Advertising And Anthropology

Examining theory and practice, Advertising and Anthropology is a lively and important contribution to the study of organizational culture, consumption practices, marketing to consumers and the production of creativity in corporate settings. The chapters reflect the authors' extensive lived experienced as professionals in the advertising business and marketing research industry. Essays analyze internal agency and client meetings, competitive pressures and professional relationships and include multiple case studies. The authors describe the structure, function and process of advertising agency work, the mediation and formation of creativity, the centrality of human interactions in agency work, the production of consumer insights and industry ethics. Throughout the book, the authors offer concrete advice for practitioners.Advertising and Anthropology is written by anthropologists for anthropologists as well as students and scholars interested in advertising and related industries such as marketing, marketing research and design.

Through its artful engagement with consumers, advertising subtly shapes our everyday worlds. It plays upon powerful emotions -- envy, fear, lust and ambition. But the industry itself is far more subtle and complex than many people might assume. Through an innovative mix of business strategy and cultural theory, this pioneering book provides a behind-the-scenes analysis of the link between advertising and larger cultural forces, as well as a rare look into the workings of agencies themselves. How do advertisements endeavour to capture real life? How do advertising agencies think of their audience: the consumer and their corporate client? What issues do agencies have to consider when using an advertisement in a range of different countries? What specific methods are used to persuade us not only to buy but to remain loyal to a product? How do advertisers fan consumer desire? An incisive understanding of human behaviour is at the core of all these questions and is what unites advertisers and anthropologists in their work. While this link may come as a surprise to those who consider the former to be firmly rooted in commerce and the latter in culture, this book clearly shows that these two fields share a remarkable number of convergences. From constructing a Japaneseness that appeals to two very different Western audiences, to tracking advertising changes in the post World War II period, to considering how people can be influenced by language and symbols, Advertising Cultures is an indispensable guide to the production of images and to consumer behaviour for practitioners and students alike.

This is the only book of its kind - written by an anthropologist who spent twelve months doing fieldwork in a major Tokyo agency and who has spent the past 30 years studying and living in Japan. By examining the production of advertising, this book turns other semiotics, media and cultural studies theories on their heads. By analysing the social structure of a modern media organization from the inside, it makes anthropology relevant and intellectually stimulating. By treating the Japanese as a more-or-less normal and rational people, it explodes the usual myths of exotic Japan and steps boldly into a global arena that embraces 'east' and 'west' in a new theory of values.

This book argues for the study of consumption and its relationship with media images, particularly advertising, from a cultural perspective. Focused on Brazil, it draws on decades of research by the author and engages with theory and concepts from a range of classic anthropological works. The chapters examine how advertising professionals view their craft, the resistance to capitalism amongst native Brazilians, images of women and their bodies in magazines, and the case of the first soccer player to become a national media celebrity. Rocha supports the study of consumption as a classification system that materializes culture and creates relations between people and goods. The book presents advertising as a mode of magical thinking that mediates the passage from the machine-driven sphere of production to the humanized sphere of consumption, converting meaningless impersonal things into goods that have name, origin, identity and purpose. It will be of interest to anthropologists, sociologists and others working on advertising, marketing, communications, and consumer research.

Scholarly and extensively footnoted, the book is meant to be used as a sourcebook for anthropological research. . . . The book′s primary audience should be marketing and anthropology researchers, and graduate students, faculty, and researchers. --P. G. Kishel in Choice "As a business person responsible for the development of advertising strategies and advertising campaigns, I was impressed with the contributors′ willingness and desire to apply anthropological principles to real world problems. John Sherry Jr.′s comment sums it up nicely, ′Anthropology is a practical discipline, anchoring the blue sky thinking it encourages firmly to the local ground it inhabits.′ We need to encourage blue sky thinking so we don′t repeatedly get the same answers to our inquiries. Anthropologists can help us with these issues. . . "This book gives me enormous hope that applied anthropology will help restore the tremendous value that can be gained through qualitative research techniques. Today in marketing and advertising, focus groups are grossly overused, misused, and underanalyzed. I was encouraged and excited about the authors′ discussions of good ethnographies and focus groups that, for example, instead of simply asking respondents whether or not EMF causes cancer, a far more creative and insightful exercise was performed with consumers, and then was intensely analyzed by anthropologists. All too often today, qualitative research is carelessly and quickly administered and the analysis consists of a 30-minute debriefing at the end of the last focus group. . . "In the last few years, the need for cross-cultural consumer understanding has grown rapidly. This phenomenon makes it imperative that not only must we fully understand the meanings of brands and products to our domestic consumers, but we must know which meanings are ′transportable′ to consumers in other cultures. John Sherry Jr.′s book suggests that anthropologists could and should have a major role in cross-cultural consumer understanding." --Patricia A. Cafferata, President and Chief Executive Officer, Young & Rubicam Chicago "John Sherry Jr. and his contributors bring ′marketplace anthropology′ out of the shadows and into the dazzling piazza of contemporary social thought. Wide-ranging, lively, and often witty, the sourcebook raises many intriguing questions about the trajectory of anthropology and social science in general for the 21st century. Though readers might not always agree with the approaches used, these chapters are pointed reminders of vast fields of anthropological neglect on subjects of huge importance for today′s world, yet inspirations for the work reach back to the foundations of modern anthropology, from Malinowski to W. Lloyd Warner. . . "This book makes a convincing case for the role of marketplace anthropology in basic research on humankind. While many anthropologists might approach this collection with some apprehensiveness, the editor does not shrink from the ethical issues of business anthropology. Applied anthropologists in many fields can benefit from the insights and ideas presented here. This book goes a long way toward replacing the pop-anthropology so rampant in corporate circles these days with substantive anthropological materials and sets of ideas on advertising, organizational behavior, buying and selling, profit-making, consumer relations, and much more." --J. Anthony Paredes, Florida State University "Anyone concerned with understanding the consumer will find John F. Sherry Jr.′s new book invaluable. In the past decade, the most important contributions to the meaning of products, brands, and advertising in consumers′ lives have come from anthropology. Sherry and the contributors to this volume have been in the forefront of that movement. The chapters in this volume, whether on shampoo, electric utilities, or life histories of brand behavior, capture the excitement and illumination of looking at marketing and advertising through the lens of anthropology." --Myra Stark, Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising "This book is long overdue; anthropologists as consumer researchers have been a powerful underground force for the past 15 years of innovative marketing. Major companies, as well as government and private institutions, have looked to anthropologists to help when other research has failed. John Sherry Jr. has collected outstanding anthropological practitioners in this volume, and they have written cutting-edge chapters on product symbolism, consumer culture, advertising efficacy, and international marketing. The power of this collection lies in the fresh insights to each of these themes and the ability to reframe old problems to reperceive what it means to live the life of a consumer as we approach the next century." --Steve Barnett, Managing Director, Global Business Network Containing original articles and empirical substance, Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior responds to a growing demand for scholarship more tuned to the empirical and practical realities of consumer culture. Written by leading anthropologists who specialize in marketing and consumer research, it is intended as a sourcebook for readers interested in consumption and its managerial consequences. The topics and their treatments run a gamut of concerns including elements of the marketing mix (such as goods and services), advertising and promotion, relationship management, managerial intervention and development, class-and-gender-linked consumer behaviors, and the production of consumption. Anthropological perspectives and methods employed by the authors range from materialistic to semiotic and both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed. Contributors range across time, space, and topics in pursuit of understanding. The result is a multifaceted perspective of marketing and consumer behavior. Also, the remarks of eminent senior Fellows of the Association for Consumer Research, who have drawn upon anthropology to make their own seminal contributions to a number of disciplines, punctuate this exceptional volume. A remarkable and extraordinary text, Contemporary Marketing and Consumer Behavior is ideal for scholars, students and professionals in marketing, cultural studies, gender studies, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and communication.

This is the only book of its kind - written by an anthropologist who spent twelve months doing fieldwork in a major Tokyo agency and who has spent the past 30 years studying and living in Japan. By examining the production of advertising, this book turns other semiotics, media and cultural studies theories on their heads. By analysing the social structure of a modern media organization from the inside, it makes anthropology relevant and intellectually stimulating. By treating the Japanese as a more-or-less normal and rational people, it explodes the usual myths of exotic Japan and steps boldly into a global arena that embraces 'east' and 'west' in a new theory of values.

Written for both the student and the general reader, this book provides the tools for an interpretation and understanding in historical perspective of how the American advertising industry portrays anyone other than the White American mainstream in its print media.