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Advertising and Consumer Society
This critical introductory text explores the role of advertising in contemporary

culture and its connections to larger economic, social, and political forces. Written
in an engaging and accessible style and incorporating a wide range of examples
from around the world, the chapters introduce the key concepts, methods, and
debates needed to analyse and understand advertising.
From an investigation of advertising’s crucial function in media economics and
our wider capitalist system to a consideration of the people who both make and
watch advertising, this insightful text enables students to: make sense of advertis-
ing’s powerful influence as both an economic force and an artistic form; assess the
various claims of these two perspectives on advertising; and understand how they
challenge and complicate one another. This revised second edition includes a new
chapter on branding and promotional culture, and substantially updated content
on topics like digital and online advertising, surveillance and empowerment, as
well as brand new topics like self-branding/influencers and using technology to
evade advertising.
Equipping students with the skills needed to partake in this lively discourse, the
text is an invaluable resource for studying advertising critically. It is essential read-
ing for students of advertising, media studies, and communication studies.
Nicholas Holm is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies based on the Wellington

campus of Massey University, New Zealand, where he teaches courses in popular
culture, advertising, and communication. His research explores the political role of
popular culture and entertainment media, with a particular focus on humour and
comedy. He is the author of Humour as Politics (Palgrave 2016).
Advertising and Consumer
Society
A Critical Introduction
Second Edition
Nicholas Holm
Designed cover image: ©Getty
Second edition published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Nicholas Holm
The right of Nicholas Holm to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Palgrave Macmillan 2016
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Holm, Nicholas, author.
Title: Advertising and consumer society : a critical introduction /
Nicholas Holm.
Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge,
2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022047495 (print) | LCCN 2022047496 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032181370 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032181363 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003253037 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Advertising. | Advertising--Social aspects. | Consumer
behavior. | Consumption (Economics)--Social aspects.
Classification: LCC HF5811 .H648 2023 (print) | LCC HF5811 (ebook) | DDC
659.1--dc23/eng/20220929
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047495
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022047496
ISBN: 978-1-032-18137-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18136-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25303-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003253037
Typeset in Bembo
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
For my parents,
I didn’t go into advertising. But this is pretty close.
Contents
Acknowledgements x
Preface to the Second Edition xi
PART I
The foundations of studying advertising 1
1 Introduction: why study advertising? 3

Why study advertising? 4
What this book is about 10
References 14
2 The history of advertising: contexts, transformations,

and continuity 15
Four moments in advertising history 16
The first moment: origins, industrialisation, and development 17
The second moment: professionalisation, consolidation, and
redemption 20
The third moment: hidden persuaders and creative revolutionaries 24
The fourth moment: digital advertising, algorithms, and social
media 27
The changing nature of advertising 31
References 33
3 Analysing advertisements: form, semiotics, and ideology 35

Advertising contexts, codes, and conventions 36
Semiotic analysis of advertising 44
Mythology and ideology 51
Conducting an ideological analysis 55
Careful reading 58
References 59
viii Contents
PART II
Advertising and capitalism 61
4 Advertising, economics, and ideology 63

What is capitalism? 63
What is political economy? 66
What is ideology? 69
Capitalist ideology in practice 73
Selling capitalist realism 77
From economics to ideology to advertising 82
References 83
5 Commodities and commodity fetishism 85

What is a commodity? 87
Commodity fetishism and the relations of consumption 92
The magic system 96
The power of Dove 99
The life cycle of the commodity 101
References 102
6 The audience commodity, media fragmentation, and

data surveillance 104
The audience as commodity 105
Maximising profit 110
Personalisation, surveillance, and online labour 116
References 123
7 Blurred lines: branding, promotion, and influence(rs) 125

From brands to commodity-signs 126
Social media self-branding and influencers 132
Promotional society and collapsing boundaries 136
References 141
PART III
Agency, art, and other complications 145
8 Advertising agencies: organisation, agency, and internal conflict 147

Advertising’s agency and advertising agencies 148
Agencies in a changing industry 153
Contents ix
The people who make advertisements 155
Ambiguity and antagonism in the agency 160
References 163
9 Advertising as art: from creativity to critique 166

Advertising and “creativity” 167
Advertising and art 171
Advertising as art 177
Advertising aesthetics 179
The future of advertising as art 183
References 184
10 Active advertising audiences: identity, engagement,

and resistance 187
The active advertising audience 188
Identities and communities 191
Active audiences online 197
Avoiding and resisting advertising 201
References 206
11 The politics of advertising: capitalism, art, agency, and dialectics 208

Some may buy it, I’m not paying the price 208
The politics of capitalism 210
The politics of agency and art 212
The dialectic of advertising 215
References 220
Index 221
Acknowledgements
I imagine almost all textbooks emerge out of the context of an actual classroom.
This one is no different. My heartfelt thanks to all the students of 154.202
Advertising and Consumer Society over the past 10 years. You were the guinea
pigs on who I tried out and refined this material. Thank you for sometimes laugh-
ing at my jokes, and helping me work out how and why Instagram is important.
I owe a debt of thanks to the intelligent and passionate teachers who have
helped me deliver the course over the past decade. Making a course function across
three campuses and an online cohort is never easy, and your dedication has been
essential to what I stubbornly insist is the course’s ongoing success. My thanks to
Alison Blair, Leon Salter, Michael Hemmingsen, Pansy Duncan, Lisa Vonk,
Campbell Birch, Kevin Veale, and Nikite Krishnamurthy.
My thanks also to my colleagues in the School of Humanities, Media and
Creative Communication. It’s been a fairly rough ride in the last few years, and I
appreciate your collegiality and friendship. Particular thanks to my colleagues in
Media Studies—Ian Huffer, Sy Taffel, Kyra Clarke, Yuan Gong, Pansy Duncan,
Claire Henry, Ilya Herb, and Kevin Veale—and to the other folks on the corridor:
Ingrid Horrocks and Elspeth Tilley. Finally, a special thanks to Ian Goodwin, with
whom I’ve had many spirited discussions about algorithms, programmatic market-
ing, and surveillance capitalism over the last few years. I still don’t agree with you
Ian about the power of machines, but you really helped me work out my thinking
on many of the crucial new aspects of digital advertising. (Also, thank you to
Mariko Hemmingsen, who suggested the “250km Wave” example to me that
opens the book!)
Finally, my thanks to my family. Beatrice and Ferdinand, you were only one
when I submitted the manuscript for the first edition of this book. You’re so much
bigger now, and much more helpful. If I ever update this again, I will rely on you
to help me understand the inevitable next round of developments in advertising.
Thanks to my in-laws, Philip and Marian, for all their support over the last few
years, especially with Bea and Ferdi. Thanks to my parents, Syd and Hilary, for,
well, everything. I know you probably would have quite liked it if I’d gone into
advertising, but having thought about it this much, I’m not sure I would have been
built for it. And obviously thanks to Lucy, without which this wouldn’t really have
been possible. I’m sorry I never let you mute the ads. It was for work.
Preface to the Second Edition
When I wrote the first edition of this textbook, I had no idea how much advertis-
ing was set to change over the next five years. In 2014–15, when I wrote the
majority of the book, terrestrial television was under threat as the dominant media
form, but still obviously the biggest player in town (in Aotearoa New Zealand at
least). Instagram was still a relatively new app that I felt I could definitely ignore,
and didn’t really have time to get to grips with anyway. Most of the discussions
about data surveillance were stuck in endless loops concerned with privacy that my
students simply didn’t care about. Needless to say, things are very different in 2022.
In response to the changing times, this new edition dramatically changes the
way the book addresses online and digital media advertising. There is nothing new
or upcoming about these media forms: they are simply everyday life. I have
attempted to reflect this normality in the book. Almost all the examples have been
updated and television commercials replaced with ads from places like YouTube
and Instagram. The material on branding has been expanded into an entirely new
chapter on promotional society and influencers. The chapter on the audience
commodity has been completely revised to both better reflect the complexities of
the historical debate and account for new debates about online audience labour.
The sections on the history of advertising and the operations of advertising agen-
cies have been updated to reflect recent developments.
I have also learnt a lot more about advertising while teaching my course over the
past six years. On this basis, material has been shuffled and moved around in ways
that I hope contribute to the readability and coherence of the book. I also had the
opportunity to fix many turns of phrase and clunky grammatical passages that have
haunted me. I’m sure I’ve also introduced some new ones. Please don’t @ me.
Part I
The foundations of studying

advertising
1 Introduction
Why study advertising?
On 20 February 2011 over 15,000 people (by most accounts) lined a train track to
celebrate the opening of the Kyushu Shinkansen: the latest section of the Japanese
high-speed “bullet train” that was to service the Southern island of Kyushu. Some
were dressed in costumes, others took part in synchronised dancing, and many
simply jumped or waved at the passing train which was recording footage that
would later serve as the basis for “The 250km Wave”: a commercial to advertise
the opening of the new train line. Set to the catchy, upbeat soundtrack of Maia
Hirasawa’s “Boom,” the commercial presented an endearing image of regional
unity and offbeat exuberance. It would eventually go on to win three awards at the
2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, including a gold “Outdoor
Lion” for the use of stunts in an advertisement (Engine Films 2011).
“The 250km Wave” was first broadcast on Japanese television on Friday 9
March, only two days before the Great East Japan Earthquake struck off the coast
of Tōhoku. The strongest earthquake ever recorded in Japan, the great East Japan
Earthquake killed over 15,000 people and displaced over 225,000 more. Given the
mood of national mourning following the unprecedented natural disaster, the
advertisement was pulled from television screens as it was felt that its celebratory
tone was inappropriate during that time. However, the commercial was still avail-
able online on YouTube and over the following months became the subject of
intense online interest. Within three months, the video had logged over two mil-
lion views (Johnny 2013), and, by the time the official account closed, the video
had recorded over three-and-a-half-million views: more than any other non-music
or earthquake-related video in Japan (Clegg 2016). Rather than turn away from
the joyful imagery of the commercial, the people of Japan had embraced the
advertisement as an uplifting message of “national solidarity” (Creativity Online
2011). As a result of its popularity in that moment, “The 250km Wave” would
remain an important cultural touchstone and a message of hope for rebuilding the
Japanese nation over the coming years.
Over a decade later, “The 250km Wave” remains a powerful demonstration of
how advertising can influence our lives in often-unexpected ways. Advertising is a
vitally important part of both our media landscape and everyday culture, and we
overlook the ways in which commercials can shape our lives at our peril. These
range from the adoption of too-frequently repeated catchphrases and jingles in
everyday speech, to the ways in which ads both demonstrate and reflect wider
DOI: 10.4324/9781003253037-2
4 The foundations of studying advertising
questions of social values and priorities, or the increasingly blurry distinction
between advertising and entertainment. That an advertisement like “The 250km
Wave” could be embraced by a nation in the way it was illustrates how advertising
is far from a disposable, ephemeral cultural form. Instead, this example demon-
strates how advertisements can have a very real influence upon the world. The
success of this particular advertisement also speaks to twenty-first-century shifts in
media institutions and technologies—from historically dominant forms, such as
broadcast television, to the online world of shareable and social media—that have
dramatically altered not only where we encounter advertising, but also how we
engage with it. The story of “The 250km Wave” could not be told outside the
context of online networks and the associated changes in advertising practice and
reception.
At the same time, we should also keep in mind how and why this video was
produced: to advertise a train service in order to make profits for a corporation.
What does it mean when a promotion for a private company becomes implicated
in public grieving? Finally, we might also want to consider the production context:
while thousands turned out to joyfully welcome the train and take part in the
filming of the ad, thousands also stayed away. The train construction cut through
existing communities and meant many had to now live in the shadow of the ten-
metre-high bridges of the new infrastructure. It also led to concerns that those
towns not serviced by stations would suffer economic decline (McMorran 2013).
Thus, while the ad shows us a happy, smiling world (which absolutely contributed
to its post-earthquake success), it does so by simplifying and leaving out more
controversial elements. All these aspects speak to the vital and complicated role of
advertising in our society: its immense creativity, its implication in wider social
discussions and debates, its potential to uplift and entertain, its close connection to
the profit motive, and its particular way of presenting the world. Those issues and
more will be the subject of our study in this book.
Why study advertising?

The first question that confronts a student of advertising is as simple as it is impor-
tant: why study advertising? In comparison to many of the other topics that you
may address at university, advertising might appear to be a subject which most of
us already know as much about as we might ever want to. Even compared to other
topics in Media and Cultural Studies, let alone subjects like Chemistry or Medieval
Literature, advertising is almost certainly a subject with which you are already
quite familiar: maybe even more familiar than you’d like to be! Indeed, advertising
may even be a media form that you’re accustomed to going some lengths to
avoid—through the use of technology such as browser web blockers or through
cultivated habits of stubborn avoidance—rather than engaging with in detail.
Advertisements, after all, are frequently framed as the bottom of the media
hierarchy: brash in their claims, demanding in their tone, unsophisticated in their
execution. Understood in this manner, it is fairly obvious why we’d want to steer
clear of advertising whenever possible and, conversely, somewhat unclear as to why
on Earth we would want to pay it the attention that is necessary for detailed study
Introduction 5
(let alone read a whole book on the subject!). Nonetheless, despite such objec-
tions, in this textbook we will be committing ourselves to making sense of what
might appear to be the dirty business of advertising. However, having picked up
this book (or signed up for a class for which you are required to purchase this
book) hopefully you already have some idea as to why—despite its negative pro-
file—you might want to study advertising.
This book is an investigation of what advertising is, what it does, and what it
means. We’ll be particularly concerned with what makes advertising different from
other ways of using media and the historical, technical, technological, economic,
political, social, and cultural roles that it plays as a result. We’ll be thinking about
why it is that so many people hate advertising and why a few people seem to really
love it: what it’s meant to do and what it actually does. Along the way, we’ll con-
sider whether advertising might be best understood as a form of art or a form of
business or just plain old manipulation, and how those different ways of making
sense of advertising fit with wider beliefs about the world, media, individuals,
communities, and communication. Moreover, we’ll be doing all this in the whole-
hearted commitment to the idea that advertising is not only possessed of hidden
depths of meaning and significance, but also has a lot to teach us about the society
we live in: in particular, the media saturated, money-driven, consumer society of
the rich countries of the twenty-first century.
Consequently, while some of our more dismissive and negative beliefs around
advertising might be absolutely justified, we will also consider how they can also
be limited and limiting. In almost all instances they can prevent us from properly
understanding advertising as a cultural, social, political, and economic practice.
Therefore, in order to address possible objections and the limitations that can arise
from them, in this introductory chapter I will present five key reasons why I think
we might want to study advertising in terms of its ubiquity, oddness, economic
importance, aesthetic possibilities, and political potential. Following the presenta-
tion of these different reasons—and hopefully having made a convincing case!—I
will then run through some of the particular features that will shape our engage-
ment with advertising and consumer society in this book.
Reason one: advertising is everywhere

At the most straightforward level, the first reason why we might want to study
advertising is relatively simple: it’s everywhere. We encounter advertising on our
smartphones, plastered across the side of buildings, blaring out of radios, embed-
ded in our social media, stuck between the pages of magazines and newspapers,
preceding movies, stuffed into every potentially empty space in sports games, pop-
ping-up and scrolling across webpages, festooning the side of highways, sprawled
across the outsides of public transport (and often on the inside as well), embla-
zoned across our clothing, wrapped around our food, and sometimes even dragged
across the sky.
Advertising is the medium that gets where other media don’t. Even as consum-
ers take advantage of new, easier, and more efficient ways of avoiding advertise-
ments, through the use of technologies such as Adblock software, advertisements
manage to remain a persistent part of our everyday existence as advertisers turn to
new techniques like programmatic marketing and colonise social media like
Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Despite the massive technological and cultural
changes in our media over the last century, advertising remains the wallpaper of
our lives: the dull background hum of our media culture that teases, teaches,
insults, provokes, informs, entertains, and annoys in equal measure.
What this means, then, is that even if advertising wasn’t an interesting cultural
form in its own right (which it is!), we’d almost be compelled to study it as a result
of the sheer ubiquity of the stuff. Because it’s everywhere, advertising has the power
to worm its way into the fabric of our everyday lives. Its power arises in part from
the sheer scale of its presence: the repetition, not just of individual ads or cam-
paigns, but of advertising itself which crashes against our brains with the persistent
force of waves upon a beach. Indeed, it would be difficult for something that is so
ever-present not to exert some influence upon our beliefs and values (Leiss et al.
2005, 3–4; Wharton 2015, 1). Anything that there is so much of deserves further
scrutiny simply by virtue of its pervasiveness, its constant presence, and the power
that it wields as a result of that. Consequently, given this power and influence,
advertising is a subject that is of the utmost importance to understand in order to
make sense of how it intervenes in our lives and shapes our beliefs and behaviours.
One of the main focuses of this book will be unpacking how advertising can work
to shape the way we understand the world, not just on the level of individual pur-
chasing decisions, but also on the level of social and cultural beliefs and values.
Reason two: advertising is weird

One of the major repercussions of the constant presence of advertising is that we
all seem to have developed a blind spot regarding how absolutely bizarre it is. We
don’t appreciate this often enough. This is true at the level of individual advertise-
ments—surreal tapestries of talking animals, cartoon jack-hammers pounding dia-
grams of distressed human heads, quick-cut montages of ludicrously jubilant young
people chewing gum or slugging back sugar water—but also at the level of wider
practice. Advertising is a massive system of global production, distribution, and
consumption based around the counter-intuitive idea that, with the right combi-
nation of design and market research, hundreds of thousands of people can be
convinced to part with their money to purchase goods that they possibly don’t
even want. Even more unlikely, advertising is produced by corporations at great
expense and then distributed for free: hundreds of thousands of stories in minia-
ture and spectacular images, prepared using countless interviews with focus groups
and studies of demographics, so carefully studied as to put Hollywood to shame.
And finally, despite all this effort, the dirty, half-kept secret of advertising is that
nobody is actually sure if it works. As the early advertiser John Wanamaker is
sometimes reported to have said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted;
the trouble is I don’t know which half ” (Pringle and Marshall 2011, 20).
This fairly odd state of affairs is the result of a highly contingent set of historical,
economic, and social circumstances, which is to say: things didn’t have to be this
way. If anyone were to create a society from scratch, it is highly unlikely that they
Introduction 7
would come up with the idea of advertising, nor assign such a prominent role to
it. Advertising didn’t have to be a central and ever-present aspect of our mediated
existence. Advertising didn’t have to underwrite a large section of our entertain-
ment media and advertising didn’t have to be an essential and unquestionable part
of providing or even selling goods and services. It’s very important to remember
this over the course of this book: advertising isn’t a fundamental part of human
existence, but it has come to function as one in the wealthy countries of the twen-
ty-first century. The way in which advertising works in our society isn’t the only
way advertising can or has worked, and we should never be satisfied with some-
thing just because that’s the way it is, but instead should always wonder why it’s this
way instead of any other. Therefore, in this book we’ll be looking at not only the
history of advertising, in order to get a sense of how things came to be this way,
but also tracing how advertising continues to reproduce the conditions of its own
justification and legitimation in our current moment.
Reason three: advertising is where the money is

The third reason advertising is fascinating is because of the money. There’s no
denying that advertising is a big business. Following a dip in revenue caused by the
global pandemic in 2020, international advertising spending surged back over
$700 billion in 2021 (Adgate 2021). Moreover, that hefty figure may even under-
estimate the amount of money tied up in advertising. After all, two of the world’s
most prominent and successful digital companies, Meta and Alphabet, generate the
bulk of their revenue from advertising: 88% in the case of Alphabet (Google’s
parent company) and a whopping 97% in the case of Meta (Facebook’s parent
company) (The Economist 2018). However, in economic terms, advertising is even
more important than such a dollar value might suggest. This is because advertising
doesn’t just work as an economic entity in its own right. It also functions as an
essential part of our wider capitalist economy. The economics of advertising are
therefore always about more than just the money that changes hands with the
production and distribution of advertising messages; they are also about the role
that advertising plays in keeping the rest of the economy humming along (Hardy
2015, 65). Without advertising (or at least the half that works…), there would be
a chance that our economy as currently organised would begin to slowly grind to
a halt.
This is because advertising is more than just the means by which we learn about
different products and services; it is also a constant reminder that as good consum-
er-citizens of the twenty-first century we should keep on buying things. Shampoo.
Fast food. Cars. Nutraceuticals. Advertising is at the heart of what we refer to as
“consumer society”: a way of living organised around the purchase of things,
where it seems unquestionably obvious that the best way to obtain the things that
sustain and bring meaning to our lives is to acquire them through the exchange of
currency. Joseph Turow and Matthew McAllister describe consumer culture as the
symbols and messages that surround people about products and services that they
buy and use (that is, consume) (Turow and McAllister 2009, 4). Consumer culture
also involves how people make meaning from these messages: how we understand
ourselves and our lives through consumer messages. Much has been written about
the consumer society: some have suggested that the ascension of consumerism has
robbed our lives of purpose, beauty, and authenticity, while others have argued that
consumer culture provides new means for us to express and articulate ourselves in
the world with a new-found sense of freedom. We will consider the arguments in
support of both of these positions in this book, and the consequences of both for
assessing the cultural, social, and political roles of advertising in the wider context
of consumer society.
In addition, the economic importance of advertising means that it is a rich site
through which to examine and debate the role of capitalism in our society more
broadly: what does it mean to live in a society where economic growth is under-
stood as the central guiding value of government, rationality is understood in
terms of profit motive, and money is often the final determining mark of value?
How does advertising both rely on such capitalist ideas and contribute to their
reinforcement? And how might we understand these ideas in relation to media and
culture—not least advertising—which has been historically denounced as a source
of false information regarding the capacity of capitalism to meet social desires
(Williams 2005, 184–186), as an aesthetic of alienating glamour that substitutes
consumption for democracy (Berger 1983, 149), or even as “a pure representation
of social power” (Horkheimer and Adorno 1972, 163)? We’ll be exploring some
of these ideas in the second part of the book through an engagement with Marxist
and post-Marxist approaches to advertising, consumerism, and capitalism as a
means to consider how advertising produces particular forms of engagement,
understandings, and impressions of the economic relations that structure our lives.
This involves much more than simply denouncing advertising as something “bad”
or manipulative, but instead trying to untangle its central role in our capitalist
economy and consumerist society.
Reason four: advertising is beautiful, inspiring, and entertaining

The fourth reason I think we should study advertising is because of its aesthetic
aspects: its ability to move us, thrill us, entertain us, and inspire us. In a way, this
fourth reason is almost the opposite of reason three, because it encourages us to
consider advertising as more than just a sales pitch and instead appreciate it as a
form of art. While much of the advertising we encounter is relatively straightfor-
ward in its appeal, and unsophisticated in its construction, advertising can also be
stunningly inventive in its formal presentation and in its ability to create emotion-
ally resonant narrative or visually striking imagery (McStay 2011, 1–3). I imagine
almost all readers will be able to recall at least one example of an advertisement that
they found unexpectedly moving, captivating, or at least entertaining. My per-
sonal, all-time favourite is Sony’s visually spectacular 2005 “Bouncy Ball” ad for
Bravia televisions! (Please see Chapter 9 for further discussion of this example) In
fact, even those apparently simple advertisements—ads for big box furniture stores
where a voice-over shouts about bargains, or an item of junk mail detailing the
specials for the week at the local supermarket—are highly complex combinations
of sound and colour that are specially designed to foster particular responses.
Introduction 9
We would therefore be doing advertising a great disservice if we were to think
about it only in terms of its brute commercial purpose and thereby overlook the
ways in which it reaches out to us through stories, songs, images, and experiences.
In fact, at least one commentator has gone so far as to declare advertising to be not
just artistic, but an actual form of art. The early media theorist Marshall McLuhan,
who was famed for making over-the-top proclamations, declared that “Advertising
is the greatest art form of the twentieth century” (qtd. in Gettins 2005, 117).
While we don’t want to get bogged down in the potential details of McLuhan’s
claim—after all, what makes one art form “greater” than another? —we will
explore what it would mean to take seriously his central claim that advertising is a
form of art.
One way we can approach this claim is to think about how the forms of adver-
tising might be interpreted in terms of art. This doesn’t necessarily mean that
advertising should be hung in a gallery, but instead emphasises how the use of
aspects such as colour and movement might transform everyday spaces and lead us
to think about the world in new and different ways. When we try to think about
the similarities between art and advertising this can complicate our ideas about the
status and role of art, and potentially present advertising in a more positive light
than that in which it usually appears. Approaching advertising as art can also lead
us to think about the people who make advertisements as more than just faceless
drones, but as passionate, creative people with different politics, who want to tell
stories and create meaningful impressions and interventions in the world. Thinking
about advertising in relation to art opens up new ways of explaining the appeal of
advertisements and forces us to acknowledge its wider cultural role.
Reason five: advertising is political

My final and most important reason for studying advertising is that it is tied up in
questions of politics. By this, I don’t mean the role of advertising in the service of
party politics and electioneering, or the manner in which political campaigns are
increasingly run as if they were advertising campaigns for competing brands of
toothpaste. These aspects of political advertising are certainly fascinating, but are
relatively narrow in their application. Instead, what I’m referring to here is the
wider point that advertising, like all forms of media, produces and reproduces
certain ways of understanding the world. In his 1917 novel, South Wind, Norman
Douglas famously suggests that “You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertise-
ments” (1917, 55). There is little to suggest that much has changed since then,
except that we now have many more advertisements, so there is arguably much
more raw material from which we can read those (inter)national ideals.
Advertisements present us with an easily accessible and always updating archive
of a society’s desires, fears, wants, and anxieties as well as a range of stock characters
and short repeated narratives. In the process of selling us running shoes and tea
bags, advertising thus presents us with insights into what makes a society tick. This
was perhaps nowhere as clear as during the 2017 Super Bowl broadcast—thought
to be the most expensive showcase in global advertising—when many archetypal
American brands, such as Budweiser, unveiled commercials that many regarded as
criticisms of then-President Donald Trump. On a similar note, Nike’s 2018 cam-
paign featuring Colin Kaepernick served as lightning rod for debates around race
in the USA amidst the Black Lives Matter protests.
Consequently, so long as we pay enough attention and know where to look, we
can find in advertising a wealth of material about the construction and dissemina-
tion of our values, ideas, and ideals in our societies (Wernick 1991, 24–25). Such
concepts are inherently political because they play a fundamental role in teaching
us about the roles and functions available to us, the ways we can express ourselves
and solve our problems, and therefore provide a way of making sense of how
power and resources are distributed in our society. Advertising arises at the conflux
of the most crudely economic demands and the loftiest cultural aspirations of our
media landscape. It is simultaneously one of the most debased and one of the most
creative cultural forms. It is essential to the expansion and persistence of consumer
society and all the consequences thereof—including exploitative work conditions
and ecological damage— and provides a distraction from sustained examination of
the environmental impact of Western consumption habits. As a consequence,
advertising expresses some of the thorniest and most interesting dilemmas sur-
rounding politics in our society and is one of the most productive sites at which to
consider some of the defining tensions of contemporary cultural production.
Provided we have the right tools for the job, advertising can tell us much about
how the world works.
What this book is about

These, then, are my five reasons why we would want to study advertising in detail
and why I think you should take the time to read a book on the subject. Hopefully,
some, if not all, of these reasons align with your own interests in advertising. In this
book I’ll be exploring, expanding, and complicating these different approaches, as
well as ideally providing opportunities for you to contemplate your own interests
in advertising. In order to accomplish these ends, this book is structured into three
parts that provide opportunities to pursue contrasting perspectives towards adver-
tising. Part I will set you up with the fundamentals you’ll need to study advertising;
Part II will focus upon advertising as an economic form tied up with capitalism
and consumerism that trains us to seek pleasure and purpose in purchases; and Part
III will present several counter-arguments for understanding advertising as a com-
plicated, creative form that can serve a variety of social and cultural purposes. By
the end of this book you will therefore be familiar with at least two central com-
peting models for analysing the social, cultural, and political work of advertising
and be able to assess the various claims of those approaches and how they challenge
and complicate one another in productive ways.
The foundations of studying advertising

The first part comprises this introduction and chapters on the formal analysis and
history of advertising. The purpose of this section is to provide you with the basic
methods and knowledge needed to make sense of advertising. In Chapter 2, I will
Introduction 11
provide you with a quick history of advertising through a focus on four key his-
torical moments: the development of advertising in the context of the Industrial
Revolution; the professionalisation of the industry at the turn of the twentieth
century; the reinvention of advertising as a creative practice in the 1950s; and the
rise of digital advertising in the twenty-first century. Chapter 3 then complements
those histories by guiding you through a range of approaches to analysing adver-
tisements in terms of semiotic and ideological methods, as well as making sense of
how different codes and conventions contribute to the final form of advertise-
ments. This chapter will provide you with a basic toolkit for explaining the key
features of individual examples and the fundamental concepts for talking about the
construction and communication of meaning in ads. The reason we begin with
this material is so that you have the ability to ground the larger theories of the later
chapters in specific examples and evaluate how those arguments apply to your own
advertising environment. You’ll be able to practice and develop the skills intro-
duced in this chapter throughout your studies of advertising. A familiarity with
both the changing style of advertising and the different ways that the practice of
advertising has been understood will enable you to place its current forms in
context.
Advertising and capitalism

Part II of the book will advance an argument that advertising can be best accounted
for in relation to the economic context of capitalism. The four chapters in this
section address key aspects of the political economic approach that has traditionally
been the dominant means for making sense of advertising in Media and Cultural
Studies. Chapter 4 begins by introducing the key concepts of “capitalism” and
“ideology.” After an explanation of why capitalism is absolutely central to any
attempt to understand advertising, this chapter will address how the notion of
ideology connects the economic idea of capitalism with a wider analysis of society
and culture. This connection will be illustrated through the analysis of several ads
for credit cards that illustrate how advertising works as a way to think through our
relationship to capitalism, and how capitalism is usually presented as a natural and
desirable way of life. Chapter 5 develops this mode of analysis further through a
sustained engagement with the idea of the “commodity.” In the context of political
economic approaches to capitalism and advertising, the term “commodity” refers
to a particular understanding of goods separate from their conditions of produc-
tion, which means that we don’t tend to think about where they come from and
how they’re made. We will consider how advertising functions to inject new
meanings into products that are frequently far and beyond any qualities that the
objects themselves possess: for example, Coca-Cola ads usually suggest that drink-
ing Coke will lead to happiness.
Chapter 6 will then explore how advertising audiences are construed in this
political economic model. This will involve an examination of how audiences for
advertising are effectively bought and sold by media producers and how the eco-
nomic logic of the mass audiences can lead to conservative and conformist media
content. We will also consider how attempts to reach audiences in the digital era
lie at the heart of both new forms of consumer engagement and online surveil-
lance. Finally, in Chapter 7, we will zoom out to consider how an ever-diminish-
ing distinction between advertising and other aspects of life has transformed the
processes and priorities of our wider society and given rise to new forms of adver-
tising, such as influencers. From branding to impression management, practices
that were once restricted to advertising now impact upon multiple aspects of our
lives and place pressure on individuals to market themselves as if they were prod-
ucts. Overall, the political economic approaches to advertising that inform the
chapters in this section contribute to a bleak picture of advertising as a powerful
cultural form that uses its ability to persuade the population to produce a profit at
the expense of social and cultural awareness.
Art, agency, and other complications

In contrast, Part III of this book will take up approaches to advertising informed by
cultural industries and cultural studies traditions in order to challenge and compli-
cate those conclusions we draw from a political economic model in isolation. The
introduction of these alternate perspectives is not meant to be a dismissal of those
critical Marxist methods, but rather should be understood as part of a dialectical
model. This means that rather than attempt to resolve the contradictions between
these competing interpretations, such that one is right and one is wrong, we need
to try to hold both in our heads simultaneously. The conflict between the two
models speaks to the fact that not just in theory, but also in its actual existence and
practice, advertising is a complicated and even internally contradictory practice.
In the first chapter of this section, Chapter 8, we will examine the production
of advertising from the perspective of those who actually produce it: rather than
the faceless monolith that emerges out of Marxist accounts, we will consider the
inner complexity, organisational structure, and self-perception of the agencies and
agents that make advertising. Chapter 9 will expand on this approach to advertis-
ing by considering the social status and critical perspective of the advertisements
themselves. This will involve an interrogation of the idea of “creativity” in the
context of advertising and the possibilities and limitations of that concept. Building
on that discussion, we will investigate the relationship between advertising and art,
ask what it is that separates the two categories, and explore what it might mean if
we were to classify advertising as a form of art with the ability to offer meaningful
and critical comment on the world. Chapter 10 closes off this section by taking
into account the goals and gratifications that the advertising audience seeks and
obtains from advertisements. Looking at the ways that audiences not only interpret
advertising, but also use it as a resource for their own ends and even help produce
it, this chapter leads us towards a more nuanced understanding of the audience as
active participants, rather than naive dupes.
To bring it all together, the final chapter of the book will then offer an overview
of the different arguments and positions staked out in the previous chapter, with a
particular emphasis on how the prior material can be considered “political.” By
examining the fortunes of Pepsi’s ill-fated “Live for Now” campaign, we’ll think
about the different ways that advertising can get caught up in politics, what it
Introduction 13
means when brands take active stances on politically contentious issues, and how
this dramatic shift away from traditional industry assumptions might point towards
the future of advertising as a media form.
What this book is not about

That, then, is a quick summary of what this book is about and the different topics
that will be touched upon in more detail in the later chapters. However, given the
potential for misunderstanding that often arises in the study of advertising, it is
important to also clearly state what this book is not about, so as to ensure we’re all
on the same page. First, if it were not already clear from the chapter summaries,
this is not a book about how to make ads, at least not in any direct way. While
some of the material addressed in this book might very well assist you in the pro-
duction of advertising, such an outcome is very far from the primary goal of this
book, which is really about understanding the role of advertising in wider social
and cultural contexts. Moreover, while this book is certainly interested in taking
into account how those who make advertising understand what they are doing,
this does not mean that we will be beholden to industry-driven perspectives on
advertising. For example, in the context of Marketing Studies there are often divi-
sions between mass-media advertising and other forms of promotion, such as
branding and publicity. However, rather than adhering to such distinctions as they
are produced and reproduced in industry-led accounts, we will instead be follow-
ing a more everyday definition of advertising. John Sinclair sums up this position
well when he argues that “when we talk about advertising in everyday life … we
don’t bother drawing a line between advertising and other forms of promotion,
nor do we distinguish between, say, TVCs [television commercials] and sponsored
search results on the internet – it’s all just advertising” (Sinclair 2012, 3).
As such, we will be casting our net more widely than might be common practice
in the context of a Marketing or Advertising Studies programme, in order to make
sense of advertising in the wider context of our media environment and consumer
culture. However, and this is the final point of clarification, this is also not a book
about advertising as a generic media form, or a way to approach wider issues in
Media and Cultural Studies. Instead, this is a book that aims to address what is most
specific to advertising as a form of media and those topics that are most salient to
advertising rather than other forms of cultural production. Accordingly, advertising
won’t be treated as the excuse or the substrate for other analyses: this means that we
won’t be looking at wider issues—such as the representation of gender and race,
celebrity culture, music, globalisation, or humour—as they emerge in advertising.
While these are valid and important topics, we’ll be focusing instead on those
concepts, issues, and debates that are particular to advertising: the concerns and
questions that are central to advertising or arise with respect to advertising in a
particularly pointed way compared to other media forms. These include the imper-
ative to sell, the relation between media and economics, ideas of manipulation and
persuasion, and the intersection between art and commerce. Advertising is the
reason we’re here, not a way into other debates and discussion, and so our focus
will always be on what is particular to advertising as a medium and cultural form.
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with-more-growth-expected-in-2022/?sh=43bdac0c7bc6. Accessed 7 May 2022.
Berger, J. 1983. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.
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as-earthquakes-rock-the-region-kyushu-shinkansen-commercialis-more-poignant-
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news/detail/we-won-some-awards-at-cannes-lions-2011/. Accessed 3 February 2015.
Gettins, D. 2005. How to Write Great Copy. London: Kogan Page.
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2 The history of advertising
Contexts, transformations, and continuity
There is a lot that can seem absolutely and unprecedentedly new about advertising
in the twenty-first century: new digital technologies allow the production of new
forms of advertising; new online platforms create new spaces in which to advertise;
new forms of data-gathering create the conditions for the unprecedented moni-
toring and targeting of consumers. With the rapid and continuing development of
new frontiers in advertising, especially in relation to digital and online media, it
might therefore appear that advertising now is all about the “new”: that there has
been an absolute break with advertising’s past and, as a result, its history can no
longer tell us anything about its future. Some have even suggested that in the
advertising industry history “is almost a dirty word” (Hegarty 2011, 7).
This is certainly the sort of claim that is repeated surprisingly frequently in both
industry and academic literature, where the brave new world of online advertising
is suggested to have changed the game so dramatically that there is little to be
learnt from an investigation of what came before. One of the ironies of such claims
is that when we do take a closer look at the history of advertising, we see that such
declarations—that advertising has changed so dramatically as to make earlier forms
of knowledge irrelevant—are one of the notable recurring features of advertising
over the past two centuries. Indeed, constant change, or at the very least the belief
that things are constantly changing, might be considered one of the most consist-
ent defining features of the institutions, practices, and forms of advertising. It is a
further irony, then, that if we do want to understand why advertising is so enthralled
with the idea of change, then we need to have a sense of the forces and priorities
that have shaped its shifting nature over time, and the consequent ways in which
advertising has understood, presented, and conducted itself.
In order to address these issues, this chapter will investigate the history of adver-
tising with a particular eye to the changes and consistencies that characterise its
development as a media form: from its early ramshackle days as an occupation of
ill-repute to its current existence as a high-tech cornerstone of the digital global
economy. We will think not only about what has changed, but also about what has
not changed: the connections that can be drawn between the debates and direction
of advertising across the twentieth century and the manifestation of advertising
today. In doing so, we will gain an appreciation for how, despite the current fixa-
tion on digital reinvention, advertising remains a product of decades-old forces,
including aspirations for legitimacy and respectability, and conflicts between the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003253037-3
science and the art of advertising. Unfortunately, I don’t have the space in this
single chapter to present you with a complete overview of the history of advertis-
ing. Instead, we will focus on some key moments and themes in the history of
advertising that will give you the background knowledge you’ll need to make the
most of your study of advertising.
A familiarity with this material will provide useful background to this book’s
later discussions of advertising in terms of concepts such as capitalism, audiences,
and creativity, and thus function as an important launching pad for making sense
of how advertising works today. If you are interested in reading more, there are a
number of book-length studies of advertising history, including Mark Tungate’s
Adland (2013) and Robert Crawford’s Digital Dawn in Adland (2021) from an
industry perspective, Jackson Lears’ Fables of Abundance from a cultural history per-
spective (1994) and William Leiss et al.’s Social Communication in Advertising (2005),
which offers an overview of a number of different historical approaches. I draw
upon all of these books in this chapter’s account, and if you want to learn more
they provide a great deal of additional detail regarding the periods and themes I
will discuss.
Four moments in advertising history

Our journey through the history of advertising will be defined by four key
moments that are spaced roughly fifty years apart. We will begin with the origins
of advertising during the Industrial Revolution and the formation of mass soci-
ety in the nineteenth century. Our investigation of this moment provides a
context for advertising’s ties to a number of other social, economic, and techno-
logical transformations taking place at that time. By examining the conditions in
which advertising began we can start to appreciate how advertising is always part
and product of its wider environment, with particular relation to ideas of con-
sumerism and the consumer society. The second key moment is the turn of the
twentieth century, when tensions came to the fore regarding the regulation and
responsibilities of advertising. Faced with pressure from officials who sought to
regulate the wild claims and outright lies that were exemplified in advertise-
ments for “patent medicines,” many in the industry sought to reinvent them-
selves as respectable businessmen. It is out of the conflicting forces of this time
that the first modern style full-service advertising agencies emerged as part of a
concerted attempt to professionalise and legitimate advertising as a responsible
practice.
Our third moment takes place in the mid-twentieth century following the mas-
sive expansion of American consumer society after World War Two. In this envi-
ronment, advertising appeared, on the one hand, as a potential menace that could
harness the power of new developments in social science and psychology to steer
the minds of the masses. On the other hand, the “Creative Revolution” promised
a rejuvenation of the power of advertising to entertain and enliven everyday life.
Finally, our fourth moment takes us almost up to the present day by considering
the changes in advertising since the beginning of the twenty-first century. We will
consider the new forms of advertising that have arisen in digital and online spaces
The history of advertising 17
and explore how these new developments both break from but also draw upon
long-standing tendencies in advertising. Again, this approach is not intended to
substitute for a comprehensive history of advertising, and the focus on these four
moments means that other aspects will be neglected, but hopefully you will come
away with a sense of some of the key themes and recurring debates in advertising
and how they inform current practice.
The first moment: origins, industrialisation, and development

Our journey through the history of advertising begins with a question that is
surprisingly difficult to answer: when did advertising begin? Some histories of
advertising—especially those operating from an industry perspective—suggest that
the first examples of advertising can be found as far back as the early Roman
Empire (Turnbull 2022, 1; Wharton 2015, 26–33) or even that pre-historic cave
paintings could be considered a form of advertising (Tungate 2013, 7). Such
accounts act to naturalise advertising: to present it as a universal and timeless aspect
of the human condition which we as a species have carried out since pretty soon
after walking on two legs. Yet in order to make such arguments, these historical
accounts end up ignoring important details and relevant aspects of the surrounding
context, because while such Classical or Prehistorical examples (might) constitute
an attempt to communicate regarding goods and services, they bear very little in
common to the mass-produced, mass-distributed, mass-mediated messages that
saturate our contemporary culture. Advertising, as it occurs in our society, is not a
natural and eternal human practice: it is the product of a specific motivation and
method of communication that emerges under particular cultural, economic and
social conditions.
The first advertising?

As communications historian Vincent Norris argues, the idea of advertising doesn’t
really even make sense in societies where economic relations were based around
gift-giving, feudal redistribution, and self-sufficiency, and there was therefore no
“need or opportunity to advertise” (1980, 49). While merchants in such contexts
may have put out signs letting passers-by know what wares they had for sale, such
displays have as much in common with the contemporary multibillion-dollar pro-
motion industry as medieval balladry does to contemporary popular music: sure,
they both involve singing, but the differences in purpose, scale, form, function,
and practice are so immense as they make them effectively different activities. The
same applies to advertising. While classical merchants may have advised potential
customers of the goods they could purchase, this is not meaningfully comparable
to globalised network of complex multi-media promotional practices that consti-
tutes twenty-first-century advertising. Thus, when we imagine Roman store signs
or other promotional images of earlier periods as the equivalent of contemporary
advertising, we are fundamentally misunderstanding the economic conditions of
those moments and the nature of advertising. Instead, as Raymond Williams
argues, in order to grasp the history of advertising in a useful manner, it is
important that we attend to the specific institutions and practices that form the
basis of contemporary advertising and consider how they relate to the surrounding
economic and social developments (2005, 190).
Industrialisation and mass society

What is at stake with the question of when advertising begins is the even larger
question of what exactly advertising is. When we mark the first moment of “actual”
advertising, we are making a statement about what constitutes the key features that
make advertising what it is. In light of this, I suggest that we mark the advent of
advertising in the early-nineteenth century: a period when industrialisation—“the
movement within a culture or economic system toward an increased emphasis on
large-scale/mechanized industry rather than agricultural/small-scale commercial
activity” (Szeman and O’Brien 2017, 319)—was dramatically changing European
and North American societies. Industrialisation ushered in many dramatic changes
to the ways in which people lived, but the most significant in terms of the current
discussion are:
• Urbanisation: the growth of large factories following the Industrial Revolution

led to the increased possibility of employment in urban centres, which resulted
in large-scale migration of people from rural areas to the growing cities across
Europe. Thousands, indeed millions, flocked to the cities, thereby breaking
historical bonds of locality and community.
• Rationalisation: in the new spaces of the city and the factory, a new organisa-
tion of space and time began to emerge with an emphasis on efficiency. Old
ways of life disappeared in favour of new regimes that separated places of work
from places of living and leisure. Time also became subject to the logic of the
factory clock and calendar, which replaced the older systems of sun and
seasons.
• Mass production and mass distribution: new developments in machine tech-
nology, notably the development of steam power and the assembly line,
allowed for the mass manufacturing of consumer goods. An increased range
of goods meant an increasingly competitive marketplace, in which producers
had to find ways to distinguish their products. At the same time, mass distri-
bution allowed manufacturers to expand beyond their traditional home mar-
kets with advertising providing a way to communicate to new consumers
across national markets.
• Mass media: perhaps most importantly for us, industrialisation (including mass
production and distribution) produced the enabling conditions for the first
mass media. While newspapers had existed since the seventeenth century, the
Industrial Revolution enabled cheaper and larger print runs, transforming
publishing into a true mass medium. Defined by a centralised model and
providing a venue for rapid, standardised communication, newspapers (joined
by broadcast radio at the turn of the century) offered a way to reach a growing
and increasingly literate audience, who also had increasing leisure time and
disposable income.
It is in the context of these four cultural shifts that the practice of advertising began
to cohere in the context of what would come to be known as “consumer society”
(Lears 1994, 88–89; McFall 2004, 111). This new organisation of society marked
a profound transformation of prior social arrangements: as Susan Strasser argues, in
this new world people would now be less defined by their job and what they
produced, and instead would be more defined by what they bought (1989, 28).
Separated from traditional systems of understanding the world, such as community,
status, and religion, the new consuming classes turned to the world of goods to
provide meaning and order in their lives.
No longer was identity defined by the place and time of one’s birth; instead, it
could be created anew in the anonymous space of the city through the purchase of
goods. One of the key ways in which this was achieved was through consumption
as brands and commodities presented a new way to map out and understand the
world. These new ways of living and relating to others marked the radical and
wholesale entry of capitalism into everyday life that, carried on the currents of the
new mass media, provided both means and motivation for the practice of advertis-
ing (we will consider capitalism in more depth in Chapter 4).
The beginning of consumer society

In this new consumer society, goods and services that were once produced by
oneself or one’s family were now increasingly acquired through the exchange of
currency. This was due in large part to an increasing “division of labour” in the
new rational order. Rather than engage in all the different tasks required to furnish
a household, workers would instead specialise in one particular job in exchange for
a wage, which could then be traded for goods and services. In this economic
environment, consumers were faced with totally new consumer goods and new
variations and types of familiar products which previously would have been
self-produced, such as soap or clothing. In the absence of the guarantee that came
from knowing the producer of goods or a long-term relationship with a merchant,
advertising offered an alternate way of understanding and interpreting these new
products. Particularly important in this process was packaging, which provided a
means to not only protect goods during mass distribution, but also served as a mark
of familiarity and quality to help distinguish goods in a changing retail environ-
ment. Branded packaging offered the promise of reliable, standardised, identifiable,
and memorable products in an age of proliferation and anonymity, and shoppers
were thereby reconfigured as an audience for the spectacle of sale. Michael
Schudson makes the important point that at this early stage the focus of advertising
was on identification over identity (1986, 166): not on providing a sense of what
values and ideas the product stood for, but simply establishing that the product
existed and making it visible. This was achieved through long-term repetition of
ads: sometimes over several decades without change.
Beyond the promotion of individual goods, nineteenth-century advertising also
served the wider role of presenting the new consumerist way of life in an attractive
way. While industrialised production methods promised to usher in an era of
plenty, an increase in goods was useless without a matching increase in
consumption. One of the central tasks of advertising was thus to not only help sell
particular products, but also to present consumption in general as a desirable and
meaningful way of procuring the basics of life. In some cases, this was achieved
through explicit instructions on how one might use the product and how it might
thereby improve one’s life (Leiss et al. 2005, 205–207). In other cases, advertising
made use of earlier iconographies and mythologies to present industrial-produced
goods as a continuation of early folk traditions and practices: drawing on a long
history of imagery that presented the agricultural US as a land of bountiful harvests
and general fecundity (Lears 1994, 18). Through the evocation of this older tradi-
tion of carnivalesque excess, early advertisements worked to establish connections
between the new world of consumer societies and older ways of life which were
quickly being lost. Through such advertising, not only were consumers being sold
goods, they were also being sold the very idea of consumption: the idea that they
could purchase their way to a better life.
At the same time, an equivalent campaign was also taking place to convince the
producers— those who paid for advertising—of the virtues of this new social
institution. Ralph Hower suggests that the main promotional goal of the early
advertising agencies wasn’t to sell goods, but “to promote the general use of adver-
tising” (quoted in Schudson 1986, 74) as an essential communication between
producers and potential consumers. Those manufacturers that heeded this message
did very well: by the early twentieth century, brand recognition built through
advertising would prove a strong barrier to competition by preventing easy access
to market (Norris 1980, 53). However, these early agencies were quite different
from their modern form. Complicating any easy equation of advertising with
creativity, the first advertising agencies didn’t even produce the ads themselves.
Instead, agents would buy media space in bulk, primarily in print publications,
then divide it into smaller packages which they would sell on to manufacturers
while charging a commission (Leiss et al. 2005, 125). These first agencies were in
the business of buying and selling media space, not creating promotional content
(Tungate 2013, 14). Therefore, while advertising was becoming ever more tightly
bound up with the wider social and economic changes of the new industrialised
consumer society, it would not be until the final decades of the century that adver-
tisers would begin to deal in advertising content as well as media space, and thereby
begin to resemble the more familiar industry and media form of the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
The second moment: professionalisation, consolidation, and

redemption
Practices and forms much more similar to the modern practice of advertising
would begin to emerge in the final decades of the nineteenth century amidst
growing concerns regarding advertising’s social role. As the industry matured and
expanded, this period saw not only the consolidation of the first advertising agen-
cies but also mounting fears regarding the power of advertising to influence con-
sumers. These concerns were only heightened by what was perceived as the
industry’s lack of organisation, accountability, or professionalism. For the
advertising industry, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a period
marked by a struggle for social legitimacy and conflicts regarding the establishment
of acceptable practices, regulations, and codes of ethics.
The problem with patent medicine

Such matters were of particular concern in the case of the large percentage of
advertisements that turned to false claims in order to sell their products. This was
especially true of advertisements for “patent medicines”: a class of products that
promised to cure any and all manner of ill-defined ailments (Lears 1994, 43),
including lumbago, toothache, “brain trouble”, malaria, and a lack of vim: often
all at once! In practice, the apparently therapeutic properties of these “medicines”
were the result of generous quantities of alcohol, opium, and even cocaine. The
soft drink Coca-Cola began life as just such a product and was marketed as a rem-
edy for fatigue and headaches: a feat it originally achieved through a dose of
cocaine (which was later replaced by a hefty dose of caffeine following govern-
ment regulation) (Pendergrast 2000, 8–10, 103–104). Patent medicine advertising
formed the “backbone” of most agencies’ business in the mid- to late nineteenth
century and constituted up to a quarter of all advertising produced in America at
the time (Schudson 1986, 161–162), while in the UK, the eponymous manufac-
turer of “Holloway’s Ointment” and “Holloway’s Pills” was that country’s “largest
advertiser” during this period (Corley 1987, 116).
Patent medicines form an important part of the history of advertising and con-
sumerism because they were one of the first products to be advertised through
appeal to specific brands, rather than as generic wholesale goods (Petty 2019, 288).
With the successful use of overblown rhetoric and vague claims towards pseu-
do-scientific research, the promotion of patent medicine also demonstrated the
power of advertising to move products that offered little to no actual benefits. To
critics of the industry, this practice was indicative of how advertising was little
more than fanciful deception and manipulation: a continuation of the older prac-
tices of travelling peddlers who combined entertainment and trickery in order to
hawk their wares (Lears 1994, 65). The excesses and outright lies of patent medi-
cine advertising were thus generative of a lack of trust or respect and contributed
to the persistent public perception that advertising was “barely an honest trade, let
alone a profession” (Tungate 2013, 30). This reputation for trickery and untrust-
worthiness did not sit well, however, with the increasingly powerful and influential
advertising agencies of the early nineteenth century. Not only were those who
worked in the industry looking for greater personal prestige and social status but
the notoriety of the profession also threatened to hinder agencies’ abilities to secure
contracts with national firms (Lears 1994, 154).
Consequently, in contrast to the chaotic and often outright deceptive practices
of patent medicine advertising, some of the key players in the industry began to
push for greater professionalism and solemnity in their practice in order to separate
themselves from “carnival barkers, snake-oil salesmen, and such celebrated pro-
moters of ballyhoo and humbug as P.T. Barnum” (Marchand 1985, 8). An impor-
tant part of this process involved taking control of the production of the
advertisements themselves, which led to the emergence of “full service” agencies
that would provide art and copy for advertising as well as buying and selling media
space. By taking control over the content of their advertising, the industry could
ensure that it was not “implicated in the sins of its clients” (Lears 1994, 201). In
this new style of advertising, realism and rationality would dominate: prose would
be simple, claims would be accurate, and imagery would be tasteful and relevant.
The search for respectability

The N.W. Ayer and Son agency was illustrative of this new approach, where agen-
cies would provide strictly factual copy for national corporations (Lears 1994, 94),
but they were far from alone in such an endeavour. The turn of the twentieth
century was the era of figures like John E. Powers, who advocated “plain speech”
and declared that “fine writing is offensive” (Tungate 2013, 11), or John E.
Kennedy, who pioneered the highly influential concept of “reason why” advertis-
ing (O’Reilly and Tennant 2009, xviii), which focused on the novel idea of pro-
viding consumers with a “reason why” they should purchase the product or
service. Such commitments spawned phenomena such as the industry-sponsored
“truth-in-advertising” movement that ostensibly sought to police standards and
stamp out misinformation (and which also served as a way for the larger Anglo-
Saxon agencies to stamp out minor players and other “undesirables”) (Lears 1994,
204).
At the heart of such approaches was a dedication to “factual advertising” that
eschewed the glitz and fanciful images of the earlier era in favour of realistic claims
and calm, rational communication in order to inform the public as to the con-
sumer choices available to them. The other key part of this shift was a transition
from understanding advertising as a form of performance to understanding it as a
form of science through the greater integration of statistical and psychological
approaches. N.W. Ayer and Sons again led the way in this regard with systematic
research into demographics and brand preferences (Lears 1994, 211). The devel-
opment of advertising trade journals provided an outlet for the developing disci-
pline of market research, which sought to apply the latest scientific breakthroughs
to the study of consumer behaviour (Leiss et al. 2005, 136). Through the marriage
of reputable business and sober science, advertising thus sought to exorcise the
ghost of patent medicine and redefine itself as a legitimate profession that contrib-
uted to society in a rational, progressive manner.
The positive effects of this self-redemptive campaign were readily apparent by
the 1920s, by which time advertising had established itself at the forefront of the
new modern era, especially in the American context. Contributions to the
American “Committee on Public Information” during World War One had
demonstrated advertising’s ability to play an active and positive role in public life
(Marchand 1985, 8), while its promotional role was increasingly understood as a
means of “educating the people in the uses of prosperity” (Lears 1994, 225). Only
two decades on from the ignominious days of patent medicine conmen, advertisers
had established themselves as a responsible and indispensable part of the new cor-
porate elite: “the American advertising man of the 1920s was the most modern of
men” (Marchand 1985, 1). No longer the work of conmen and scoundrels, adver-
tising was instead increasingly hailed as a “moral and educative force”, and adver-
tisers were the model of “business statesmanship” (Marchand 1985, 8).
The high point of this praise was President Calvin Coolidge’s 1926 address to the
newly formed American Association of Advertising Agencies, in which he cele-
brated their contributions to the “ennoblement” of the commercial world (Marchand
1985, 8–9). This association with the new sense of progressive modernity was only
strengthened by advertising’s close ties with the new medium of radio: despite initial
concerns about both the possible negative consequences of commercial sponsorship
as a funding mechanism and the intrusion of advertising into the private home,
advertising soon become a central part of the structure of the American radio indus-
try (Merskin 2003, 767–768). Nor was this modernity restricted to America: in the
aftermath of the war, American technology and consumer practices were exported
directly to the industrialised states of Western Europe (Sasson 2006, 937; Tomka
2013, 251) and with it came the techniques and organisations of American adver-
tising. As with many aspects of popular and mass culture, the entry of American
models into Europe following World War One, and later World War Two, would
prove highly influential for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond.
By the end of the 1920s, key aspects of the modern advertising industry—
including the role of agencies, connections to media, and business practices—had
been well established (Pope 1983, 253–256). The idea of a sober, respectable, and
professional industry dedicated to a scientific and rational process coalesced during
this period and would constitute the dominant model of advertising up until the
late 1950s. This does not mean, however, that the practice and forms of advertising
were absolutely static in this period. For example, although there remained a com-
mitment to advertising as a form of rational communication, the increasing inte-
gration of consumer research meant that there was an increasing focus on “appeals”
and the use of symbols that could evoke emotional responses: the turn to research
also lead to a focus on market segmentation and the identification of particular
consumer groups (Leiss et al. 2005, 150–152). Nonetheless, despite these shifts in
focus the outward form of advertisements remained largely unchanging: especially
with regards to print advertising.
Sut Jhally refers to this period as the “iconology” phase of advertising, where
advertisements focused on the way in which products could intercede in the world
in order to grant consumers status, health, and authority (1990, 201–202). During
this time, the formal arrangement of advertising also became increasingly formu-
laic, with the combination of illustrative images, usually of people engaging with
the product, and explanatory prose at the bottom or sides of the image.
While shifting production technology led to an increasing integration of pho-
tography over illustration from the 1930s onwards, and colour became increasingly
standard in the 1940s, the overall formula shifted little. Consequently, compared to
the advertising of today, the advertisements produced in the first half of the twen-
tieth century seem remarkably consistent and standardised over a relatively long
period of time: the product of a stable, self-satisfied and ostensibly “scientific”
industry that was yet to undergo dramatic changes and challenges during the late
1950s.
The third moment: hidden persuaders and Creative
Revolutionaries
Amidst the booming consumer culture of the late 1950s, advertising’s nine-
teenth-century reputation for chicanery and roguishness must have seemed a
world away. In its place, the industry was now widely perceived as “monotonous,
repetitive and dull”: the natural home of the conformist and sycophantic “organ-
isation man” of the period (Frank 1997, 35–36). Advertising had acquired the
sort of reputation that we would these days associate with accounting: a safe,
lucrative, reputable, but ultimately profoundly boring, profession that involved
the careful execution of unchanging formulas. The soul-crushing dullness of the
mid-century advertising world reached its apogee in Sloan Wilson’s 1955 novel,
The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (and its 1956 film adaptation) which detailed the
inauthenticity and conformity of the public relations industry, in particular, and
corporate America, more generally. However, this conception of advertising as a
buttoned-down, bureaucratic practice would be dramatically challenged by the
end of the decade in ways that would transform the practice and profile of the
industry.
The fear of advertising

The radical shifts that reverberated through the advertising industry in the middle
of the last century can be summarised through two examples that represent incred-
ibly different interventions into the practice of advertising: the first is Vance
Packard’s book-length exposé The Hidden Persuaders, and the second is Doyle Dane
Bernbach’s “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagen. While in their way both
texts reflect exhaustion with the scientific model that had dominated advertising
since the 1910s, they present very different responses to that situation. On the one
hand, Packard’s book speaks to an increasing public fear regarding the power of
scientific advertising that gave rise to new counter-culture critiques of consumer
society, and which would manifest in their most paranoid form in ideas of sublim-
inal advertising. On the other hand, the “Think Small” campaign would offer a
vision of a new self-styled “creative” advertising that would dispense with the
formulas of the past decades in search of new, more authentic forms. Both would
prove definitive for the next stage of advertising’s development.
Vance Packard’s The Hidden Persuaders, originally published in 1957, has been
called one of the most influential critiques of advertising ever published (Leiss et
al. 2005, 9; Miller 2007, 10). Mark Crispin Miller credits it with the complete
reorientation of the public’s concept of advertising from a stodgy annoyance to a
frighteningly powerful machine for the wholescale manipulation of the public
(2007, 10–12). In the book, Packard denounces advertising as the application of
cutting-edge social science in the service of corporations. At the heart of Packard’s
criticisms of advertising is the idea of “motivation research”: practices that involved
using the latest developments in psychoanalytic research and social anthropology
in order to develop a better sense of the fears, values, doubts, and desires of the
consuming public (2007, 47). Armed with such knowledge, advertisers were
thought to be able to appeal to the subconscious drives of consumers and thereby
lead them to purchase goods for which they had no rational need or desire.
Packard refers to this system as “depth manipulation” (2007, 170). Although
such techniques may not seem particularly controversial or shocking today—
Packard’s chapter on “marketing eight hidden needs”, including emotional secu-
rity and a sense of power, might not be out of place in a modern marketing
textbook—at the time, they outraged the public and stirred substantial debate
(Miller argues that our jaded response to such claims should be read as an indica-
tion of how much we’ve internalised the consumer framework that Packard
denounces [2007, 25]). In such a manner, The Hidden Persuaders helped provide
form and substance to previously nebulous concerns about the power of corporate
communication in an increasingly media-saturated society. Thus, while Packard
didn’t simply create popular scepticism and fear towards advertising out of thin air,
his work would act as a rallying point for subsequent denunciations of advertising
as a form of undemocratic manipulation.
Perhaps the most influential and controversial critique of advertising to emerge
in the period was the idea of subliminal advertising. Packard had suggested that
advertisers were embracing psychological research in order to steer consumer
behaviour, but the idea of subliminal advertising took this even further (Leiss et al.
2005, 7). Developed most fully in the work of Wilson Bryan Key (1973), the
subliminal theory suggested that images or words secretly implanted in advertis-
ing—below the level of conscious perception—could exert powerful control over
audience behaviour. Methods for inserting such subliminal messaging include sub-
tle photo manipulation, quick-fire editing, and audio back-masking. As with
Packard’s revelations regarding “motivation research” in Hidden Persuaders, the
notion of subliminal advertising struck a strong chord with the public regarding
the general unease about the growing presence and power of advertising, albeit
with one important difference: unlike “motivation research,” subliminal advertis-
ing had no real basis in fact (Leiss et al. 2005, 7). Nonetheless, the widespread
embrace of the notion and its persistent prominence in discussions of advertising
speak to the growing popular scepticism of advertising from the 1950s onwards
and the identification of advertising with the dark side of the new consumer
society.
“Think Small” and the Creative Revolution

The other prominent example we’ll be looking at—the “Think Small” cam-
paign—speaks to a very different, but equally significant, transformation in adver-
tising: the rise of the “Creative Revolution.” Launched in 1959, the primary
purpose of “Think Small” was to provide a much-needed rebranding for
Volkswagen, who were at the widely time regarded as “Nazi cars”. However, the
ads ended up becoming a phenomenon in themselves. Eschewing the formal,
quasi-scientific rules developed over the previous five decades, the “Think Small”
campaign emphasised simplicity and authenticity with a wry sense of humour.
While it may be difficult to appreciate from the vantage of half a century on, this
was a radical campaign at the time. From its self-effacing copy to its minimalist,
black-and-white design, and even its sans-serif font and use of a full stop with its
slogan, this campaign defied contemporary advertising conventions in a manner
that seemed to pull away the curtain from the systems and rules that had come to
define advertising, revealing them as contrived and ineffectual. It is difficult to
overstate the importance of these advertisements, which are among the most
widely reproduced and most celebrated ever: the VW campaign is “one of the
most analysed, discussed, and admired campaigns in the industry’s history, studied
in introductory marketing classes and including in advertising retrospectives of all
kinds” (Frank 1997, 60). In its own way, “Think Small” is the Mona Lisa of
advertising.
The impact of “Think Small” thus goes far beyond the critical and commercial
success of the campaign itself. It was not simply a ground-breaking series of adver-
tisements, but also came to “epitomise the Creative Revolution, and that revolu-
tion changed the face of advertising” (Cracknell 2011, 100). The Creative
Revolution is the name given to a period of rapid transformation in the advertising
industry—centred largely in New York in the late 1950s and 1960s—in which
quasi-scientific methods were dispensed with in favour of a new focus on artistry,
authenticity, and individuality. In the wake of the “Think Small” campaign, adver-
tising was seemingly reborn as art directors and copywriters were elevated in stat-
ure, research was dispensed with, and rules were suddenly made to be broken. No
longer would advertisements be produced by committee and the application of set
formulae: they would instead emerge from the eccentric genius of unshackled
creative individuals: people like Bill Bernbach of Doyle, Dane and Bernbach
(DDB).
If “Think Small” is the emblematic advertisement of the Creative Revolution,
then Bernbach is the emblematic individual for this new ways of doing things: the
man who “invented the creative revolution” (Fox 1997, 240). A founder of DDB,
Bernbach is the figure most often identified with the Creative Revolution’s
straight-talking and anti-conventional approach to advertising, and with the con-
comitant reorganisation of agency structures along anti-hierarchical lines (Frank
1997, 56–60). Most importantly, Bernbach’s restructuring meant that no longer
would art directors and copywriters work in isolation: encouraged to collaborate
they would increasingly come to challenge the power of not only research and
accounts departments but also clients (Pray, 2009). Following the success of DDB,
it seemed as if a whole new world had opened up, and DDB was quickly joined
by a number of other newly creative agencies, such as Papert Koenig Lois, Young
& Rubicam and Geer, DuBois, and new creative celebrities, such as David Ogilvy,
Jerry Della Femina, George Lois, Phyllis Robinson and Mary Wells. The diversity
of this group, which included women and working-class creatives, was indicative
of the new voices the Creative Revolution brought to the industry. The estab-
lished agencies had traditionally enforced a largely unspoken, but widely known,
hiring policy that excluded “ethnic” groups, such as those of Italian, Greek and
Jewish descent, in favour of “Anglo-Saxons” (Femina 2010, 4). However,
Bernbach’s triumph was indicative of a new generation of Jewish copywriters,
who would work alongside a new generation of Italian and Greek art-directors,
like George Lois (Cracknell 2011, 80). As historical prejudices began to break
down, the advertising industry would increasingly welcome those who historically
been excluded (Fox 1997, 218).
The Creative Revolution was therefore much more than a celebration of the
creative contributions of a few geniuses: it was also a larger shift in the way adver-
tising was created and perceived (Leiss et al. 2005, 317). Advertising was no longer
respectable. Advertising was exciting, rebellious, and fun: all the better to sell
products to new generations of counter-cultural and sceptical consumers who had
internalised the warnings of The Hidden Persuaders. Nor was the influence of this
new way of doing advertising limited to the USA; it also found its adherents in
places like Western Europe (Nixon 2013) and Brazil (O’Barr 2008). Thus, just as
the commitment to staid rationality shaped advertising in the first half of the cen-
tury, the new style and new way of thinking about advertising borne of the
Creative Revolution—in conjunction with increased public scepticism and con-
cern—would dominate the second half. Even as research departments regained
some of the prestige they had lost in the Creative Revolution at the end of the
1960s (Frank 1997, 225–226), the displacement of power towards creative depart-
ments would continue to guide the wider profile of the industry. As we will see
when we examine the organisational structures of agencies in Chapter 8, the rele-
vance of research continues to be questioned in contemporary agencies, while (as
we’ll see in Chapter 9) creative departments are often defined by a sense of their
own self-importance.
Moreover, even though the Creative Revolution had begun primarily in print,
its emphasis on visuals over words would prove well-suited to the increasingly
dominant medium of television. The rise of television created the conditions for
ever greater emphasis on the affective appeals and aesthetic play that emerged in
the Creative Revolution, which can be seen in the emphasis on “emotional selling
points” that shaped advertising in the 1980s (McFall 2004, 178), and the hip, cyn-
ical appeals to “generation X” in the 1990s (Leiss et al. 2005, 481–484). The
ascendance of the thirty-second TV commercial, or TVC, as the gold standard of
advertising during this period is indicative of the values and expectations that
guided an industry which understood itself as (at its best) fundamentally creative
and entertaining. As moving images, television commercials have the ability to
present short narratives and usually have greater budgets than other advertising
genres. In fact, television advertisements usually have higher production costs per
second than feature films and television programmes, making them potentially the
most expensive visual media with the highest production values (Logue Newth
2013, 34)! For the rest of the twentieth century, advertisers didn’t overly concern
themselves with factual information about product benefits: instead, they dreamed
of untiring robot rabbits, smoking cowboys, and ice-skating polar bears.
The fourth moment: digital advertising, algorithms, and social

media
While the industry continued to worship at the altar of creativity, at the dawn of
the twenty-first century the feisty underdogs of the Creative Revolution had
grown into the globalised behemoths of the corporate world. As we will examine
in more detail in Chapter 8—where we discuss the role and organisation of agen-
cies—the 1980s and 1990s saw a string of complicated corporate manoeuvres that
lead to both “unbundling” within agencies, whereby different divisions were spun
off into separate businesses, and a series of mergers between agencies to form new
global “mega-agencies” (Sinclair 2012, 42). As the dominance of television had
helped cement the shifts of the Creative Revolution, the increasing importance of
digital and online technology would herald the emergence of new advertising
paradigms in the 2000s. The transition to digital advertising was relatively slow in
the first decades of the twenty-first century, with television advertising proving
particularly tenacious despite multiple predictions of its demise. In the USA (the
country for which it is easiest to obtain clear advertising sales figures), only 27% of
overall advertising spend went to digital and online media in 2015. However, with
the growing shift to online media only exacerbated by the global COVID-19
pandemic, the transition rapidly accelerated and by 2021 over half the US adver-
tising spend had moved online (The Economist 2020, The Economist 2021). The
fourth, final and current moment of our history is one defined by the rise of these
new forms of digital advertising.
The first online advertising

In its earliest days, the internet was often celebrated as a space of ultimate freedom
where neither governments nor corporations could control the flow of informa-
tion and where individuals were free to do, say, and be whatever they wanted.
Whether or not, such “cyber-utopianism” ever accurately characterised the World
Wide Web is now a moot point, because it is now unavoidable that, in many
important ways, the contemporary internet is fundamentally shaped by forms of
corporate control and sponsorship, especially advertising. Consequently, online
content is “free” in the same way that broadcast television and radio are free: con-
tent is provided to audiences in exchange for their exposure to messages about
different products. Content providers and producers receive monetary compensa-
tion for their work to the extent that they are able to sell space and audiences to
those who wish to promote products. This is true even in the “dark web”: that
network of deeply anonymised websites that requires specialised software to access
and which promises access to all manner of unsavoury and illegal goods and ser-
vices: from drugs to weapons to harassment-for-hire (Gehl 2021, 670–671). The
commercial logic of advertising thus intrudes even into those spaces that operate
outside the legal purview of states. Hence, while the particular ways in which those
advertising messages are presented may have changed, the basic economic logic has
remained remarkably consistent even as new techniques alter the way advertisers,
content providers, and consumers understand and approach advertising.
The first digital advertising appeared in the 1990s, when early webpages
attempted to replicate the strategies of outdoor and print advertising in online
spaces. Such early digital advertising created overwhelming clutter in the form of
banner ads and pop-up advertising, but manifestly failed to secure an income
stream necessary to fund the infrastructure of the growing web. Christina Spurgeon
has argued that “misplaced confidence in the income-earning potential of banner
advertising was one of a number of critical factors that saw many internet start-ups
fail when the market flow of technology stocks collapsed in the so-called dotcom
bust of 2000–01” (2008, 12). The problems of these first websites demonstrated
the potential difficulty of integrating old advertising methods into the new plat-
forms. Users were resistant to the apparent invasion of this new territory by adver-
tising, and therefore, in the wake of this collapse, digital advertisers sought out new
methods that were better aligned to the affordances and practices of developing
online media.
Algorithmic advertising
As the online economy rebuilt in the wake of the dot.com bust, advertising
remained a key element of attempts to monetise the web and provide income
streams for online endeavours. Probably the most successful advertising develop-
ment in this new context was also the most radical, as Google managed to inte-
grate advertising into the basic navigational tools of the web: search functionality.
While we might not be accustomed to thinking of internet search engines as a
medium for advertising, search advertising has been called the “single most impor-
tant development for informational advertising since the time of the first paid
newspaper advertisement” (Spurgeon 2008, 25). Google’s search advertising allows
advertisers to bid in real-time auctions to have their chosen information displayed
alongside particular search terms. The more in demand the search term, the more
an advertiser pays to have their product information and web address displayed
alongside the search result: thus “mortgage” or “food delivery” will cost more than
“lemur” or “bioethics.”
While the main results themselves cannot be directly bought, companies pay for
ads above and besides search results based upon the terms searched for. Such key-
word auctioning constitutes 60% of online advertising (McStay 2016, 5) and in
large part finances the growth and management of search engines. From 2013,
Google (or, more correctly, its parent company Alphabet) also began to push sim-
ilar advertising into its popular free e-mail service, Gmail, and in 2021 integrated
advertising across its properties, including Search, Gmail, Google Maps, and
YouTube. These newer forms of digital advertising trade on the promise that sur-
veillance of consumer data will allow companies like Alphabet to target promo-
tional messages with hyper-specificity based on online activities, social networks,
and non-traditional forms of demographic information (West 2019, 34).
A similar technological system also sits behind “display advertising”. Probably
the most prominent form of online advertising in the 2000 and 2010s, display
advertisements can take the form of text, images, video, or audio that appear on
websites and apps. Display advertising ranges widely in form from the commercials
that appear on ad-sponsored video streaming services to “chumbox” or “chum-
bucket” advertising, which describes the grid of thumbnail advertisements that
appear at the bottom of many webpages, often with clickbait headlines (Reeve
2022). On the surface, online display advertisements appear similar to older forms
of advertising: a large picture like an outdoor advertisement, or a video like a TV
commercial.
The difference, though, is that under the hood, the placement of this advertising
is driven by software algorithms that display certain ads for certain products based
on the identity of the user, rather than the content besides which it is displayed.
Two people reading the same article on a news website or watching the same
online video are therefore likely to receive different advertising based on their
browsing history and personal data. As with search advertising, this change in
delivery method has major repercussions that change the priorities and practices of
advertising. Such targeting does away with the need to capture large audiences
with high-quality content or to produce creative advertising that captures their
attention. Instead, the guiding philosophy of much of twenty-first-century adver-
tising is premised on the delivery of “low-frills” promotional messages directly to
carefully selected individuals. Accordingly, a large part of the growth of online
advertising was funded by local and small-scale businesses who could afford to
advertise on mediated platforms for the first time due to the decreased costs of
entry enabled by search and social media advertisements.
Algorithmic advertising also offers the advantage of increased monitoring of
campaign performance with the ability to report precisely how many potential
customers have seen an advertisement and how many have clicked through. Such
systems can even actively tweak a campaign in real time: shifting not just where ads
are displayed and to whom, but even their design and colour scheme to maximise
effectiveness. The importance of data in this new system has also driven changes in
the underlying infrastructure. Whereas html data packets, known as cookies, were
historically the standard method for gathering user data, tech companies like
Google, Microsoft and Apple have increasingly been designing their systems to
hinder the operation of that software with in-build adblockers and functions that
anonymise users. You shouldn’t think this is because they’re trying to protect you,
though. Companies like Google aren’t that concerned about protecting consumers
and their data, but rather want to retain control over that information for their
own ends, and to support their own internal advertising and consumer-targeting
services.
Social media advertising

The other major shift ushered in through online spaces is the ever-increasing inte-
gration of advertising content into the flows and spaces of everyday life via social
media platforms. In the context of online social networks like Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and TikTok (not to mention LinkedIn, Goodreads, Pinterest, Academia,
etc.), advertising doesn’t accompany any particular piece of media content, but
instead is inserted into the flow of user interaction and user-generated content by
advertisers either through paid promotion, or through corporate social media
accounts. Given that such advertisements are tied to the digital “space,” rather than
any particular content, this sort of promotion works in a way similar to outdoor
advertisements: incorporated into everyday spaces with the intention that users
will notice it in the background as they go about other tasks. However, unlike
outdoor advertising, such social media advertising is not simply additional to the
environment but is an integral part of funding and maintaining the platform.
Moreover, by intruding into the online conversations and exchanges that make
up life in our digital world, advertising has the potential to become an integral part
of everyday practices, rather than an interruption. In some instances, this has led
to a blurring between advertising and non-advertising content: as is the case with
new forms of Influencer advertising, which integrate product endorsements into
the general flow of content. While this promotional technique opens up the pos-
sibility that advertisers will lose some control over the context and meaning of
their messages (an issue we will examine more in Chapter 10), the potential ben-
efits would seem from the corporate view to outweigh the risks. Alongside search
advertising, influencer advertising now threatens to radically disrupt conventional
advertising practices with the emergence of a new variant of online celebrities
who primarily exist to shift products. No longer do corporations simply purchase
media space in order to advertise their goods and services: in the age of digital
advertising and social media, they attempt to tap into social (media) networks and
encourage consumers to do their advertising for them.
The changing nature of advertising

As discussed at the beginning of this chapter, advocates of digital advertising often
argue that it constitutes a clean break from the past: a whole new form of paid
promotion that rewrites the rulebook. However, we should be careful when we
encounter claims that we are witnessing a radical shift or a completely new para-
digm that breaks with history. While there are certainly aspects of the current
digital environment that have led to novel developments in advertising, it would
be a mistake to think that digital advertising is entirely unprecedented or that it
bears no similarity to the past. For example, while the digital infrastructure that
enables search advertising may be like nothing before, the basic principle of such
advertising—whereby the present concerns of a searching consumer become the
basis to provide targeted promotion—echoes the historical phenomena of “Yellow
Pages” advertising.
In the late twentieth century, Yellow Pages were large directory books that
grouped phone numbers for different types of services that someone might want:
everything from plumbers to book stores to pharmacies to florists. In the context of
a Yellow Pages book, companies could then pay for their information to be pre-
sented in a more noticeable fashion by adding pictures, colours, or larger font. As
late as 2000, Yellow Pages was the “fifth largest advertising medium in the US,” and
of particular importance for local and small-scale advertisers (Fernandez and Rosen
2000, 61). In its focus on low-key, information-focussed ads tailored to the specific
immediate interests of consumers, search advertising echoes the strategy of Yellow
Pages advertising, albeit on a much larger scale. Thus, while there is certainly a need
to acknowledge that the underlying digital infrastructure enables search advertising
to work on a radically different scale from its predecessors, this does not mean that
it constitutes a radical and unheralded departure from earlier practice.
Thus, while industry figures and commentators may rush to declare that a new
technology, technique, or trend is equivalent to the complete reinvention of adver-
tising, we ought to be sceptical of such claims. Each of the moments explored in
this chapter could be considered a “clean break” with what came before, but in
practice each is better understood as a reorientation of existing assets, practices,
and players in response to external developments. Instead of thinking of advertis-
ing history as a series of reinventions and ruptures with its past, I suggest instead
that it makes more sense to imagine it in terms of an ever-shifting balance of forces
and influences. In the earliest chaotic days, power rested with clients, who used
advertising as a way to generate sales with no particular regard for truth or propri-
ety. However, once the industry consolidated, it was the account managers (we
will explore the different roles of an advertising agency in more depth in Chapter
8) who took centre stage, and transformed advertising into a respectable, formulaic
industry of sharp suits and firm handshakes, before the creative departments seized
power in the 1950s and declared advertising the home of freethinkers and rebels.
Finally, with the rise of online media, data scientists and software engineers have
risen to the fore and made advertising central to the technological aspirations of a
new generation of digital corporations.
As power has shifted between these different groups, the core truth of advertis-
ing has been reimagined in different ways. Sometimes advertising is described as a
science, at others times it is an art. At moments, the secret of successful advertising
has been overwhelmingly conceived in emotional and artistic terms, while at other
times, it’s been all about making use of demographic data to target users. Each time
a new paradigm has emerged, the victors have declared the end of the old ways and
the dawn of a new era, but you know what? The changes are never as dramatic as
they’re claimed to be. Fashions change, different parts of the industry rise to the
top or are relegated to the back rooms, but advertising, and its basic structures,
persists. As I write this second edition in 2022, there is a growing sense that “dis-
play advertising” may be losing favour as tech companies begin to hoard data, cli-
ents reassess the claims made on behalf of consumer tracking, and the ads themselves
are increasingly criticised as intrusive, ugly, and even predatory. One of the major
challenges of writing a history that comes all the way up to the present is that it
suggests the need to explain what is happening right now. I cannot say whether the
current murmurings indicate that another paradigm shift is at hand for advertising.
However, what I can say is that things will almost certainly change again, and that
the accepted truths about what advertising “is” will be rewritten.
In this chapter we’ve run through a quick account of some of the key moments
in advertising over the past two centuries. While such a brief account is always
necessarily incomplete, hopefully you now have a better sense of the changing
social role and media forms that advertising has taken. Such a background will
provide you with the knowledge you need to better assess claims about the nature
of advertising and to understand how its current form has developed as the result
of a specific history of events. From its origins in the industrial consumer society
of the nineteenth century to the algorithm-generated content of the twenty-first,
advertising has experienced a series of upheavals, but has also remained orientated
around some key debates regarding the respectability and trustworthiness of the
profession, its relative indebtedness to corporate or creative demands, and the
question of whether advertising is at its core an art, a science, a business, or a
swindle.
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— Kelpo poikani, hän sanoi, — kenenkään aivoitukset eivät ole
samanlaisia kuin toisen! Alkuasukkaat ovat yliluonnollista väkeä —
siksi minä tunnen heidät. Olen itsekin jonkinmoinen yliluonnollinen
lintu.
Asetettuaan tavaransa paikoilleen hän lähetti hakemaan

Bosamboa, ja tämä arvon herra saapui yllään muhkea vaatteus ja
istuutui nöyrästi portaitten eteen.
— Bosambo, sanoi komissaari äkeästi, — sinulla on marakatin

kieli, joka pauhaa alati.
— Herra, on hyvä, että marakatit rähisevät, vastasi kiikkiin joutunut

päällikkö, — muuten ei metsästäjä voi niitä pyydystää.
— Voi niin olla, sanoi Sanders, — mutta jos rähinä on kyllin suuri
hämmentääkseen metsästäjän, niin ne ovat vaarallisia petoja. Saat
myöhemmin kertoa Mlakan verenmyrkytyksestä, mutta nyt sano,
miksi haluat olla kanssani hyvissä väleissä. Sinun ei tarvitse
valehdella, sillä me keskustelemme kuin miehet.
Bosambo katsoi pelottomana herraansa silmiin.
— Herra, sanoi hän, — minä olen pienen kansan pieni päällikkö.

He eivät ole minun heimoani, mutta kuitenkin hallitsen heitä viisaasti.
Olen tehnyt heistä taistelevan kansan, kun he olivat naisia.
Sanders nyökkäsi.
— Se on totta; ja ellei niin olisi, olisin passittanut sinut aikoja sitten.

Sen tiedät. Myöskin sen, että olen sinulle kiitollinen eräistä seikoista.
— Herra, sanoi Bosambo vakavana, — en ole suosion kerjäläinen,
sillä olen, niin kuin tiedät, kristitty ja tunnen pyhän Pietarin ja pyhän
Paavalin sekä muita pyhimyksiä, joiden nimet olen unohtanut. Mutta
minä olen parempi mies kuin kaikki nämä päälliköt ja haluan päästä
kuninkaaksi.
— Kuinka? kysyi hämmästynyt Sanders.
— Kuninkaaksi, herra, sanoi Bosambo häpeilemättä, — sillä minut

on luotu kuninkaaksi, ja eräs poppamies krulaisten maassa ennusti,
että minä tulen hallitsemaan suuria maita.
— Et tällä puolen taivaan, sanoi Sanders kuivasti. Hän ei lausunut

»taivaan», vaan sivuutti sen.
Bosambo epäröi.
— Ochori on pieni paikka ja ochorilaiset pieni kansa, — sanoi hän

puolittain itsekseen, — ja minun naapurinani asuu Mlaka, joka
hallitsee kolme kertaa niin suurta ja rikasta aluetta.
Sanders maiskautti huuliaan kärsimättömästi, mutta sitten asian

huvittavuus tempaisi hänet valtoihinsa.
— Mene Mlakan luo, hän virkkoi virnistäen itsekseen, — ja sano

hänelle, mitä olet sanonut minulle. Jos Mlaka antaa
kuningaskuntansa sinun huostaasi, niin minä suostun siihen.
— Herra, sanoi Bosambo, — minä teen niin, sillä olen suurten

yritysten mies ja minulla on onni myötä.
Kopeana kuin hallitsijan poika ainakin hän harppoi puiston läpi ja

hävisi.
Seuraavana aamuna Sanders sanoi hyvästit hra Franksille —
rannikkolaivan saapuminen antoi hänelle aihetta kiirehtiä tämän
lähtöä. Päälliköt olivat lähteneet auringon noustessa, ja illalla
Sandersin elämä oli palautunut säännölliseen uomaansa.
Hiljalleen kului kaksi kuukautta, minkä ajan kuluttua Mlaka vieraili

lankonsa, Ngombin Kulalan luona, joka oli huomattava mies, sillä
hän oli viidensadan keihään ja kuuluisien metsästäjien herra.
He pitivät palaverin, jota kesti melkein viikon, ja päättäjäisiksi

pidettiin suuri tanssi.
Oli enemmän kuin sattuma, että neuvottelujen viimeisenä päivänä

kaksi värisevää Ochorin miestä tuotiin kylään ja uhrattiin.
Sitten seurasi tanssi.
Seuraavana aamuna Mlaka ja hänen sukulaisensa lähtivät

Ochoria vastaan ottaen matkallaan kiinni miehen, jonka Mlaka tunsi
Sandin vakoojaksi. Hänelle he tuottivat äkkikuoleman, ja hän kuoli
valittamatta. Sitten he lepäsivät kolme päivää. Mlaka ja hänen
miehensä tulivat Ochorin kylän laitaan päivän noustessa ja pitivät
lyhyen neuvottelun.
— Tieto tästä menee Sandin korviin, sanoi hän, — ja Sandi, joka

on valkea paholainen, tulee sotilainensa, ja meidän täytyy sanoa,
että meidän oli pakko tehdä näin, kun Bosambo kutsui meidät
tanssiin ja sitten aikoi tuhota meidät.
— Bosambo aikoi tuhota meidät, vahvisti joukko uskollisesti.
— Ja jos me tapamme kaikki ochorilaiset, niin sanomme, ettemme

me heitä tappaneet, vaan akasavalaiset.
— Herra, akasavalaiset tappoivat heidät, kertasivat miehet jälleen.
Järjestettyään siten sekä selityksen että todisteet poissaolostaan

Mlaka vei miehet riveihin.
Hämärän harmaassa valaistuksessa Ochorin kylä lepäsi pahaa

aavistamatta. Ei ollut tulia kylän kaduilla, ei savun hivenkään
kiemurrellut osoittamaan eloa.
Mlakan armeija eteni pitkässä, järjestymättömässä rivissä metsän

ja kylän välisen aukean poikki.
— Tappakaa! kuiskasi Mlaka, ja käsky kerrattiin pitkin riviä.
Lähemmäs ja lähemmäs ryömivät hyökkääjät; sitten astui eräästä

majasta kylän laidassa ulos Bosambo, yksin.
Hän meni hitaasti keskelle katua, ja Mlaka näki: hoikalla

kolmijalalla oli jotakin kiiltävää ja kirkasta ja välkehtivää.
Jotakin, joka sieppasi auringon ensimmäiset säteet niiden

koskettaessa puiden latvoja ja lähetti ne liekehtien ja sädehtien
takaisin.
Kuusisataa Ngombin sotilasta värähti ja pysähtyi naulittuina

paikalleen nähdessään sen. Bosambo tarttui suureen
messinkiputkeen ja käänsi sen huolimattomasti osoittamaan suoraan
kohti Mlakaa, joka oli kolmenkymmenen askelen päässä.
Aivan kuin saadakseen täyden varmuuden hän kumartui ja tähtäsi

pitkin kiiltävää pintaa, ja Mlaka pudotti keihäänsä maahan nostaen
ylös kätensä.
— Herra Bosambo, virkkoi hän vienosti, — me tulemme rauhassa.
— Rauhassa saatte mennä, sanoi Bosambo ja vihelsi.
Äkkiä kylä heräsi elämään, aseistettuja miehiä näkyi joka puolella.

Joka majasta heitä riensi aukealle.
— Minä rakastan sinua kuin mies vuohiansa, sanoi Mlaka

hartaasti. —
Näin sinut unessa ja sydämeni johdatti minut luoksesi.
— Minä myös näin sinut unissani, sanoi Bosambo. — Sen vuoksi

nousin kohtaamaan sinua, sillä Mlaka, Pikku Isisin kuningas, on kuin
oma veljeni.
Mlaka, jonka silmät yhä viipyivät messinkipeitteisessä putkessa,

sai aatoksen.
— Tätä pyydän sinulta, herrani ja isäntäni, sanoi hän, — pyydän,

veljeni, että mieheni saisivat tulla sinun kaupunkiisi ja uhrata, sillä se
on tapa.
Bosambo kynsäisi leukaansa miettivästi.
— Sen minä sallin, sanoi hän, — mutta sitä ennen on jokaisen

jätettävä keihäänsä, kärki maahan pistettynä — se on tapa meillä
ennen uhraamista.
Mlaka siirsi jalkaansa kärsimättömänä. Hän teki kaksi pientä

kaksoispotkua; kärsimättömyyden merkki neekereillä.
Bosambon käsi laskeutui hitaasti messinkiputkelle.
— Tapahtuu kuin tahdot, sanoi Mlaka nopeasti ja antoi käskyn.

Kuusisataa masentunutta, aseetonta miestä marssi kylän läpi, ja
molemmin puolin heitä kulki rivi Ochorin sotilaita, jotka eivät olleet
aseettomia. Bosambon majan eteen Mlaka, hänen lankonsa Kulala,
hänen päämiehensä ja Ochorin päämiehet istuutuivat neuvotteluun.
Se oli puoliksi ateria, puoliksi palaver.
— Sanopa, herra Bosambo, kysyi Mlaka, — kuinka Sandi antaa

sinulle kiväärinsä, joka sanoo »ha-ha-ha»? Sillä kiellettyhän on
tämän maan asukkailta ja päälliköiltä kiväärienpito.
Bosambo nyökkäsi.
— Sandi rakastaa minua, sanoi hän koruttomasti, — syistä, joista

puhuakseni olisin koira, sillä eikö sama veri virtaa minun kuin
hänenkin suonissaan?
— Se on hullua puhetta, sanoi Kulala, lanko, — sillä hän on valkea

ja sinä olet musta.
— Siitä huolimatta totta, vastasi tyyni Bosambo, — sillä hän on

minun serkkuni, kun hänen veljensä on nainut minun äitini, joka oli
päällikön tytär. Sandi aikoi mennä naimisiin hänen kanssaan, jatkoi
hän muisteloltaan, — mutta ne ovat asioita; joista häpeän puhua.
Hän antoi minulle myöskin nämä.
Vaipan alta, joka oli hänen hartioillaan, hän otti pienen

nahkarasian. Siitä hän otti pienen paketin. Se oli kuin lyhyt keppi.
Hitaasti hän avasi kankaasta tehdyn, taidokkaan käärön, jolloin
hänelle jäi käteen kolme puukuppia. Muodoltaan ne olivat kuin
vaakakupit, kooltaan kuin isot sormustimet.
Ne olivat veistetyt hyvästä puusta ja tavattoman ohuet. Ne olivat
sisäkkäin hänen avatessaan käärön, mutta sitten hän erotti ne
hitaasti ja merkitsevästi.
Käskystä eräs mies toi majasta jakkaran ja asetti sen hänen

eteensä.
Sille hän levitti kangaspalan ja asetti kupit suu alaspäin. Yhdestä

hän otti pienen, kopaalista ja kamferttipuusta tehdyn punaisen
pallon.
Innokkaasti uteliaat päälliköt tarkastelivat häntä.
— Nämä Sandi antoi minulle, sanoi Bosambo, — jotta voisin

hauskasti kuluttaa sateiset päiväni. Näillä pelaan päämiesten!
kanssa.
— Herra Bosambo, kysyi Mlaka, — kuinka sinä pelaat?
Bosambo katsoi helottavalle taivaalle ja pudisti päätänsä

pahoitellen.
— Tämä peli ei ole sinua varten, Mlaka, sanoi hän viitaten

taivaaseen. — Se sopii vain sellaisille, joilla on terävä silmä; sitä
paitsi se on kristittyjen peli.
Isisiläiset ovat ylpeitä silmänsä tarkkuudesta. Joen sananparsi

sanoo:
»Ngombi kuulee, busmanni maistaa, isisi näkee, ochori juoksee.»
— Salli minun nähdä, mitä en näe, sanoi Mlaka, ja hieman

halveksivasti
Bosambo laski punaisen pallon jakkaralle kupin taakse.
— Tarkkaa sitten, Mlaka! Panen pallon tämän kupin alle ja siirrän
kuppia…
Hyvin hitaasti hän siirsi kuppeja.
— En ole nähnyt mokomaa peliä, sanoi Mlaka ylenkatseellisesti.
— Se on kuitenkin peli, josta minä ja kirkassilmäiset mieheni

pidämme, sanoi Bosambo, — sillä me veikkaamme jonkin määrän
putkia suolaa vastaan, ettei toinen voi seurata katseillaan punaista
palloa.
Pikku Isisin päällikkö tiesi, missä punainen pallo oli, koska sitä
kätkevän kupin laidassa oli pieni kolo.
— Herra Bosambo, sanoi hän lainaten sananpartta, — vain rotta

tulee syömään ja viipyy kuolemaansa asti — mutta ellen istuisi sinun
majasi varjossa, niin veisin sinulta jok'ainoan putken.
— Nukusa on pieni eläin, mutta sillä on julma ääni, virkkoi

Bosambo antaen sanan sanasta, ‒ ja minä panen veikkaa, ettet sinä
tiedä, missä pallo on.
Mlaka kumartui eteenpäin.
— Panen sotilaitteni keihäät Ochorin keihäitä vastaan, sanoi hän.
Bosambo nyökkäsi.
— Pääni kautta, sanoi hän.
Mlaka ojensi kätensä ja nosti kuppia, mutta pallo ei ollut siellä. Se

oli viereisen kupin alla, kuten Bosambo osoitti.
Mlakan silmät levisivät.
— Minä en ole sokea, sanoi hän lujasti, — ja sinun kielesi

muistuttaa kuivien tikkujen palamista — krak, krak, krak!
Bosambo otti loukkauksen vastaan tyynesti.
— Silmästä se riippuu, sanoi hän hämäävästi, — me ochorilaiset

olemme tarkkasilmäisiä.
Mlaka nielaisi loukkaavan sanan.
— Minulla on kotona kymmenen säkkiä suolaa, sanoi hän lyhyesti,

— ja minä panen suolani niitä keihäitä vastaan, jotka voitit.
— Sydämeni ja elämäni kautta, sanoi Bosambo ja pani pallon

kupin alle.
Hyvin hitaasti hän siirteli kuppeja edestakaisin, muuttaen niiden

asentoa.
— Suolani keihäitäsi vastaan, sanoi Mlaka päättävästi, sillä hän

näki nyt kupin hyvin. Siinä oli pieni naarmu lähellä laitaa.
Bosambo nyökkäsi, ja Mlaka kumartui ja kohotti kuppia. Mutta

pallo ei ollut siellä.
Mlaka henkäisi syvään ja kirosi Iwan kautta — joka on kuolema —

ja tuntematonta laatua olevien paholaisten kautta, sairauden ja
isänsä kautta — joka oli hirtetty — mistä saattoi huomata Mlakan
olevan kuohuksissaan.
— Se riippuu silmästä, sanoi Bosambo pahanilkisesti, — niin kuin

jokivarrella sanotaan: »Ochorilaiset näkevät…»
— Se on valhe! karjaisi Mlaka. — Ochorilaiset eivät näe mitään
muuta kuin tien juosta. Pelataan taas…
Ja taas Bosambo kätki punaisen pallon; mutta tällä kertaa hän

sekautui, sillä hän asetti palloa peittävän kupin epätasaiselle paikalle
jakkaralla. Ja kupin laidan ja kankaan välissä oli pieni rako, josta
pallo paistoi punaisena — eikä Mlaka ollut sokea.
— Bosambo, sanoi hän ylvästellen, — lyön suuren veikan, sillä

olen suuren alueen päällikkö, ja sinä olet pieni päällikkö; mutta tällä
kerralla panen vetoon kaiken.
— Isisin Mlaka, vastasi Bosambo hitaasti, — minä olen myöskin

suuri päällikkö ja Sandin sukulainen naimisen kautta. Olen myöskin
jumalanmies ja puhun valkoisten miesten puhetta ja tunnen pyhän
Antoniuksen, Markuksen, Luukkaan, pyhän Timoteuksen ja muita
väkeviä. Tämä olkoon veto: jos sinä löydät pallon, sinä löydät orjan,
jonka nimi on Ochorin Bosambo, mutta jos sinä kadotat punaisen
pallon, kadotat maasi.
— Tulkoon mongotauti minuun, ellen puhu totta, vannoi Mlaka, —

mutta tähän kaikkeen minä suostun.
Hän ojensi kätensä ja koski kuppia.
— Se on siellä! huhkaisi hän ja nosti kupin.
Punainen pallo ei ollut siellä.
Mlaka ponnahti jaloilleen sieraimet tuhisten.
Hän avasi suunsa puhuakseen, mutta se oli tarpeetonta, sillä

ochorilainen juoksija tuli huohottaen katua myöten tuoden uutisia;
ennen kuin hän pääsi majan luo, jossa hänen herransa istui,
kertomaan niitä, ilmestyi metsäpolulta Sandersin joukon pää.
Sanotaan, että »veren haju kulkee nopeammin kuin mies näkee».

Oli tehty taktillinen virhe, kun tapettiin Sandersin vakooja.
Komissaari oli tahrautunut, likautunut ja parta ajamatonna, sillä

sodan kutsu oli hänet pakottanut rivakasti marssimaan maailman
pahinta metsäpolkua.
Aukealle tuli joukko, rivi rivin jälkeen sinipukuisia hausoja,

paljassäärisiä, sandaalijalkaisia, fessipäisiä, leviten kuin savu leviää
tullessaan kapeasta piipusta. Muodostaen kaksi taistelulinjaa joukko
eteni varovasti, sillä Ochorin kaupungissahan vihollinen majaili.
Bosambo arvasi toimenpiteiden tarkoituksen ja kiirehti komissaaria

vastaan. Sandersin käskystä rivit pysähtyivät, ja puolitiessä
kaupungin ja metsän välillä he kohtasivat — Bosambo ja hänen
herransa.
— Herra, sanoi Bosambo kohteliaasti, — kaikki minun omani on

sinun.
— Näyttää siltä kuin olisit hengissä, mikä on enemmän kuin

odotin, sanoi Sanders. — Tiedän, että Mlaka, Pikku Isisin päällikkö,
majailee kylässäsi. Sinun on luovutettava hänet minulle
tuomittavaksi.
Mlakan tunnen kyllä, sanoi Bosambo varovasti, — ja hänet

luovutetaan, mutta kun sinä puhut Pikku Isisin päälliköstä, niin sinä
puhut minusta, sillä olen voittanut hänen maansa eräällä pelillä.
— Siitä puhumme myöhemmin, sanoi Sanders.

Hän vei miehensä kylään asettaen heidät sen neljälle laidalle;
sitten hän seurasi Bosamboa sinne, missä Mlaka päämiehineen
odotti hänen tuloaan — sillä päällikön vieras ei tule tervehtimään
toista vierasta.
— Mlaka, sanoi Sanders, — kaksi tietä on päälliköille, jotka

tappavat hallituksen palvelijoita. Toinen on korkea ja lyhyt tie, niin
kuin tiedät.
Mlakan silmät etsivät sopivaa puuta, ja hän värisi.
— Toinen tie, sanoi Sanders, — on pitkä ja vaivalloinen, ja se tie

on sinua varten. Saat istua Kahleitten kylässä kuninkaani hyvitteeksi.
— Herra, kuinka kauan? kysyi Mlaka värisevällä äänellä.
— Niin kauan kuin elät, sanoi Sanders.
Mlaka alistui elinkautiseen pakkotyöhön filosofisesti — sillä

pahempaakin voi tapahtua.
— Herra, sanoi hän, — olet aina vihannut minua. Olet suosinut

muita päälliköitä ja sortanut minua. Minulta kiellät kaiken suosiosi;
vaikka Bosambolle, sedällesi…
Sanders hengähti pitkään.
— … annat monia suosionosoituksia, niin kuin kiväärejä.
— Ellen olisi antanut sanaani, sanoi Sanders kylmästi, — niin

hirttäisin sinut, Mlaka, sillä olet valehtelijain isä ja valehtelijain poika.
Mitä kiväärejä olen antanut Bosambolle?
— Herra, tuolla näet sen, sanoi Mlaka ja nyökkäsi päällään kohti
kauhistuttavaa kolmijalkaa.
Sanders meni kapineen luo.
— Bosambo, sanoi hän ärtyisästi, — muistan kolme valkeaa

miestä, jotka tulivat katsomaan kuuta.
— Herra, niin oikein, sanoi Bosambo leikkisästi.
He olivat huhuja, ja he katselivat kuuta tämän kapineen läpi,

myöskin tähtiä.
Hän viittasi viattomaan kaukoputkeen.
— Ja tämän he kadottivat? sanoi Sanders.
Bosambo nyökkäsi.
— He kadottivat sen, ja sen löysi eräs ochorilainen, joka toi sen

minulle, sanoi Bosambo. — Herra, en ole sitä kätkenyt, vaan
asettanut sen paikkaan, jossa jokainen voi sen nähdä.
Sanders silmäsi taivaanrantaa. Metsästä oikealle oli leveä

marskimaa; taka-alalla aamuisen auteren sinessä kohosi kukkula,
joka merkitsi Pikku Isisin kylää.
Hän astui kaukoputken luo ja tähtäsi sen kukkulaa kohti. Sen

juurella oli rykelmä harmaita majoja.
Katso! sanoi hän, ja Bosambo astui hänen paikalleen. — Mitä

näet?
— Pikku Isisin kaupungin, sanoi Bosambo.

Katso tarkoin, sanoi Sanders, — se on kaupunki, jonka olet
voittanut eräällä pelillä.
Bosambo nyähti hermostuneesti.
— Kun tulen uuteen kaupunkiini… aloitti hän.
Niin minä myöskin tulen, sanoi Sanders merkitsevästi. Jakkaralla

majan edessä olivat vielä pienet puukupit, ja Sanders oli nähnyt ne
sekä pallon. — Huomenna nimitän uuden päällikön Pikku Isisiin. Kun
kuu on täysi, mm minä tulen katsomaan uutta päällikköä, sanoi hän,
ja jos hän on menettänyt maansa »eräällä pelillä», nimitän kaksi
uutta päällikköä, toisen Isisiin ja toisen Ochoriin, ja ochorilaisilla tulee
olemaan suru, sillä Monrovian Bosambo lähtee heidän luotansa.
Herra, sanoi Bosambo yrittäen viimeisen kerran kuningaskunnan

kokoamista, — sanoit, että jos Mlaka antaa, niin Bosambo pitää.
Sanders otti punaisen pallon ja kätki sen erään kupin alle. Hän
muutti kuppien asentoa hiukan.
— Jos pelisi on rehellistä peliä, sanoi hän, — niin näytä minulle

kuppi, jonka alla pallo on.
— Herra, se on keskimmäinen, sanoi Bosambo arvelematta,
Sanders nosti kuppia.
Siellä ei ollut palloa.
— Huomaan, sanoi Bosambo hitaasti, — huomaan, että herrani

Sandi on myöskin kristitty.
*****
— Se oli leikkiä, selitti Bosambo päämiehilleen, kun Sanders oli
lähtenyt. — Sillä tavoin herrani Sandi aina leikki silloinkin, kun minä
pienenä lapsena hoidin häntä. Menchimis, anna lokalin soida ja
koota miehet suureen palaveriin, sillä minä aion kertoa heille tarinan
Sandista, joka on minun velipuoleni toisesta äidistä…
MONGOTAUTI
Sanders opetti kansaansa varoituksin, sanoin ja sellaisin

rangaistuksin kuin oli tarpeen. Näistä oli rangaistus se
menettelytapa, jolla oli vähimmin kantavuutta, sillä muisti loppui, kun
kipu päättyi, ja miehet, jotka olivat sydän vapisten katselleet
puunoksasta riippuvaa sätkyttelevää ruumista, unohtivat heti, kun
rikollinen oli kuollut, minkä vuoksi hän oli kuoleman kärsinyt.
Sanders opetti miehilleen, miten puut oli pinottava »Zairen»
kannelle. Hän opetti, että jos pinot asetettiin keulaan, niin aluksen
keulapuoli painui, ja jos puut ladottiin jommallekummalle laidalle, niin
alus kallistui. Hän valvoi heitä päivän toisensa jälkeen, ohjaten ja
neuvoen, ja alituiseen hänellä olivat samat miehet, sillä Sanders ei
pitänyt uusista kasvoista.
Hän oli kiireesti nousemassa jokea, kun hän pysähtyi eräälle

puunottopaikalle täydentämään varastoaan.
Kuuden vuoden opetuksen jälkeen hän jätti heidät pinoamaan

puita mennen itse nukkumaan, ja he tekivät kaiken niin kuin ei olisi
pitänyt tehdä.
Hän huomasi tämän tullessaan laivalle.

— Herra, sanoi pinoojien päämies puhuen hieman ylpeästi, —
olemme hakanneet ja pinonneet puita puk-a-pukia varten yhdessä
aamupäivässä, jossa työssä muilta hitaammilta olisi mennyt koko
päivä auringonlaskuun asti, mutta kun rakastamme sinua, herra, niin
teimme työtä, kunnes hiki tippui ruumiistamme.
Sanders katsoi kokonaan väärin pinottuihin puihin, ja silmäsi

päämieheen.
— Ei ole viisasta, sanoi hän, — pinota puita keulaan, sillä silloin

laiva uppoaa, niin kuin usein olen sinulle sanonut.
— Herra, teimme niin, kun se oli helpointa, sanoi mies

vilpittömästi.
— Sen uskon kyllä, sanoi Sanders ja vihastumatta käski

pinoamaan puut uudelleen.
On muistettava, että hänellä oli tulinen kiire; joka hetki maksoi.

Hän oli kulkenut koko yön — mikä on vaarallista, sillä joki oli matala
ja siinä oli uusia hiekkasärkkiä, joita ei ollut hänen kotitekoisella
kartallaan. Jotkut sydäntyvät sellaisista pikkuasioista kuin väärin
pinotuista puista, mutta Sanders ei sydämistynyt eikä huolestunut.
Jos niin olisi tapahtunut, niin hän olisi pian heittänyt henkensä, sillä
nämä olivat hänen elämänsä jokapäiväisiä tapahtumia, mutta
kuitenkin päämiehen huomaamattomuus häntä hiukan huoletti, sillä
hän tiesi, että mies ei ollut hupakko.
Tunnin kuluttua puut oli tasaisemmin pinottu ja Sanders antoi

lähtömerkin. Hän käänsi »Zairen» keulan keskivirtaan ja noudatti
samaa kurssia, kunnes joki äkkiä laajeni ja pikku saaret muuttuivat
suuriksi vihreiksi kasvillisuusryteiköiksi.
Täällä hän hiljensi laivan vauhtia ajaen varovaisesti joka saaren
ympäri, kunnes tuli pimeä; sitten hän läheni varovasti rantaa
hiekkasärkkien lomitse. »Zaire» hypähti ja tärisi koskettaessaan
salaisia särkkiä.
Kerran se aivan pysähtyi, ja sen nelikymmenmiehinen miehistö

hyppäsi veteen ja kahlaten rintaa myöten työnsi sitä eteenpäin
laulaen matalasti.
Viimein päästiin viettävälle rannikolle, jossa alus kiinnitettiin

kahdella köydellä puihin odottamaan aamun koittoa.
Sanders otti kylvyn, pukeutui ja tuli pieneen kansihyttiinsä, jossa

valmis ateria odotti.
Hän söi hiukan kanaa, otti pikku tuikun whiskyä ja sytytti sikarinsa.
Sitten hän lähetti hakemaan Abibua.
— Abibu, kerran sinä oleilit näillä tienoilla.
— Herra, niin on, sanoi Abibu. — Olin täällä vakoojana kuusi

kuukautta.
— Mitä tiedät näistä saarista?
— Herra, tiedän vain, että yhteen niistä isisiläiset hautaavat

kuolleensa ja toisessa sanotaan kasvavan taikayrttejä ja että
poppamiehet tulevat joskus tänne harjoittamaan menojansa.
Sanders nyökkäsi.
— Huomenna tutkimme Yrttisaaren, sanoi hän, — sillä minulle on

ilmoitettu, että pahoja asioita tapahtuu kuun vaihteessa.
— Olen sinun miehesi, sanoi Abibu.
Kahtena seuraavana yönä tapahtui, että eräs Ngombin päällikkö,

jolla oli alkeelliset käsitykset oikeudesta ja suuri luottamus
paholaisiin, tuli kaksitoista miestä mukanaan myötävirtaa, ja suurella
vaivalla he kiinnittivät kaksi salkoa vinon ristin muotoon kahden puun
väliin.
He taivuttivat nuoren vesan katkoen oksia latvasta, kunnes se

ulottui ristiin, ja sitoivat sen sitten ongensiimalla kiinni. Muut aiotut
valmistelut lykkäytyivät, kun Sanders, joka oli katsellut suuren
kopaalipuun takaa, astui äkkiä piilostaan, eikä tulevaisuus luvannut
päällikölle mitään loistavaa.
Hän katsoi Sandersia hieman nuhtelevasti.
— Herra, asetamme tähän leopardinsadinta, selitti hän, —

leopardi on hyvin kauhea eläin.
— Joskus, mutisi Sanders ääneen, — saattaisi tällaisen ristin

nähdessään ajatella kidutusta, oi päällikkö — ja sitä paitsi leopardit
eivät tule tänne saarille — sano minulle totuus.
— Herra, sanoi vanha päällikkö hämmentyneenä, — tämä leopardi

ui, ja sen vuoksi me sitä pelkäämme.
Sanders huokasi raskaasti.
— Nyt kerrot minulle totuuden, tai minä rupean leopardia

pahemmaksi.
Päällikkö pani kätensä ristiin niin, että kämmenet tapasivat

selkään, hän kun oli laiha mies, ja hänen sormensa olivat
hermostuneen levottomat.
— En voi puhua sinulle valhetta, sanoi hän, — koska olet juuri kuin
yökkö, joka näkee pimeyteen ja liikkuu yöllä. Ja sinä olet kuin
äkkimyrsky, joka puhkee metsässä ilman ennustuksia, ja olet kauhea
vihassasi.
— Puhu, sanoi Sanders hieman kiihtyneenä.
— Tämä on totuus, sanoi päällikkö käheästi. — Muuan mies tulee

kylääni auringon laskiessa, ja hän on paha, sillä hän on kristitty ja
kuitenkin tekee inhoittavia tekoja — niin että aiomme syödä hänet.
Sanders tähyili miestä tarkkaan.
— Jos syötte hänet, niin varmasti sinä kuolet, sanoi hän lempeästi,
— vaikka hän olisi paha kuin paholainen — mitä lajia paholaista
sitten eniten pelkäätkin. Tämä on todellakin paha palaver, ja minä
istun kanssasi jonkin päivän.
Hän vei päällikön seurueineen takaisin kylään ja piti neuvottelun.
Joen Sanders oli hetkinä sellaisina kuin tämä loputtoman

kärsivällinen; ja kärsivällisyyttä hän tarvitsikin, kun kaksi tuntia hänen
saapumisensa jälkeen kylään tuli suurellisesti kävellen mies nimeltä
Ofalikari, ngombilainen, jonka isä oli kongolainen.
Hänen toinen nimensä oli Josef, ja hän oli saarnaaja.
Sen Sanders huomasi piankin.
— Tuo tämä mies luokseni, sanoi hän kersantti Abibulle, sillä

saarnaaja aloitti kokouksen toisessa laidassa kylää.

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Advertising and Consumer Society 2nd

Edition Nicholas Holm

Media and Society Power Platforms and Participation 2nd

The Consumer Society Myths and Structures Jean

Lutheran Theology and the Shaping of Society The Danish

Handbook on Society and Social Policy 1st Edition

Advertising and Public Relations Research 2nd Edition

The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional

Introduction to Advertising Understanding and Managing

The Production Of Consumer Society: Cultural-Economic

This critical introductory text explores the role of advertising in contemporary

Nicholas Holm is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies based on the Wellington

1 Introduction: why study advertising? 3

2 The history of advertising: contexts, transformations,

3 Analysing advertisements: form, semiotics, and ideology 35

4 Advertising, economics, and ideology 63

5 Commodities and commodity fetishism 85

6 The audience commodity, media fragmentation, and

7 Blurred lines: branding, promotion, and influence(rs) 125

8 Advertising agencies: organisation, agency, and internal conflict 147

9 Advertising as art: from creativity to critique 166

10 Active advertising audiences: identity, engagement,

11 The politics of advertising: capitalism, art, agency, and dialectics 208

The foundations of studying

Why study advertising?

Reason one: advertising is everywhere

Reason two: advertising is weird

Reason three: advertising is where the money is

Reason four: advertising is beautiful, inspiring, and entertaining

Reason five: advertising is political

What this book is about

The foundations of studying advertising

Advertising and capitalism

Art, agency, and other complications

What this book is not about

Four moments in advertising history

The first moment: origins, industrialisation, and development

The first advertising?

Industrialisation and mass society

• Urbanisation: the growth of large factories following the Industrial Revolution

The beginning of consumer society

The second moment: professionalisation, consolidation, and

The problem with patent medicine

The search for respectability

The fear of advertising

“Think Small” and the Creative Revolution

The fourth moment: digital advertising, algorithms, and social

The first online advertising

Social media advertising

The changing nature of advertising

Asetettuaan tavaransa paikoilleen hän lähetti hakemaan

— Bosambo, sanoi komissaari äkeästi, — sinulla on marakatin

— Herra, on hyvä, että marakatit rähisevät, vastasi kiikkiin joutunut

Bosambo katsoi pelottomana herraansa silmiin.

— Herra, sanoi hän, — minä olen pienen kansan pieni päällikkö.

— Se on totta; ja ellei niin olisi, olisin passittanut sinut aikoja sitten.

— Kuinka? kysyi hämmästynyt Sanders.

— Kuninkaaksi, herra, sanoi Bosambo häpeilemättä, — sillä minut

— Et tällä puolen taivaan, sanoi Sanders kuivasti. Hän ei lausunut

— Ochori on pieni paikka ja ochorilaiset pieni kansa, — sanoi hän

Sanders maiskautti huuliaan kärsimättömästi, mutta sitten asian

— Mene Mlakan luo, hän virkkoi virnistäen itsekseen, — ja sano

— Herra, sanoi Bosambo, — minä teen niin, sillä olen suurten