Anat Rosenberg on her book, The Rise of Mass Advertising
Interview by Astrid Van den Bossche, Kings College London Oxford University Press Astrid Van den Bossche: One striking focus of your book is the presence and treatment—legally, culturally,…
Tag: Advertising
Ad-hoc Block: Dystopian Worlds and the War for Advertising
As artificial intelligence and algorithmic surveillance become more ubiquitous, we should really start to think about our relationship, not just to internet tracking and data collection, but to…
Culture: brought together, kept apart
brought together but kept apart I felt like I was being chased up the beach by a tidal wave. Run for your life, anthropologist, run for your life! I…
Advertising Change: Presenting a New New Zealander?
The Southern Man advert is aiming to speak to a specific audience of beer drinkers, assumed by Speight’s to be men. Other beer companies have played with similar…
Alex Fattal on his book, Guerrilla Marketing
Interview by Winifred Tate https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo29202793.html Winifred Tate: The title, Guerrilla Marketing, evokes advertising, and in fact Amazon lists a number…
Behold the hot computer technology of 1985
What was it like to do use a computer for chat, graphic design, banking or online shopping in the mid-1980s? What were the most innovative hardware and software…
Beth Comstock and 7 truths for the C-suite
(This post was first published on Medium, April 3, 2018.) Anyone who works as a creative, a strategist, a planner, a story teller, a PR specialist, or a…
A Tale of Two (Ad) Campaigns
For a while, the mega-global corporation, Unilever — owner of Dove beauty products — spoke thoughtfully to the world’s women. The 13-year-long “Real Beauty” campaign that…
Hero or Outlaw: How Archetypes Can Tell A Brand Story
In 2001, The Hero and The Outlaw introduced the branding world to the use of archetypes. The book reminds us that humans relate to stories with strong characters,…
Mixed Kernels, or What We Don’t See in Ads #ThinkingVisually
You know how a common criticism of politicians is that they’re out of touch with the real world? “Does your local representative know the price of a carton…
How Karl Marx Ruined My Dinner Party
At dinner one night, I made two fatal social errors in rapid succession. First, during casual conversation with two good friends, I began talking about American culture. Not…
Bud Caddell
Whenever I have the chance to talk to Bud Caddell, I take it. This’s because while I know the future is badly distributed (in Gibson’s famous phrase), I fervently…
Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media: Call for Papers
Constructing and Consuming Gender through Media Call for Papers CyberOrient: Online Journal of the Virtual Middle East Editor-in-Chief: Daniel Martin Varisco Guest Editor: Mona Abdel-Fadil Submission …
Less public knowledge, more private meaning (lessons for politicians and brands)
This is a part of a map of London drawn by Fuller (aka Gareth Wood). Wood says that he created a map to show his relationship with the city over…
Cultural Leaders and Laggards, the problem with beer ads
I love this ad. How quickly bashful behavior gives way to full-on performance. And how this disappears (when the woman enters the store). And then reappears (when it occurs to our…
The real message of advertising?
If the art of advertising (one of them anyhow) is closing the distance between the brand and the consumer, you can’t do much better than this. Do we…
Are We Stuck in the ‘Fifties?
This set of fourteen offensively sexist ads from the 1950s is so over-the-top, it’s easy to dismiss them, relegating them to a “Thank goodness we’re beyond this and…