Ad Worlds: Brands, Media, Audiences

Description

Our world is defined by advertisements. They make us smoke, drink, lose weight, but things we do not need. Of course we see through them - or so we say. So how do advertisments work in today's culture? 'Ad Worlds' is a readable introduction to the ways ads are produced, transmitted and interpreted, drawing on work in cultural studies, discourse analysis and marketing. It argues that advertising is not monolithic, and illustrates the complex and unpredictable effects of ads as they travel through different worlds - the client's, the agency's, and the medium's - before ultimately reaching ours. Challenging the view of advertising as an homogenous and all-powerful institution, Greg Myers focuses on the interactions that shape an ad, its circulation, and the responses to it. With each chapter centred on an analysis of a memorable commercial, the book reveals the author's genuine enjoyment of ads, their ingenuity and excitement.

Greg Myers is Professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Lancaster University, UK. Visit his blog: The Language of Blogs [http://thelanguageofblogs.typepad.com/]

Valuable for the way it reveals the insidious complexity and importance of adverts to the media and, beyond that, to the way Western society operates. Natfhe An engaging and useful book analysing various forms of contemporary British and American advertising. Across 12 lucidly written and, for the most part, lively chapters, the reader is informed, guided and entertained by the author's enthusiastic discussions of the various social worlds of advertising. A good, basic introduction to the mechanics of the advertising process. European Journal of Communication