Page 158 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Marketing communications and media 137

the production, circulation and consumption of goods and services –‘political’
dimensions – how marketing and communications are organised and regulated –
and ‘symbolic’ dimensions – meaning and ideology – to explore the contribution of
advertising to the production of meanings, social relations and material practices.
These can be distinguished analytically but are bound together in material processes
of promotion (McFall 2004). Advertising has been examined as part of a system
of communications that ‘engineers consumption to match production and
reproduces the ideological system that supports the prevailing status quo’ (Faraone
2011: 189). This requires study of communication as a sector of the total economy
and for its ‘linking function in the production, circulation and consumption of
goods and services and its strategic, symbolic role in maintaining and perpetuating
political and economic control’ (Faraone 2011: 189). As we will see there have
been tensions and debates within CPE on adequate theorisation of the interplay
between economic and symbolic dimensions of advertising.
Critiques of advertising from the 1960s and 1970s had fallen out of favour by
the 1980s for their reliance on concepts of ideological manipulation, ‘false’
needs, and overgeneralised accounts of advertising’s ‘function(s)’, ‘effects’ and
influence. Some of the deficiencies of general critiques of the advertising system
were addressed by analyses of the advertising industry, exploring the corporate
organisation of marketing communications, and of advertising work, examining the
practices and reflexivity of practitioners. A fourth area of focus has been the
governance and regulation of advertising, where CPE scholars have emphasised both
the importance of public regulation of advertising and the efforts of organised
lobbying by marketers, marketing agencies and commercial media to extend
commercial speech rights and the ‘right to advertise’. The fifth main area of
analysis has been the relationship between media and advertising, where I believe CPE
has made its most distinctive contribution.

Political economy of advertising industries and practices

The advertising industry has experienced the same core processes of corporate
reorganisation that have occurred in media businesses and more generally across
advanced economies (Turow 2010, 2011). Advertising agency growth accompanied
that of transnational corporations and their expansion into foreign markets. From
the 1980s there was a drive amongst major advertisers to consolidate their
advertising accounts, with agencies consolidating and reorganising to match the
needs of TNCs (Herman and McChesney 1997: 39), although there have been
deconvergence trends too with the break-up of ‘full-service agencies’ (Nixon
2011). By the early 1990s there were seven major global advertising holding
companies, with a second tier of large firms dominating regions and a third tier
of national and sub-national firms. Today, four major global groups dominate:
WPP Group (British), Interpublic Group (US), Omnicom Group (US) and
Publicis (France), the last two seeking a merger in 2013 to create the largest
marketing agency.