Promotional Cultures The Rise and Spread of Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing and Branding

by Davis, Aeron

• ISBN13: 9780745639833
• ISBN10: 0745639836
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2013-07-10
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

In the twenty-first century, promotion is everywhere and everything has become promotable: everyday goods and organizations, people and ideas, cultures and futures. This engaging book looks at the rise of advertising, public relations, branding, marketing and lobbying, and explores where our promotional times have taken us.

Promotional Cultures documents how the professions and practices of promotion have interacted with and reshaped so much in our world, from commodities, celebrities and popular culture to politics, markets and civil society. It offers a mix of historical accounts, social theory and documented case studies, including haute couture fashion, Apple Inc., Hollywood film, Jennifer Lopez, the Occupy movement, Barack Obama’s election campaigns, news production and the 2008 financial crisis. Together, these show how promotional culture may be recorded, understood and interpreted.

Promotional Cultures will appeal to students and scholars of media and culture, sociology, politics, anthropology, social and industrial history.

Author Biography

Aeron Davis is professor of political communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has investigated communication at Westminster, the London Stock Exchange, amongst the major political parties and across the trade union movement. Along the way he has interviewed close to 300 high-profile individuals employed in journalism, public relations, politics, business, finance, NGOs and the civil service. He has published on each of these topics in journals and edited collections and is the author of Public Relations Democracy (MUP, 2002), The Mediation of Politics (Routledge, 2007), and Political Communication and Social Theory (Routledge, 2010).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Detailed Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgements
Part One: Introduction, Producers, Consumers and Texts
Chapter One Introduction
Chapter Two Production: Industry and its Critics
Chapter Three Audiences and Consumers
Chapter Four Texts: Situating the Text in Promotional Culture
Part Two: Commodities, Media and Celebrity
Chapter Five Commodities: Promotional Influences on the Creation of Stuff
Chapter Six News Media and Popular Culture: Promotion and Creative Autonomy
Chapter Seven Celebrity Culture and Symbolic Power
Part Three: Politics, Markets and Society
Chapter Eight Politics and Political Representation
Chapter Nine Conflict and Pluralism in Civil Society
Chapter Ten Economies, Speculative Markets and Value
Chapter Eleven Conclusions
Bibliography
Index