24 research outputs found
Rethinking advertising as paratextual communication
No full textBook synopsis: Providing new insights into the textual and paratextual character of brands and advertising, this innovative book showcases an extensive selection of vivid and topical case examples that assist the practical understanding of advertising paratexts.
Chris Hackley and Rungpaka Amy Hackley draw on many examples of creative advertisements to illustrate the key features of paratextual advertising and all types of brand communication, practice, strategy and research. The book examines the idea of an advertisement as something that is read and interpreted as a text by an audience, drawing on some of the pioneering research literature that introduced literary forms of analysis into business, management and related fields of scholarship. The authors utilise ideas from literary theory to examine how advertising can be understood, as well as consider semiotic and anthropological perspectives on advertising and digital media.
Aiming to change the way advertising is understood by students, scholars, and by media and management professionals, this book will be a valuable resource for those with an interest in advertising and promotion, marketing, communication, business management, and branding
How the hungry ghost mythology reconciles materialism and spirituality in Thai death rituals
No full textPurpose – This paper aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Asian consumer culture by exploring how hungry ghost death ritual in the Buddhist world reconciles spiritual asceticism and materialism. Design/methodology/approach – This is an interpretive study that incorporates elements of visual semiotics, ethnography, and qualitative data analysis. The native-speaking first author interviewed local ritual leaders of the Pee Ta Khon festival in Dansai, Thailand,while both authors witnessed examples of other Buddhist death rituals in Thailand and visited temples and markets selling death ritual paraphernalia. Data include translated semi-structured interview transcripts, field notes, photographs and videos, the personal introspection of the first author, and also news articles and website information. Findings – The paper reveals how hungry ghost death ritual resolves cultural contradictions by connecting materialism and spirituality through consumption practices of carnival celebration with feasting, music, drinking, costumes, and spirit offerings of symbols of material wealth such as paper money and branded goods. Research implications/limitations - Further research in the form of full ethnographic studies of the same and other rituals would add additional detail and depth to the understanding of ritual in Asian consumer culture. Originality/value – The study extends existing qualitative consumer research into death ritual into a new area, and sheds light on the way managers must locate Asian marketing initiatives within distinctively local contexts
Advertising and promotion
No full textBook synopsis: Using a wide range of visual examples and case studies, Advertising and Promotion 4th edition introduces the reader to the key concepts, methods and issues and illustrates these with first-hand examples gathered from leading international advertising agencies and brand campaigns. Told from the perspective of the agency, it gives a fun and creative insider view helping the reader to think beyond the client position and understand what it might be like working within an ad agency.
Drawing not only from management and marketing research but also from other disciplines such as cultural/media studies and sociology, the authors offer a rounded and critical perspective on the subject to those looking to understand advertising as social phenomenon in addition to its business function and purpose.
The new edition has in-depth coverage of online advertising and the role of social media in advertising including metrics and analytics and includes advertising examples by global brands including Adidas, Benetton, BMW, Dove and DeBeers. “Snapshots” bring in aspects of cross-cultural advertising such as Barbie in China.
The book is complemented by a companion website featuring a range of tools and resources for lecturers and students, including PowerPoint slides, SAGE journal articles, links to further online resources and author Videos.
The textbook is also supported by an author-written blog which keeps readers updated on interesting, topical examples relating to advertising and promotion from current affairs and popular culture: www.hackleyadvertisingandpromotion.blogspot.com.
Suitable for Advertising, Marketing and Communications modules at undergraduate or postgraduate level
Advertising at the threshold:Paratextual promotion in the era of media convergence
No full textIn the media convergence era, brands are embracing hybrid forms of advertising communication such as branded content, product placement and sponsored TV ‘pods’, brand blogs, share-able video, programmatic advertising, ‘native’ advertising and more, as alternatives to, and extensions of, traditional mass media advertising campaigns. In this paper we draw on Genette’s (2010) theory of transtextuality to re-frame this phenomenon from a paratextual purview. We suggest that the analogy of the paratext articulates the iterative, ambiguous, participative, and intertextual character of much contemporary brand communication. We describe extended examples of paratextual advertising and promotion that illustrate the fluid and mutually contingent relation of advertising text to paratext, and we outline an analytical framework for future research and practice
The iconicity of celebrity and the spiritual impulse
No full textCelebrity has a powerful material presence in contemporary consumer culture but its surface aesthetic resonates with the promise of deeper meanings. This Marketplace Icon contribution speculates on the iconicity of celebrity from a spiritual perspective. The social value or authenticity of contemporary celebrity, and the social processes through which it emerges, are matters of debate amongst researchers and competing approaches include field theory, functionalism, and anthropologically inflected accounts of the latent need for ritual, myth and spiritual fulfilment evinced by celebrity “worship.” We focus on the latter area as a partial explanation of the phenomenon whereby so many consumers seem so enchanted by images of, and stories about, individuals with whom they, or we, often have little in common. We speculate that the powerful presence of celebrity in Western consumer culture to some extent reflects and exploits a latent need for myths of redemption through the iconic character of many, though by no means all, manifestations of celebrityconsumption
Autoethnography and Subjective Experience in Marketing and Consumer Research (Autoetnografia e experiência subjetiva em marketing e pesquisa do consumidor)
No full textMarketing and consumer research is often associated with the methods of natural science applied to experimental and survey data, but there are also strong traditions of interpretive and qualitative work that draw on disciplines such as qualitative sociology, ethnography and anthropology. This paper outlines one such approach, authoethnography, in order to consider its wider adoption in marketing and consumer research. The paper refers to multidisciplinary sources along with autoethnographic studies published in American and European marketing and consumer research journals. It concludes by suggesting that a stronger understanding of autoethnographic research principles could broaden the scope, reach and relevance of marketing and consumer researc
Marketing and the cultural production of celebrity in the era of media convergence
No full textCelebrity endorsement research in the marketing literature has been over-reliant on an exogenous notion of celebrity as something produced outside of the marketing system, from which meanings can be transferred to brands within the marketing system. In fact, marketing has been deeply implicated in the constitution of celebrity since the dawn of Western consumer culture in the early part of the twentieth century. In the era of media convergence there is a pressing need for researchers in marketing to re-evaluate the meta-assumptions around celebrity and its relation to marketing in the light of marketing’s culturally constitutive role
The work of culture in Thai Theravāda Buddhist death rituals
No full textThai Theravāda Buddhist death rituals are explored in this book chapter as vivid examples of how rituals around death can offer rich potential sources for consumer cultural insight. The chapter explores Ricoeur’s and Obeyesekere’s ‘cultural hermeneutics’ (1965) and ‘the work of culture’ (1990) within the context of Thai death rituals and death consumption to extend CCT research into these under-explored areas. The death rituals reflect a sense of immortality, identity, and continuity as part of collective cultural identities that link the living with the dead. The chapter uses an autoethnographic practice theory perspective to demonstrate how Theravāda Buddhist death rituals entail the symbolic exchange between the living and the dead within the liminal spaces of a selection of death rituals and festivals. Death can be seen as a culturally defined concept given the ontological finality of the Western notion of death. The roles of Thai death rituals and the language related to death and death rituals contribute to the living’s sense of self-consciousness and identity, and connect to consumer culture. By engaging with death through death rituals, the cultural identity of the dead can be continued
