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United America

Wendy L. Wall

in Inventing the "American Way": The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement

In the aftermath of World War II, an array of influential elites launched a wide-ranging effort to recapture the sense of teamwork that had pervaded public discourse during the war. Those engaged in ... More

In the aftermath of World War II, an array of influential elites launched a wide-ranging effort to recapture the sense of teamwork that had pervaded public discourse during the war. Those engaged in this endeavor included social scientists who worried about threats to national cohesion; intergroup activists who hoped to extend their wartime anti-prejudice campaigns; business and advertising executives determined to derail the rising power of labor and to halt or roll back the New Deal; and officials of the Truman Administration who sought to unify Americans behind their emerging Cold War policies. The motives of these elites differed sharply, as did their definition of the values around which Americans should unite. What they shared was a fear of social unrest or upheaval. This chapter explores their efforts, focusing particularly on the activities of the Advertising Council. The council provided a vital link between numerous groups and conducted campaigns on behalf of both free enterprise and intergroup tolerance.Less

Regulation and control of branding to children

Barrie Gunter

in Kids and Branding In A Digital World

The growing concern about children's pre-occupation with brands has led to calls for tighter government-backed restrictions on brand owners‘ marketing activities. The appeal of digital worlds to ... More

The growing concern about children's pre-occupation with brands has led to calls for tighter government-backed restrictions on brand owners‘ marketing activities. The appeal of digital worlds to young consumers has not gone unmissed by professional marketers. The concerns of marketing regulators around the world has grown particularly acute with the emergence of more subtle forms of branding activity in online environments that often disguise their true purpose. Until they reach a level of psychological development that approaches adulthood, children are in any case susceptible to marketing appeals. This is true even with forms of advertising that stand apart from other media content or the physical setting in which they are presented. In digital worlds, brand promotions are frequently integrated with surrounding content and form part of it. This chapter examines these concerns and considers concepts of taste, freedom of choice and harm in debating what kinds of restrictions might be placed on different brand marketing activities where children are concerned.Less

On Representation

Seb Franklin

in Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic

This chapter considers exclusion as an unmarked but fundamental principle of control, and thus as a central concern for contemporary theories of representation. Beginning from Neferti X.M. Tadiar’s ... More

This chapter considers exclusion as an unmarked but fundamental principle of control, and thus as a central concern for contemporary theories of representation. Beginning from Neferti X.M. Tadiar’s critique of the totalizing concept of life that grounds much recent critical work on post-Fordism, the chapter works through the history of the black box concept and its relation to recent socioeconomic imaginaries. The chapter then addresses the methodological limitations of privileging computational media such as network diagrams and video games when seeking to theorize the social, political, and cultural implications of control.Less

Action: Can We Stop Terminal Consumption?

Peter J. Taylor, Geoff O’Brien, and Phil O’Keefe

in Cities Demanding the Earth: A New Understanding of the Climate Emergency

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its ... More

This chapter asks the question, what does this unthinking mean for current anthropogenic climate change policies? This is answered in two ways. First, the concept of urban demand is discussed in its current manifestation as the product of a global Advertising-Big Data-Social Media complex. Second, the mechanisms behind the immensity of Chinese urban growth in recent decades are described. In their different, but intertwined, ways these two expressions of today’s modernity are pointing irrevocably towards terminal consumption. The only means to stop this happening appears to a reinvention of the city, creating an urban demand for stewarding nature for future generations, a posterity cityLess

Freedom of Commercial Expression and Public Health Protection: The Principle of Proportionality as a Tool to Strike the Balance

Amandine Garde

in From Single Market to Economic Union: Essays in Memory of John A. Usher

This chapter explores the basic principles of the internal market and EU law. The discussion centres on how the European Court of Justice used the principle of proportionality in the Tobacco ... More

This chapter explores the basic principles of the internal market and EU law. The discussion centres on how the European Court of Justice used the principle of proportionality in the Tobacco Advertising proceedings. It compares the Court's approach to advertising restrictions with the approach used by the U.S. Supreme Court. This chapter also considers the argument that neither court has created an appropriate balance between the need to guarantee that courts to do not replace their assessment with that of the legislature when using their powers of judicial review, and the need for public authorities to provide proper proof to help justify the limits on the freedom of commercial operators to advertise their goods and services.Less

Modeling Race: Refashioning Blasianness

Myra S. Washington

in Blasian Invasion: Racial Mixing in the Celebrity Industrial Complex

Kimora Lee Simmons’s career as a fashion model and media figure offers an alternative reading of Blasians as potentially resistive and subversive campy subjects. This chapter delves into how her use ... More

Kimora Lee Simmons’s career as a fashion model and media figure offers an alternative reading of Blasians as potentially resistive and subversive campy subjects. This chapter delves into how her use of camp is predicated on the performative nature of identity and her refusal to settle for the primacy of visibility and authenticity as key measures of race. Analyses of Simmons’s advertising campaigns, reality television show, and social media usage highlights the ways her Blasianness publicly challenges the idea of a color-blind, post-racial United States.Less

Positive Realism: Tom Burrell and the Development of Chicago as a Center for Black-O wned Advertising Agencies

Jason P. Chambers

in Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago

New York City’s Madison Avenue has long been considered the center of advertising in the United States. Yet for African Americans in the industry, Chicago is much more representative of their ... More

New York City’s Madison Avenue has long been considered the center of advertising in the United States. Yet for African Americans in the industry, Chicago is much more representative of their experiences in and contributions to advertising. This chapter examines the early professional and entrepreneurial life of Thomas J. Burrell, founder of Burrell Advertising. It analyzes the creation of his advertising technique known as “Positive Realism” in representing blacks’ in advertisements as well as his contributions to the development of the network of blacks Chicago’s business community. Additionally, this chapter focuses on the strategic relationships Burrell built within the advertising industry and with individuals who worked for clients like McDonald’s. These relationships enabled Burrell to build of the most successful agencies in advertising history. Less

Introduction

Christopher Gair

in The American Counterculture

This chapter examines the factors leading to the emergence of the counterculture. It focuses on dempgraphic, economic and technological change and offers an overview of the material to follow.

Representing Africa through the commodity

Graham Harrison

in The African presence: Representations of Africa in the construction of Britishness

This chapter focuses on the role of consumption in Africa campaigning. The premise of the chapter is that British nationalism has always been constructed through norms of consumption: what to eat, ... More

This chapter focuses on the role of consumption in Africa campaigning. The premise of the chapter is that British nationalism has always been constructed through norms of consumption: what to eat, what to buy, and what makes a ‘healthy’ nation. One can see this mostr prominently in the connections between consumption and imperial grandeur – encapsulated in the term ‘commodity racism’. Consumer politics has also been reflected in campaign politics. The chapter explores the politics of sugar boycotts as a key example of campaign action and an appeal to British consumer preferences, encapsulated in the imagery of ‘blood sugar’. The chapter finishes with an analysis of the ways in which contemporary Africa campaigning has increasingly relied on the techniques of marketing and branding to ‘sell’ a campaign. This has profound effects on the way Africa is represented which the chapter details by reviewing the websites and advertising of major campaign organisations.Less

Institutional Design and Accountability in UK Media Regulation

Mike Feintuck and Mike Varney

in Media Regulation, Public Interest and the Law

This chapter shifts the focus from predominantly structural regulation of media markets to the activities of the media, and those who regulate them, from the perspective of accountability. It ... More

This chapter shifts the focus from predominantly structural regulation of media markets to the activities of the media, and those who regulate them, from the perspective of accountability. It discusses aspects of accountability; formal power and informal influence; complaints and ‘standards’ in broadcasting; the Press Complaints Commission; and the Advertising Standards Authority.Less

The Shanghai Artist in Advertising and Mass Media

Roberta Wue

in Art Worlds: Artists, Images, and Audiences in Late Nineteenth-Century Shanghai

Examines the relationships between Shanghai artists and their public and the establishment of these relationships through Shanghai’s growing mass media outlets. By exploiting the city’s burgeoning ... More

Examines the relationships between Shanghai artists and their public and the establishment of these relationships through Shanghai’s growing mass media outlets. By exploiting the city’s burgeoning newspaper and publishing industries, artists promoted themselves as public figures and marketed themselves, their products and activities; through the mass media, they were able to access audiences on local, national and even international levels. By using newspaper advertising and articles, guide books, popular periodicals and collected writings, this chapter reveals the formation of the art world’s public image, promoted for consumption by an urban audience and mass readership.Less

A Nasty Story

Julian Petley

in Film and Video Censorship in Contemporary Britain

This chapter describes in detail the video nasty affair. This started with complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the British Videogram Association (BVA) and members of the ... More

This chapter describes in detail the video nasty affair. This started with complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the British Videogram Association (BVA) and members of the public about the gruesome nature of the advertising for certain cassettes. The British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) and the BVA were establishing a working party to prepare a classification strategy for videos similar to that used in cinemas. Gareth Wardell introduced a Bill under the ten-minute rule ‘to prohibit the rental of video cassettes of adult category to children and young persons’. Graham Bright reviewed the main features of his Bill to the press. It then explores some of the implications of the proposed legislation. Opposition to the media hysteria and the ill-conceived legislation rushed through parliament has been almost non-existent, and the outrage stoked up over ‘video nasties’ is bound to spill over into other areas of expression.Less

The functioning metropolis

James Greenhalgh

in Reconstructing modernity: Space, power and governance in mid-twentieth century British cities

This chapter examines the strategies employed by the local governments of Manchester and Hull to govern the space of their cities in the immediate post-war period by examining policies and projects ... More

This chapter examines the strategies employed by the local governments of Manchester and Hull to govern the space of their cities in the immediate post-war period by examining policies and projects that sought to control the built environment. The techniques of spatial governance local governments deployed ranged from zoning large areas, to prohibiting certain types of business, display or activity and included control of land, buildings and even the air. The chapter argues that in the immediate post-war period local corporations attempted to expand their ability to control their cities in a holistic sense through the application and expansion of national planning legislation. Their aim was the assertion of a long-term, rational approach to the physical development of their cities, but their means were often mundane or small-scale: control of fun-fairs, the regulation of air or advertising as well as the siting of shops were all part of corporations holistic view of the functional city. These attempts were contested by the agencies of the national state, commercial elites and the inhabitants of the cities, illustrating the deeply contested character of modernity in the post-war.Less

‘The Most Beautiful Factory in the World’: the power of the garden image

Helena Chance

in The Factory in a Garden: A History of Corporate Landscapes from the Industrial to the Digital Age

An analysis of the extensive collections of photographs, illustrations, films and ephemera in company archives provides a fresh perspective on the factory gardens and parks. By means of illustrated ... More

An analysis of the extensive collections of photographs, illustrations, films and ephemera in company archives provides a fresh perspective on the factory gardens and parks. By means of illustrated lectures, publications and factory tours, in which the landscapes featured prominently, industrialists presented their enterprises as places of status, community, opportunity, health and hygiene and their products as authentic and modern. The landscapes and their representations defined this utopianist portrayal of working conditions and labour, and motivated myths about the commodities they produced. The advertising and packaging images from the early twentieth century of the companies discussed here are now iconic in the history of marketing and advertising, for it was largely through effective publicity that they became household names.Less

The Initial Year of the Advertising Council

Inger L. Stole

in Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s

This chapter looks at the strategizing and planning efforts that went into the Advertising Council. It outlines the Council’s organizational setup and its working relationship with the government’s ... More

This chapter looks at the strategizing and planning efforts that went into the Advertising Council. It outlines the Council’s organizational setup and its working relationship with the government’s Office of War Information (OWI) during its first year of existence. It also presents the Council’s criteria for accepting the government’s domestic information campaigns and how individual campaigns were prepared and implemented in actual advertisements. By providing their services to the government through the Council at no charge, advertisers hoped to impress upon the American people that theirs was a patriotic institution helping the war effort. The chapter concludes with a discourse regarding the advertisers’ victory in the battle to keep advertising a tax-deductible expense for business.Less

The Crying Indian

Finis Dunaway

in Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images

In 1971, the antilitter organization Keep America Beautiful, along with the Advertising Council, launched a campaign featuring the Crying Indian. Played by Iron Eyes, an actor in native garb, the ... More

In 1971, the antilitter organization Keep America Beautiful, along with the Advertising Council, launched a campaign featuring the Crying Indian. Played by Iron Eyes, an actor in native garb, the Crying Indian sheds a tear in response to litter and pollution. This chapter views the television commercial and other public service announcements in the broader contexts of popular perceptions of indigenous peoples, debates over disposable packaging, and the question of responsibility. By designing the commercial around the imagined experience of a native person, Keep America Beautiful (KAB) incorporated the counterculture’s embrace of Indianness as a marker of oppositional identity. Yet KAB, composed of leading beverage and packaging corporations, sought to interiorize the environmentalist critique of progress, to make individual viewers feel guilty and responsible for the degraded environment. Deflecting the question of responsibility away from corporations and placing it entirely in the realm of individual action, the commercial castigated spectators for their environmental sins but concealed the role of industry in polluting the landscape. While the Crying Indian became an environmental icon, many environmentalists critiqued the campaign and clashed with KAB over its opposition to bottle bills.Less

Gas Lines and Power Struggles

Finis Dunaway

in Seeing Green: The Use and Abuse of American Environmental Images

This chapter begins by looking at pictures of gas lines that emerged during the OPEC oil embargo in 1973-74. These images presented the energy crisis as a short-term problem of supply rather than a ... More

This chapter begins by looking at pictures of gas lines that emerged during the OPEC oil embargo in 1973-74. These images presented the energy crisis as a short-term problem of supply rather than a long-term question of escalating demand. In a period marked by severe economic decline and increasing public cynicism, gas lines also contributed to the decade’s broader emotional politics that emphasized anger and alienation over a collective sense of hope and possibility. While the Advertising Council once again produced public service announcements that emphasized individual responsibility for energy conservation, environmentalists sought to broaden the concept of energy crisis by warning of the dangers of nuclear power and by promoting alternative energy sources. Ultimately, the emotional politics of the 1970s intersected, in shifting and surprising ways, with popular environmentalism. During this crucial environmental moment, the visual media conveyed the dangers of radiation to a mass public, but reaffirmed popular conceptions of environmentalism as a cause that focused on individual moral choices rather than on broader structural solutions.Less