Is it possible that consumers exploit advertising even more so than advertising exploits and influences our culture? Author Jib Fowles argues that consumers look to advertising to provide them with images that can assist them in negotiating the personal dilemmas of advanced industrial life. Advertising and Popular Culture is the first comprehensive text to provide a balanced analysis of advertising and its companion, the popular culture, conveyed through the mass media. Reflecting current theories, this thoughtful critique uses excerpts from advertising campaigns to illustrate how modern advertising both draws from and contributes to popular culture. Fowles traces the role of advertising in our culture from its evolution as part of the culture of mass consumption in the late 19th century, the development of advertising agencies, and the creation of a consumer culture to an exploration of the major themes of American advertising. Advertising and Popular Culture represents a fresh and fully elaborated conceptualization of the services that advertising and popular culture provide. This text will be a vital tool in departments and schools of advertising, journalism, and communication where increasing emphasis is being placed on studying the cultural significance of advertising.

"Subliminal perception debunked, senior citizen advertising comes of age, Mona Lisa goes commercial, and male ad image changes are questioned! These and a host of other insightful, informative essays comprise this volume. Numerous advertising and marketing scholars united to bring the reader some of their most instructive, stimulating and entertaining works." "Advertising today, more than ever, is a field filled with change, challenge, and controversy. For about a decade, the Popular Culture Association's Advertising Area has proved to be a forum for a variety of topics that highlight advertising's impact on culture and society. This volume stems from a proposal to collect into a book some of the papers presented at PCA Conferences in the Advertising Area from 1985-1989. Authors represent a variety of interests and research areas." "While original plans did not call for any specific topic divisions in this volume, the articles do present variety, though somewhat loosely categorized. In general, these categories fall under the broad umbrella of popular culture studies. Besides the familiar historical and critical presentations, articles of controversy and interest are included, such as the one on subliminal advertising. Some of these articles attempt to debunk previously written pieces and serve as a stepping stone to much further discussion." "All-in-all, you will find something to amuse, amaze, inform and stimulate in this volume of advertising variety and versatility."--BOOK JACKET.

This is the first scholarly collection to examine the social and cultural aspects on the worldwide interest in the faded remains of advertising signage (popularly known as ‘ghost signs’). Contributors to this volume examine the complex relationships between the signs and those who commissioned them, painted them, viewed them and view them today. Topics covered include cultural memory, urban change, modernity and belonging, local history and place-making, the crowd-sourced use of online mobile and social media to document and share digital artefacts, ‘retro’ design and the resurgence in interest in the handmade. The book is international and interdisciplinary, combining academic analysis and critical input from practitioners and researchers in areas such as cultural studies, destination marketing, heritage advertising, design, social history and commercial archaeology.

Guide to advertising and pop culture posters in China from the early 1900s to the 1950s

A history of printed cosmetics advertising throughout the 20th-century, this study charts the growth of mass-circulation magazines and how they led to a huge increase in advertising space and, by beginning of the 21st century, had to compete with those in other media such as television and the internet. Showing how advertising became the engine of capitalism that directed political destinies and even influenced international conflicts and military victories by means of propaganda, this references pays special attention to the ways in which the cosmetic advertising industry became a dominant driving force in Western culture. Eighty beautiful, full color reproductions of ads, taken from the Library of Historic Advertising, are also included in this fascinating look at the history of how cosmetics have been sold.

The Rise and Spread of Advertising, Public Relations, Marketing and Branding.

Gender & Pop Culture provides a foundation for the study of gender, pop culture and media. This comprehensive, interdisciplinary text provides text-book style introductory and concluding chapters written by the editors, seven original contributor chapters on key topics and written in a variety of writing styles, discussion questions, additional resources and more. Coverage includes: - Foundations for studying gender & pop culture (history, theory, methods, key concepts) - Contributor chapters on media and children, advertising, music, television, film, sports, and technology - Ideas for activism and putting this book to use beyond the classroom - Pedagogical Features - Suggestions for further readings on topics covered and international studies of gender and pop culture Gender & Pop Culture was designed with students in mind, to promote reflection and lively discussion. With features found in both textbooks and anthologies, this sleek book can serve as primary or supplemental reading in undergraduate courses across the disciplines that deal with gender, pop culture or media studies. “An important addition to the fields of gender and media studies, this excellent compilation will be useful to students and teachers in a wide range of disciplines. The research is solid, the examples from popular culture are current and interesting, and the conclusions are original and illuminating. It is certain to stimulate self-reflection and lively discussion.” Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D., author, feminist activist and creator of the Killing Us Softly:Advertising’s Image of Women film series “An ideal teaching tool: the introduction is intellectually robust and orients the reader towards a productive engagement with the chapters; the contributions themselves are diverse and broad in terms of the subject matter covered; and the conclusion helps students take what they have learnt beyond the classroom. I can’t wait to make use of it.” Sut Jhally, Professor of Communication, University of Massachusetts at Amherst,Founder & Executive Director, Media Education Foundation Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, Ph.D. is currently an assistant professor of sociology at Valencia College in Orlando, Florida. Her first book, Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos (Scarecrow, 2013) addresses the ways women use music to heal after experiencing trauma. www.adriennetrier-bieniek.com Patricia Leavy, Ph.D. is an internationally known scholar and best-selling author, formerly associate professor of sociology and the founding director of gender studies at Stonehill College. She is the author of the acclaimed novels American Circumstance and Low-Fat Love and has published a dozen nonfiction books including Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. www.patricialeavy.com

The mass production and diversification of media have accelerated the development of popular culture. This has started a new trend in consumerism of desiring new consumption objects and devaluing those consumption objects once acquired, thus creating a constant demand for new items. Pop culture now canalizes consumerism both with advertising and the marketing of consumerist lifestyles, which are disseminated in the mass media. The Handbook of Research on Consumption, Media, and Popular Culture in the Global Age discusses interdisciplinary perspectives on media influence and consumer impacts in a globalizing world due to modern communication technology. Featuring research on topics such as consumer culture, communication ethics, and social media, this book is ideally designed for managers, marketers, researchers, academicians, and students.

Popular Culture and Social Change: The Hidden Work of Public Relations argues the complicated and contradictory relationship between public relations, popular culture and social change is a neglected theoretical project. Its diverse chapters identify ways in which public relations influences the production of popular culture and how alternative, often community-driven conceptualisations of public relations work can be harnessed for social change and in pursuit of social justice. This book opens up critical scholarship on public relations in that it moves beyond corporate understandings and perspectives to explore alternative and eclectic communicative cultures, in part to consider a more optimistic conceptualisation of public relations as a resource for progressive social change. Fitch and Motion began with an interest in identifying the ways in which public relations both draws on and influences the production of popular culture by creating, promoting and amplifying particular narratives and images. The chapters in this book consider how public relations creates popular cultures that are deeply compromised and commercialised, but at the same time can be harnessed to advocate for social change in supporting, reproducing, challenging or resisting the status quo. Drawing on critical and sociocultural perspectives, this book is an important resource for researchers, educators and students exploring public relations theory, strategic communication and promotional culture. It investigates the entanglement of public relations, popular culture and social change in different social, cultural and political contexts – from fashion and fortune telling to race activism and aesthetic labour – in order to better understand the (often subterranean) societal influence of public relations activity.

Advertising is often used to illustrate popular and academic debates about cultural and economic life. This book reviews cultural and sociological approaches to advertising and, using historical evidence, demonstrates that a rethink of the analysis of advertising is long overdue. Liz McFall surveys dominant and problematic tendencies within the current discourse. This book offers a thorough review of the literature and also introduces fresh empirical evidence. Advertising: A Cultural Economy uses a historical study of advertising to regain a sense of how it has been patterned, not by the `epoch′, but by the interaction of institutional, organisational and technological forces.