising and capitalism
Art, agency, and other complications
What this book is not about
References
Chapter 2: The history of advertising: Contexts, transformations, and continuity
Four moments in advertising history
The first moment: origins, industrialisation, and development
The first advertising?
Industrialisation and mass society
The beginning of consumer society
The second moment: professionalisation, consolidation, and redemption
The problem with patent medicine
The search for respectability
The third moment: hidden persuaders and Creative Revolutionaries
The fear of advertising
“Think Small” and the Creative Revolution
The fourth moment: digital advertising, algorithms, and social media
The first online advertising
Algorithmic advertising
Social media advertising
The changing nature of advertising
References
Chapter 3: Analysing advertisements: Form, semiotics, and ideology
Advertising contexts, codes, and conventions
The importance of medium
Analysing static advertisements
Analysing video advertisements
Analysing advertising in video games
Semiotic analysis of advertising
Denotative signs
Connotative meanings
Anchorage and meaning
Mythology and ideology
Mythological analysis
Ideological analysis
Conducting an ideological analysis
Careful reading
References
Part II: Advertising and capitalism
Chapter 4: Advertising, economics, and ideology
What is capitalism?
Three definitions of capitalism
What is political economy?
Marxism and capitalism
What is ideology?
Advertising and ideology
Advertising as ideological state apparatus
Capitalist ideology in practice
Selling capitalist realism
Capitalist realism in advertising
Capitalist Realism in practice
From economics to ideology to advertising
References
Chapter 5: Commodities and commodity fetishism
What is a commodity?
The commodity in capitalism
Use value and exchange value
Equivalence of commodities
The secret lives of commodities
Commodity fetishism and the relations of consumption
The concept of fetishism
The secret powers of commodities
The magic system
The reality of magic
The power of Dove
The life cycle of the commodity
References
Chapter 6: The audience commodity, media fragmentation, and data surveillance
The audience as commodity
“Advertising turns into terror”
Watching advertising can be hard work
Imagining the audience commodity
Maximising profit
The mass audience
Eliminating waste
Breaking down the audience
Fragmenting society
Personalisation, surveillance, and online labour
From suitor to hunter
Dataveillance and the new audience commodity
New forms of digital audience labour
References
Chapter 7: Blurred lines: Branding, promotion, and influence(rs)
From brands to commodity-signs
From cattle to corporations
Brands and commodity-signs
Branding and the production of difference
Social media self-branding and influencers
Social media and online identity
The rise of influencers
Promotional society and collapsing boundaries
Native advertising, branded content and blurred lines
Promotional culture and the society of the spectacle
References
Part III: Agency, art, and other complications
Chapter 8: Advertising agencies: Organisation, agency, and internal conflict
Advertising’s agency and advertising agencies
The functions of an advertising agency
Media buying and planning
Account management
Creatives
Agencies in a changing industry
The people who make advertisements
Advertising professionals in their own words
Advertising professionals as a (worrying) demographic
Ambiguity and antagonism in the agency
Agency as form from chaos
References
Chapter 9: Advertising as art: From creativity to critique
Advertising and “creativity”
(Not) defining creativity
The problems with creativity
Advertising and art
What is art?
Advertising inside the institutions of art
Advertising as art
Advertising against the market
Advertising aesthetics
Advertising changing the world
The future of advertising as art
References
Chapter 10: Active advertising audiences: Identity, engagement, and resistance
The active advertising audience
The Encoding/Decoding model
The uses and gratifications model
Identities and communities
Advertising and identity formation
Constructing consumer communities
Active audiences online
Free labour vs. “Brand Protection”
Cambridge Analytica and the power of online ads
Avoiding and resisting advertising
The advertising arm’s race
Activist resistance
References
Chapter 11: The politics of advertising: Capitalism, art, agency, and dialectics
Some may buy it, I’m not paying the price
The politics of capitalism
The politics of agency and art
The dialectic of advertising
“Wokevertising”
What does Advertising do?
References
Index
