Bringing together critical race, queer and decolonial analytical approaches, visual analysis, and multimodal discourse analysis, this book explores the discursive strategies deployed by African luxury brands in an age of cross-platform, intertextual branding. Building on literature examining the aesthetics and politics of African luxury, this book demonstrates how leading African luxury brands create visual material speaking to complex sensibilities of culture, nature, and future. Iqani shows how powerful brand narratives and strategies reveal ethical and ideological messages that function to re-position Africa in an increasingly congested global marketplace of ideas. In acknowledging that there is a strong political validity to recognizing the importance of African brands staking their claim in luxury, this book also problematizes the role these brands play in the promotion of luxury discourses, advancing the project of capitalism and their contribution to broader patterns of inequality. Shedding new light not only on luxury branding strategies but also on the idea of a luxurious global “Africanicity” and on the complex cultural politics of South Africa, African Luxury Branding will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in disciplines, including Critical Advertising Studies, African Studies, Media and Communications.

Africa Fashion explores the kaleidoscope of craft cultures that have shaped African fashion for centuries and captures the intriguing stories of pioneering and contemporary African brands. Part One retells the history of African fashion, exploring Africa's textile traditions, artisanship in jewelry and embellishment and the continent's role as a global resource. The second part presents a New Africa and examines the promise and potential of Africa's markets, while challenging stereotypes and the concept of European hegemony in the realm of luxury fashion. It also spotlights Africa's unique position as the global industry shifts towards a more sustainable future. The third and final part ushers the reader into the spectacular world of African fashion today. It showcases a carefully curated set of the continent's most dynamic brands and, through interviews with prominent and inspiring designers, offers rare insight into their ethos and design practice.

Moving far beyond predominant views of Africa as a place to be "saved," and even more recent celebratory formulations of it as "rising," African Luxury: Aesthetics and Politics highlights and critically interrogates the visual and material cultures of lavish and luxurious consumption already present on the continent. Methodologically, conceptually, and analytically, the collection dismantles taken-for-granted ideas that the West is the source and focus of high-end and hyper-desirable material cultures. It explores what the culture of consumption means in Africa in both historical and contemporary contexts, studying diverse luxury phenomena including fashion advertising, reality television, retail, gendered consumption, and gardening to re-center the discussion on existing contemporary luxury cultures across the continent. Moving far beyond predominant views of Africa as a place to be 'saved', and even more recent celebratory formulations of it as 'rising', African Luxury: Aesthetics and Politics highlights and critically interrogates the visual and material cultures of lavish and luxurious consumption already present on the continent. Methodologically, conceptually and analytically, the collection dismantles taken-for-granted ideas that the West is the source and focus of high-end and hyper-desirable material cultures. It explores what the culture of consumption means in Africa in both historical and contemporary contexts, studying diverse luxury phenomena including fashion advertising, reality television, retail, gendered consumption and gardening to re-centre the discussion on existing contemporary luxury cultures across the continent.

This book is an invaluable repository of knowledge that brings clarity to key issues and trends for practitioners, academics and students of luxury brands. It sets out to decode the luxury markets in the primary emerging markets (BRICs) and provide a rich resume of the key factors that influence the effectiveness of luxury brand strategies.

The uptake of digital media platforms necessitates the need to understand how digital cultures of consumers and brands are unfolding. Despite the increase in usage and adoption of the internet in Africa, there is limited information about digital marketing trends on the continent. This book is among the first to present an edited collection of chapters on digital and influencer marketing authored by many who are either from or have close ties to Africa. This book showcases digital marketing trends in Africa that are burgeoning at the same speed as the uptake of technology in the continent. With this in mind, the contributors seek to interrogate digital marketing trends in two stages: the status of digital marketing on the African continent, including cases from Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda and Kenya, and an analysis of the rise of influencer marketing, including cases from Nigeria and Uganda. This book will explore factors driving the increase in digital media platforms in Africa as well as an analysis of the implications of the growth in digital marketing, using various theoretical and methodological underpinnings to probe trends. Digital Public Relations and Marketing Communication Trends in Africa provides significant implications for marketing scholars and researchers and will be relevant to those looking to understand the opportunities and challenges ahead.

The Routledge Handbook of Humanitarian Communication is an authoritative and comprehensive guide to research in the academic sub-field of humanitarian communication. It is broadly focused on communication that presents human vulnerability as a cause for public concern and encompasses communication with respect to humanitarian aid and development as well as human rights and "humanitarian" wars. Recent years have seen the expansion of critical scholarship on humanitarian communication across a range of academic fields, sharing recognition of the centrality of media and communications to our understanding of humanitarianism as an agent of transnational power, global governance and cosmopolitan solidarity. The Handbook brings into dialogue these diverse fields, their theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches as well as the public debates that lie at the heart of the contemporary politics of humanitarianism. It consolidates existing knowledge and maps out this emerging field as an important site of interdisciplinary knowledge production on media, communication and humanitarianism. As such, the Handbook is not simply a collection of texts sharing a similar theme. It is a coherent intellectual contribution which systematizes current critical scholarship in terms of Domains, Methods and Issues and sets an agenda of emerging and evolving research priorities in the field. Consisting of 26 chapters written by international scholars, who have contributed to laying the foundation of the field, this volume provides an essential guide to the key ideas, issues, concepts and debates of humanitarian communication.

Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. Volumes deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complimenting the Academy’s flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review. Volumes are edited by leading scholars and practitioners across a wide range of subject areas in marketing science. This volume includes the full proceedings from the 2014 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference held in Indianapolis, Indiana, entitled Let’s Get Engaged! Crossing the Threshold of Marketing’s Engagement Era. The volume includes manuscripts relevant to marketing strategy, consumer behaviour, quantitative modelling, among others.

African design encompasses colours, textures, patterns, styles and traditions varied enough to fuel a range of dazzling home decorating looks. Detailed captions identify the design elements in each photograph, offering readers ideas for their own home

We live in a world obsessed by luxury. Long-distance airlines compete to offer first-class sleeping experiences and hotels recommend exclusive suites where you are never disturbed. Luxury is a rapidly changing global industry that makes the headlines daily in our newspapers and on the internet. More than ever, luxury is a pervasive presence in the cultural and economic life of the West - and increasingly too in the emerging super-economies of Asia and Latin America. Yet luxury is hardly a new phenomenon. Today's obsession with luxury brands and services is just one of the many manifestations that luxury has assumed. In the middle ages and the Renaissance, for example, luxury was linked to notions of magnificence and courtly splendour. In the eighteenth century luxury was at the centre of philosophical debates over its role in shaping people's desires and oiling the wheels of commerce. And it continues to morph today, with the growth of the global super-rich and increasing wealth polarization. From palaces to penthouses, from couture fashion to lavish jewellery, from handbags to red wine, from fast cars to easy money, Peter McNeil and Giorgio Riello present the first ever global history of luxury, from the Romans to the twenty-first century: a sparkling and ever-changing story of extravagance, excess, novelty, and indulgence.

Africans Investing in Africa explores intra-African trade and investment by showing how, where and why Africans invest across Africa; to identify the economic, political and social experiences that hinder or stimulate investment; and to highlight examples of pan-African investors.