Page 156 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Chapter 6

Marketing communications
and media

Introduction
Political economists have tended to share broader critiques of advertising as the
leading ideological agency for capitalism, of its role in promoting consumerism and
possessive individualism, and of its regressive, stereotypical representations of
gendered, racial and other identities. But CPE researchers developed a more dis-
tinctive contribution. They argued that to understand advertising required attention
to its economic as well as its ideological importance, addressing the nature and
implications of advertising as a support mechanism for media. Overwhelmingly,
research into marketing communications pursues an agenda conducive to the
needs and interests of advertisers and the advertising industry, focusing on the
effectiveness and efficiency of marketing communications. Critical output has been
tiny by contrast (Mattelart 1989: 200) yet has been remarkably influential at times
and, like Naomi Klein’s No Logo (2000), has connected with wider social concerns
about marketing communications. Critical perspectives are also generated by
campaigning organisations, critical–artistic interventions such as Adbusters and
other civil society organisations that draw upon and resonate with public attitudes.
From the 1980s critical discourses of advertiser power were challenged and
disfavoured by culturalist scholars (Nava 1997; McFall 2004; Cronin 2003).
Analysis of control, domination and manipulation was replaced by appreciation
of people’s imbrication in branding and consumer culture. This work has offered
significant advances in theory and empirical enquiry, into brand strategies,
advertising work and user engagement. Yet the disavowal of advertiser power
has also led to rather anaemic, descriptive accounts that chart and interrogate
advertising practice and culture without systematic critique. This makes them
poorly equipped to address the transformations in capitalism and communications
that lead to unprecedented advertiser power and are the subject of a new wave
of critical scholarship of digital profiling, tracking and targeting (Turow 2011;
Pariser 2011). This chapter traces both ‘classic’ and ‘contemporary’ lines of
enquiry. In doing so it seeks to outline key arguments but also to contribute to
identifying the revision and renewal of the radical tradition and to invite an
assessment of their value and contemporary relevance.