“It is a truism that, in media, everyone knows they are being sold something all the time. It is exactly because of this that we become blind to the subtle seductions of contemporary commercial culture—and Michael Serazio is here to open our eyes.” —Mark Deuze, author of Media Life and Media Work “Michael Serazio has produced an extremely important and engaging book: well researched and highly readable, it provides a detailed and compelling account of the mechanisms of consumer governance at work in the digital age. It deserves a wide readership among scholars and students alike.” —Liz Moor, Goldsmiths, University of London Amidst the profound upheavals in technology, economics, and culture that mark the contemporary moment, marketing strategies have multiplied, as brand messages creep ever deeper into our private lives. In Your Ad Here, an engaging and timely new book, Michael Serazio investigates the rise of “guerrilla marketing” as a way of understanding increasingly covert and interactive flows of commercial persuasion. Digging through a decade of trade press coverage and interviewing dozens of agency CEOs, brand managers, and creative directors, Serazio illuminates a diverse and fascinating set of campaign examples: from the America’s Army video game to Pabst Blue Ribbon’s “hipster hijack,” from buzz agent bloggers and tweeters to The Dark Knight’s “Why So Serious?” social labyrinth. Blending rigorous analysis with eye-opening reporting and lively prose, Your Ad Here reveals the changing ways that commercial culture is produced today. Serazio goes behind-the-scenes with symbolic creators to appreciate the professional logic informing their work, while giving readers a glimpse into this new breed of “hidden persuaders” optimized for 21st-century media content, social patterns, and digital platforms. Ultimately, this new form of marketing adds up to a subtle, sophisticated orchestration of consumer conduct and heralds a world of advertising that pretends to have nothing to sell. Michael Serazio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Fairfield University. An award-winning former journalist, he continues to write about popular culture, advertising, and new media for The Atlantic, among other publications. In the Postmillennial Pop series
In recent decades, authenticity has become an American obsession. It animates thirty years' worth of reality TV programming and fuels the explosive virality of one hot social media app after another. It characterizes Donald Trump's willful disregard for political correctness (and proofreading) and inspires multinational corporations to stake activist claims in ways that few "woke" brands ever dared before. It buttresses a multibillion-dollar influencer industry of everyday folks shilling their friends with #spon-con and burnishes the street cred of rock stars and rappers alike. But, ironically, authenticity's not actually real: it's as fabricated as it is ubiquitous. In The Authenticity Industries, journalist and scholar Michael Serazio combines eye-opening reporting and lively prose to take readers behind the scenes with those who make "reality"—and the ways it tries to influence us. Drawing upon dozens of rare interviews with campaign consultants, advertising executives, tech company leadership, and entertainment industry gatekeepers, the book slyly investigates the professionals and practices that make people, products, and platforms seem "authentic" in today's media, culture, and politics. The result is a spotlight on the power of authenticity in today's media-saturated world and the strategies to satisfy this widespread yearning. In theory, authenticity might represent the central moral framework of our time: allaying anxieties about self and society, culture and commerce, and technology and humanity. It infects and informs our ideals of celebrity, aesthetics, privacy, nostalgia, and populism. And Serazio reveals how these pretenses are crafted, backstage, for audiences, consumers, and voters.
2013 Book of the Year, Visual Communication Division, National Communication Association “It is a truism that, in media, everyone knows they are being sold something all the time. It is exactly because of this that we become blind to the subtle seductions of contemporary commercial culture—and Michael Serazio is here to open our eyes.” —Mark Deuze, author of Media Life and Media Work “Michael Serazio has produced an extremely important and engaging book: well researched and highly readable, it provides a detailed and compelling account of the mechanisms of consumer governance at work in the digital age. It deserves a wide readership among scholars and students alike.” —Liz Moor, Goldsmiths, University of London Amidst the profound upheavals in technology, economics, and culture that mark the contemporary moment, marketing strategies have multiplied, as brand messages creep ever deeper into our private lives. In Your Ad Here, an engaging and timely new book, Michael Serazio investigates the rise of “guerrilla marketing” as a way of understanding increasingly covert and interactive flows of commercial persuasion. Digging through a decade of trade press coverage and interviewing dozens of agency CEOs, brand managers, and creative directors, Serazio illuminates a diverse and fascinating set of campaign examples: from the America’s Army video game to Pabst Blue Ribbon’s “hipster hijack,” from buzz agent bloggers and tweeters to The Dark Knight’s “Why So Serious?” social labyrinth. Blending rigorous analysis with eye-opening reporting and lively prose, Your Ad Here reveals the changing ways that commercial culture is produced today. Serazio goes behind-the-scenes with symbolic creators to appreciate the professional logic informing their work, while giving readers a glimpse into this new breed of “hidden persuaders” optimized for 21st-century media content, social patterns, and digital platforms. Ultimately, this new form of marketing adds up to a subtle, sophisticated orchestration of consumer conduct and heralds a world of advertising that pretends to have nothing to sell. Michael Serazio is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Fairfield University. An award-winning former journalist, he continues to write about popular culture, advertising, and new media for The Atlantic, among other publications. In the Postmillennial Pop series
In recent decades, authenticity has become an American obsession. It animates thirty years' worth of reality TV programming and fuels the explosive virality of one hot social media app after another. It characterizes Donald Trump's willful disregard for political correctness (and proofreading) and inspires multinational corporations to stake activist claims in ways that few "woke" brands ever dared before. It buttresses a multibillion-dollar influencer industry of everyday folks shilling their friends with #spon-con and burnishes the street cred of rock stars and rappers alike. But, ironically, authenticity's not actually real: it's as fabricated as it is ubiquitous. In The Authenticity Industries, journalist and scholar Michael Serazio combines eye-opening reporting and lively prose to take readers behind the scenes with those who make "reality"—and the ways it tries to influence us. Drawing upon dozens of rare interviews with campaign consultants, advertising executives, tech company leadership, and entertainment industry gatekeepers, the book slyly investigates the professionals and practices that make people, products, and platforms seem "authentic" in today's media, culture, and politics. The result is a spotlight on the power of authenticity in today's media-saturated world and the strategies to satisfy this widespread yearning. In theory, authenticity might represent the central moral framework of our time: allaying anxieties about self and society, culture and commerce, and technology and humanity. It infects and informs our ideals of celebrity, aesthetics, privacy, nostalgia, and populism. And Serazio reveals how these pretenses are crafted, backstage, for audiences, consumers, and voters.
A provocative, must-read investigation that both appreciates the importance of—and punctures the hype around—big-time contemporary American athletics In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality—impervious to DVR, evoking ancient religious rites—makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier—from hot take journalism formats to the creeping infestation of advertising to social media celebrity schemes. More importantly, sports are sold as an oasis of community to a nation deeply divided: They are escapist, apolitical, the only tie that binds. In fact, precisely because they appear allegedly “above politics,” sports are able to smuggle potent messages about inequality, patriotism, labor, and race to massive audiences. And as the wider culture works through shifting gender roles and masculine power, those anxieties are also found in the experiences of female sports journalists, athletes, and fans, and through the coverage of violence by and against male bodies. Sports, rather than being the one thing everyone can agree on, perfectly encapsulate the roiling tensions of modern American life. Michael Serazio maps and critiques the cultural production of today’s lucrative, ubiquitous sports landscape. Through dozens of in-depth interviews with leaders in sports media and journalism, as well as in the business and marketing of sports, The Power of Sports goes behind the scenes and tells a story of technological disruption, commercial greed, economic disparity, military hawkishness, and ideals of manhood. In the end, despite what our myths of escapism suggest, Serazio holds up a mirror to sports and reveals the lived realities of the nation staring back at us.
Communication and Sport: Surveying the Field provides students with an understanding of sports media, rhetoric, culture, and organizations through an examination of a wide range of topics. Authors Andrew C. Billings and Michael L. Butterworth address everything from youth to amateur to professional sports through varied lenses, including mythology, community, and identity. A comprehensive focus on communication scholarship gives attention to the ways that sports produce, maintain, or resist cultural attitudes about race, gender, sexuality, class, and politics. The Fourth Edition includes new interviews with prominent figures in the field and new discussions on current events like the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Winner of a Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award Information Technology is supposed to enable business performance and innovation, improve service levels, manage change, and maintain quality and stability, all while steadily reducing operating costs. Yet when an enterprise begins a Lean transformation, too often the IT department is either left out or viewed as an obstacle. What is to be done? Winner of a 2011 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award, this book shares practical tips, examples, and case studies to help you establish a culture of continuous improvement to deliver IT operational excellence and business value to your organization. Praise for: ...will have a permanent place in my bookshelf. —Gene Kim, Chief Technology Officer, Tripwire, Inc. ... provides an unprecedented look at the role that Lean IT will play in making this revolutionary shift and the critical steps for sustained success. —Steve Castellanos, Lean Enterprise Director, Nike, Inc. Twenty years from now the firms which dominate their industries will have fully embraced Lean strategies throughout their IT organizations. —Scott W. Ambler, Chief Methodologist for Agile and Lean, IBM Rational ... a great survival manual for those needing nimble and adaptive systems. —Dr. David Labby, MD, PhD, Medical Director and Director of Clinical Support and Innovation, CareOregon ... makes a major contribution in an often-ignored but much-needed area. —John Bicheno, Program Director MS in Lean Operations, Cardiff University ... a comprehensive view into the world of Lean IT, a must read! —Dave Wilson, Quality Management, Oregon Health & Science University
As a non-dogmatic religion, paganism is a spiritualty that is variously interpreted in terms of nature worship, this-worldliness, the valuing of the physical, and multiple understandings of the sacred. Like most religions, pagan spirituality also entertains the experience of mystical ecstasy as an intense state of psycho-spiritual consciousness that radically diverges from ordinary waking awareness. This volume addresses two fundamental questions, namely: “how do the world’s religions understand the mystical and its pursuit?”, and “how and why does paganism offer something different?” Proverbially, the mystical quest is an ultimate human endeavour. The re-emergence of pagan thought in contemporary times challenges the obsolete and unlocks both innovation and available forms of transpersonal emancipation.
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