Television has become so saturated with commercials that it is difficult at times to tell the different images apart, much less remember or care about them. But, on closer look, television commercials can tell us a great deal about the interplay of market forces, contemporary culture, and corporate politics. This book views contemporary ad culture as an ever-accelerating war of meaning. The authors show how corporate symbols or signs vie for attention-span and market share by appropriating and quickly abandoning diverse elements of culture to differentiate products that may be in themselves virtually indistinguishable. The resulting "sign wars" are both a cause and a consequence of a media culture that is cynical and jaded, but striving for authenticity. Including more than 100 illustrations and numerous examples from recent campaigns, this book provides a critical review of the culture of advertising. It exposes the contradictions that stem from turning culture into a commodity, and illuminates the impact of television commercials on the way we see and understand the world around us.
Every era has its dominant representations. Just as landscape painters of previous centuries captured and expressed new modes of perceiving history, corporate advertisers now devise the imagined landscapes of global capitalism. Advertising functions as an omnipresent discursive form, publicly assembling and circulating the predominant tropes of our era. This project is based on the premise that corporate advertising’s landscapes help shape our epoch’s imaginative conceptualizations of the spatial relations, the temporal flows, and the cultural geographies that correspond to the emergence of a high-tech global economy. In Landscapes of Capital Robert Goldman and Steven Papson examine how corporate television ads from the last fifteen years have organized predominant images, tropes and narrative representations of a world in transition. The volume takes particular interest in how relations of space, time, speed, capital, technology and globalization are narratively represented in advertising. Goldman and Papson skillfully demonstrate how Capital represents itself at a moment of critical historical transition Ð the passage into high-tech globalization and the crises associated with it. They argue that corporate ads can be read to reveal how Capital represents itself and the world that is being wrought Ð in terms of the signifiers it prefers and the stories it tells.
This book is one of the first to take an in-depth look at how an advertising image works. It situates the Nike swoosh logo in terms of political economy, sociology, culture and semiotics. Nike Culture describes and deconstructs the themes and structures of Nike's advertising, outlines the contradictions between image and practice, and explores the logic of the sign economy. In addition, by focusing on issues revolving around representations of race, class and gender, the desire for both community and recognition, and the construction of sport as a spiritual enterprise, the book offers insights into the cultural contradictions embedded in sports culture.
Now available in a significantly updated third edition to address new issues such as the Internet and globalization, Social Communication in Advertising remains the most comprehensive historical study of advertising and its function within contemporary society. It traces advertising's influence within three key social domains: the new commodities industry, popular culture, and the mass media that manages the constellation of images that unifies all three. The third edition includes: * discussion of new technologies and issues, from the Internet to globalization * updated and expanded examples and illustrations * revisions throughout to address recent developments in advertising scholarship and the latest trends in advertising practice
Written by experienced academics used to teaching the subject this book will help students and researchers find their way within the diverse field of sport studies. Clear, well researched entries explain the key concepts in the debates surrounding the social significance and social dynamics of sport. Each entry provides: • Clear Definitions • Relevant Examples • Up-to-date Suggestions for Further Reading • Informative Cross-Referencing Valuable in its parts and indispensable as a whole this book will provide a stimulating, practical guide to the relationship between sport and society. Stephen Wagg is Professor of Sport and Society at Leeds Metropolitan University. Carlton Brick lectures in the School of Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland in Paisley. Belinda Wheaton is a Senior Research Fellow in the Chelsea School, University of Brighton. Jayne Caudwell is a Senior Lecturer in the Chelsea School, University of Brighton.
In this, the first-ever photographic history of Peabody, authors Stephen J. Schier and Kenneth C. Turino document vividly the long and illustrious history of the nineteenth-century's "Leather City." Once the largest producer of leather in the world, Peabody is a proud city with a rich photographic legacy. Over two hundred vintage images of Peabody's past appear in this volume, representing the period from the 1870s through the 1960s. The people, places, and institutions of Peabody are illustrated in photographs gathered from both public and private sources, including the vast and outstanding holdings of the Peabody Historical Society.
The rise of retro has led many to conclude that it represents the end of marketing, that it is indicative of inertia, ossification and the waning of creativity. Marketing — The Retro Revolution explains why the opposite is the case, demonstrating that retro-orientation is a harbinger of change and a revolution in marketing thinking. In his engaging and lively style, Stephen Brown shows that the implications of today's retro revolution are much more profound than the existing literature suggests. He argues that just as retro-marketing practitioners are looking to the past for inspiration, so too students, consultants and academics should seek to do likewise.
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