Advertising, once seen as 'the official art of capitalist society', is an increasingly commonplace component of a characteristically promotional culture. Iain MacRury's Advertising offers the means to explore and evaluate this transition with an introduction to advertising for the contemporary reader.

Advertising provides a clear and easy guide to a changing cultural and commercial genre. It explores how advertising can be studied as a cultural industry, and as a sign system, and how adverts and the reception of adverts can be considered, drawing on approaches from literary criticism,structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and ethnography.

Advertising, once seen as 'the official, art of capitalist society', is an increasingly commonplace component of a characteristicaLLy promotional, culture, lain MacRury's Advertising offers the means to expl.ore and evatuate this transition with an introduction to advertising for the contemporary reader.

Advertising provides a dear and easy guide to a changing cuttural and commercial genre. It explores how advertising can be studied as a cuLturaL industry and as a sign system, and how adverts and the reception of adverts can be considered, drawing on approaches from titerary criticism, structuratism, post-structuratism, psychoana!.ysis and ethnography.

Written in an accessibLe and interesting styte, Advertising is the ideal introductory book for students of media,communication and journaLism.

Lain MacRury is Principal Lecturer in Culturat Studies and Creative Industries in the Schoot of Social Sciences,Media and Cuttural Studies at the University of East London. He has co-authored The Dynamics of Advertising (2000) and co-edited Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption (1996).

List of illustrations

Series editors preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Advertising and common sense

Dilemmas 23

Public opinion  27

Popular culture  35

The coherence of advertising  40

Advertising agencies: mediation and the creative

process

Selling things, selling ideas 44

Brand ideas 49

The advertising agency  51

Advertising: provoking engagement  52

The advertising agency and the client  56

Tranformation: from product to advertisement  60

Marketing, media and communication

Above the line and below the line  76

Consumers direct  80

Through the line  82

Advertising, sponsorship and PR  86

Above the line: media and advertising  89

Critical responses to advertising and other marketing strategies 107

Analysing and historicising advertising

This is and is not a commodity: definitions  111

Abstract things 112

Advertising as de-commodiflcation  115

Commodity-signs  I 18

Revisiting academic perspectives  119

Culture and creativity  122

Media and advertising: critical perspectives  124

Advertising: genres and history  127

Advertising and culture

Advertising, language and culture  /60

Representing a cultural world: advertising

well-being  163

Representing people and culture  166

Advertising and representation: examples, exemplars

and ideals  172

Advertising and a culture of signs  181

Signs and textualities

Engaging environments of signs  186

Advertising and semiotics  187

Modelling advertising signs  191

Advertising semiosis  195

Levels of the sign: denotation and connotation  199

Advertising syntaxes and paradigms and framing:organising signs  200

Framing: advertising layout  209

Textual analysis 211

New forms and intimacies

Rhetorical advertising  217

Changing advertising  218

Disarming advertisements  219

Heroic to comic  220

Real stories: pseudo Divine to All Too Human  223

Ad-makers and renewal  224

Speeding up  224

Genrequake  226

Genre boundaries: life, death and bodies  229

Humour  231

Gesture and movement  234

Asocial movements  235

Audiences and psychology

Entertainment and popular culture  242

Reading intertextuality: dispersal and integration  243

Changing audiences changing cultures 246

Creative deconstruction: ad readers and postmodernism  247

Inside outside: dynamic and static audiences  253

Advertising and psychoanalysis 254

Advertising: articulating and resolving conflict  257

Conclusion: making your mind up  271

Notes

Bibliography

Index