Advertising, once seen as 'the official art of capitalist society', is an increasingly commonplace component of a characteristically promotional culture. Iain MacRury's Advertising offers the means to explore and evaluate this transition with an introduction to advertising for the contemporary reader.
Advertising provides a clear and easy guide to a changing cultural and commercial genre. It explores how advertising can be studied as a cultural industry, and as a sign system, and how adverts and the reception of adverts can be considered, drawing on approaches from literary criticism,structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and ethnography.
Advertising, once seen as 'the official, art of capitalist society', is an increasingly commonplace component of a characteristicaLLy promotional, culture, lain MacRury's Advertising offers the means to expl.ore and evatuate this transition with an introduction to advertising for the contemporary reader.
Advertising provides a dear and easy guide to a changing cuttural and commercial genre. It explores how advertising can be studied as a cuLturaL industry and as a sign system, and how adverts and the reception of adverts can be considered, drawing on approaches from titerary criticism, structuratism, post-structuratism, psychoana!.ysis and ethnography.
Written in an accessibLe and interesting styte, Advertising is the ideal introductory book for students of media,communication and journaLism.
Lain MacRury is Principal Lecturer in Culturat Studies and Creative Industries in the Schoot of Social Sciences,Media and Cuttural Studies at the University of East London. He has co-authored The Dynamics of Advertising (2000) and co-edited Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption (1996).
List of illustrations
Series editors preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Advertising and common sense
Dilemmas 23
Public opinion 27
Popular culture 35
The coherence of advertising 40
Advertising agencies: mediation and the creative
process
Selling things, selling ideas 44
Brand ideas 49
The advertising agency 51
Advertising: provoking engagement 52
The advertising agency and the client 56
Tranformation: from product to advertisement 60
Marketing, media and communication
Above the line and below the line 76
Consumers direct 80
Through the line 82
Advertising, sponsorship and PR 86
Above the line: media and advertising 89
Critical responses to advertising and other marketing strategies 107
Analysing and historicising advertising
This is and is not a commodity: definitions 111
Abstract things 112
Advertising as de-commodiflcation 115
Commodity-signs I 18
Revisiting academic perspectives 119
Culture and creativity 122
Media and advertising: critical perspectives 124
Advertising: genres and history 127
Advertising and culture
Advertising, language and culture /60
Representing a cultural world: advertising
well-being 163
Representing people and culture 166
Advertising and representation: examples, exemplars
and ideals 172
Advertising and a culture of signs 181
Signs and textualities
Engaging environments of signs 186
Advertising and semiotics 187
Modelling advertising signs 191
Advertising semiosis 195
Levels of the sign: denotation and connotation 199
Advertising syntaxes and paradigms and framing:organising signs 200
Framing: advertising layout 209
Textual analysis 211
New forms and intimacies
Rhetorical advertising 217
Changing advertising 218
Disarming advertisements 219
Heroic to comic 220
Real stories: pseudo Divine to All Too Human 223
Ad-makers and renewal 224
Speeding up 224
Genrequake 226
Genre boundaries: life, death and bodies 229
Humour 231
Gesture and movement 234
Asocial movements 235
Audiences and psychology
Entertainment and popular culture 242
Reading intertextuality: dispersal and integration 243
Changing audiences changing cultures 246
Creative deconstruction: ad readers and postmodernism 247
Inside outside: dynamic and static audiences 253
Advertising and psychoanalysis 254
Advertising: articulating and resolving conflict 257
Conclusion: making your mind up 271
Notes
Bibliography
Index
