The document discusses the concept of postmodern marketing and its relevance to creative and media industries, using the advertising industry as a case study. It begins with an overview of postmodernism and theories of postmodern marketing, focusing on symbolic meaning, customization, identity, and playfulness. It then analyzes examples of contemporary advertising to identify evidence of these postmodern marketing traits. While advertising began as a modernist practice, the document argues it has evolved elements of postmodern marketing to continue appealing to audiences in a postmodern world.
This is a presentation i've done based on postmodern theory and the media. It includes elements which are postmodern and examples of different genres. I've also analysed some film trailers and a timeline.
This is a presentation i've done based on postmodern theory and the media. It includes elements which are postmodern and examples of different genres. I've also analysed some film trailers and a timeline.
âWith the collapse of Communism, Marxâs contribution to the analysis of culture lost its contemporary significance.â Discuss.' An analysis of the global Occupy protests in 2011/12 in light of Marxist philosophy.
This is a collection of images I put together for a recent Ignite presentation on Subvertising and Radical Advertising. It chronicled our defensive reactions toward the incessant din of advertising and how artists attempt to take back the media and attribute humanist content. It's not anti-capitalist, it's anti-materialist.
Postmodern Marketing and Its Impact on Traditional Marketing Approaches: Is K...AJHSSR Journal
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ABSTRACT : The essay discusses the concept of postmodern marketing and its impact on marketing theory
and practice. It explores the characteristics of postmodernism, including openness, tolerance, hyper-reality,
fragmentation, and the lack of clear boundaries, and how they challenge traditional marketing approaches. The
paper also looks at the contributions of postmodern marketing to consumer and marketing research and how it
has redefined the way we think about marketing as a science. Ultimately, it raises the question of whether and
how marketing should adapt itself to the new conditions brought about by postmodernism.
KEYWORDS :Postmodernism, Postmodern Marketing, Kotler, Marketing Theory, Postmodern Consumer
Consumers, Culture, Media, and Brands - Guest lecture pt. IIHenri Weijo
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How consumers have evolved as readers of media texts and what this means for brands. A guest lecture by Henri Weijo (http://www.facade.fi) at the Helsinki School of Economics. Course: Brands in Strategic Marketing.
Insights cultural diversity and revolutionary change semiotics in emerging ma...LeapFrog Strategy
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Well established academically across the human sciences, semiotics has recently achieved mainstream recognition and use in consumer insight and marketing consultancy. Some major client corporations such as P&G and Unilever, using tried and tested suppliers, have achieved considerable success in applying the methodology globally. Many clients and supplier agencies, however, still see semiotics as an optional extra rather than an essential part of a thought through research process. Nowhere is the role of semiotics more important than for international business units looking to learn about developing markets and the increasingly diverse and fluid cross-cultural patterns that characterize globalization today.
[En] THE TRIBALISATION OF SOCIETY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE CONDUCT OF MARKETINGYann Gourvennec
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This paper presents an alternative, 'Latin', vision of our societies. Here the urgent societal issue is not to celebrate freedom from social constraints, but to re-establish communal embeddedness. The citizen of 2000 is less interested in the objects of consumption than in the social links and identities that come with them. This Latin view holds that people like to gather together in tribes and that such social, proximate communities are more affective and influential on people's behaviour than either marketing institutions or other 'formal' cultural authorities. There is also an element of resistance and re-appropriation in the acts of being, gathering and experiencing together. This view of the shared experience of tribes sets it apart from both Northern notions of segmented markets and one-to-one relationship.
Opportunities and Risks of Effective International Advertising StrategiesVictor Clar
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This was my Bachelor Thesis, written in 2008 as a student of Betriebswirtschaft und Internationales Management at the University of Applied Sciences (Bremen - Germany).
ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel - (What Comes After) Metamodernism - Digital Booklet Esmod Berlin
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ESMOD Berlin is pleased to present a digital publication from our inaugural Annual Panel held in May of this year. The panel discussed (What Comes After) Metamodernism, a term coined to describe the shift in contemporary culture away from the trademarks of post modernism. The panelsâ brief was to explore the dominant oscillation in culture between disillusionment and meaningfulness, between apathy and empathy with key questions such as; In what direction are the globalized youth going and why? Where is there an overlap with the recent past? Where do we find a combination in the analog and digital in designing individual concepts of life?
Bringing together experts from across various cultural fields the panel discussion was led by Paul Feigelfeld from the Digital Cultures Research Lab Centre, Leuphana University, and included special guests speaker Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer and Lead Design Director of 42 Entertainment based in California. 42 Entertainment are one of the leading companies in transmedia marketing whom blur the boundaries between marketing and entertainment. 42 Entertainment are most well known for their innovative campaign for American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails for their album Year Zero, which extrapolated the theme of a dystopian future beyond the album through leaking unreleased recordings online, and planting USB sticks in the toilets of concerts venues, which lead fans down a thrilling rabbit hole into a world of online and offline acts of underground resistance.
Dealing with the life and work of digital dissents, German Author and Director Angela Richter also participated in the panel discussion. Richter spoke about her time working with Wikileakers Founder and digital activist Julian Assange, of whom she wrote a play Assassinate Assange, premiering in 2012. Other notable panelists included Joerg Koch, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of German culture magazine 032c, as well as Dutch cultural philosopher Robin van den Akker, whom with his colleague Timotheus Vermeulen, coined the term metamodernsm and founded the online magazine Notes on Metamodernsim.
Traversing topics such as sci-fi literature, digital hacktivism, sustainable architecture, fashion and DIY maker culture, the publication aims to capture some of the intense and surprising discussions that took place. The ESMOD Berlin Annual Panel is a program conceived for students from a number of international schools, including L'Institut Francais de la Mode, Paris; ESMOD Berlin International Masters Programme â Sustainability in Fashion, Berlin; and Dessau Institute of Architecture. The booklet also aims to deliver an insight into how the students negotiated the concepts and questions raised during discussion.
Download the digital booklet HERE and for further information please contact Lizzie Delfs, Public Relations Manager, International Masters Programme â Sustainability in Fashion, ESMOD Berlin International University of Art for Fashion, m
Communication strategy lessons @ Panteion University (Dept. of Communication, Media & Culture).
This is my first one, a prologue to advertising history.
06/03/2012
http://1story.tumblr.com/
Service Dominant Logic Applied to Postmodern Marketinginventionjournals
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This paper provides an analysis of how service dominant logic of marketing can be appliedin a post-modernistic approach in the hope of providing solutions and elucidations to certain criticisms on postmodern marketing. The work has been shaped as a conceptual essay and comprises (1) premise derivation for postmodern marketing; (2) the fundamentals of service dominant logic of marketing in relation to postmodern marketingâs derived premises; and (3) anapplication of service dominant logic with postmodern marketing which serves to elucidate certain criticisms imposed on post-modern marketing.
1. MARCH 2012
What is the relevance of
âpostmodern marketingâ to
the creative and media
industries?
MARKETING & MARKETS
2,739 words
Student 1160350
2. Introduction
The idea of postmodernism and the postmodern denotes a distinctive but far from specific set of
ideas and concepts arising around the 1960s. It has had an impact on almost every aspect of culture
and creativity; from art and architecture to socio-political movements such as feminism.
(Featherstone 1991) The field of âpostmodern marketingâ attempts to understand this ânew stageâ of
human experience and apply its principles to marketing approaches.
By their very nature, the creative and media industries are susceptible to the influences of cultural
and social developments, as well as often being their creators and arbiters. This is why the question
of postmodern marketing in these industries is important. Few industries have had as much impact
on contemporary culture as the advertising industry. Responsible for much of the creative output of
the previous and present centuries, advertising incorporates visual art, written media and
psychosocial aspects. It can also be argued that the initial concept of advertising â as a method of
marketing to the masses with a simple call to action â was a modernist one, which has had to evolve
in a postmodern world. Thus it is the perfect area of creative and media industries to focus on for
insights into the relevance of postmodern marketing.
The essay begins with an overview of what is meant by postmodernism, then outlines the theories of
postmodern marketing. Through this I will set out a framework of rough criteria and attributes for
postmodern marketing, and then explore to what extent these are today apparent, employing
examples of contemporary advertising. A discussion of critiques of âpostmodern marketingâ follows,
before a conclusion about the relevance of this new approach for the creative and media industries.
What is postmodernism?
âNot so much a question of historical period, but of a special aesthetic and special philosophy.â
3. (Sipe 2008)
âA rather shallow and meaningless intellectual fad.â
(Featherstone 1991:1)
These descriptions, one rather less reverential and more dismissive than the other, have both been
applied to that phenomenon known as postmodernism. It has also been defined as âthe
randomisation of cultural productionâ (Malcolm Bradbury, The Guardian, December 9 1995), âan
opportunist, voracious termâ (Alan Yentob, BBC) and even âthe total disintegration of the very notion
of meaningâ (Wakefield 1990). Anyone confused by the plethora of overlapping and differing
descriptions of the concept, however, can take comfort from the fact that plurality and breakdown
of cultural authority is generally held to be intrinsic to postmodernism. This goes with a general
breakdown of respect for rationality and progress intrinsic to Modernism. The confident Modernist
concept and aesthetic expressed itself in architecture through impressive buildings of steel and
concrete, in art through startling innovations like Cubism and Surrealism, and in design through
daringly short 1920s hemlines, and geometric art deco. Modernism was marked by a desire to break
with the past, believing in novelty and progress as ever-improving. Postmodernism, on the other
hand, has lost this faith. (Featherstone 1991) The breakdown of belief in metanarratives â all-
encompassing philosophies â goes alongside the disintegration of homogeneous societies and ways
of thought. In art and culture, earnestness gives way to playful irony, while media-saturated
audiences can be expected to recognise pastiche and intertextuality. The growth of consumerism
and the individual makes values and interpretations fragmented and highly subjective.
What is postmodern marketing?
But what does all of this seemingly abstract philosophising have to do with marketing goods and
services to consumers? Bernard Cova (1996) undertook to answer this very question, taking his cue
4. from marketing consultant James Ogilvy, who declared: âThe postmodern is too important to be left
to French philosophers alone.â
Covaâs insights are focused on the shift in consumer psychology and behaviour in the postmodern
era. Crucially, he says, consumers no longer simply consume a product, but they consume a symbolic
meaning associated with it. The building of identity through consumption is a phenomenon that
others (Brown 1995, Turnock 2007) have also associated with postmodern culture. In todayâs world
of deliberately conspicuous cultural consumption via, for example, social media applications like
Spotify-for-Facebook, this idea that we consciously define ourselves through consumption holds
increasing weight. Cova mentions that this individualism, paradoxically, goes alongside tribalism.
Fragmented identities and the weakening of traditional institutional identity-givers like state and
family (also noted by Kelner, 1992), call for a more fluid but not less connected sense of community,
which, nowadays, is often expressed via shared consumption habits and online connections. His
point that hyper-reality replaces authenticity calls to mind niche online simulations like Second Life
but also the mainstream Facebook, both of which hold huge marketing potential.
Firat et al (1995) make a similar analysis, but give more emphasis to consumer sovereignty and the
desire for customisation. Like Cova, they believe that the age of mass homogenous consumption has
given way to a more interactive world. Audiences can alter meanings and subvert marketing
messages, an effect that has been noted with respect to television (Ang 1991) and advertising
consumption (OâDonohoe 1994). The writers believe marketing to be an important mediator of the
postmodernist experience, and conclude by advocating a re-evaluation of traditional marketingâs
âlong-held views and ideals.â Cova concludes that post-modern marketing needs to recognise and
respond to new elements. Slightly more specific in his recommendations, he calls for incorporating
co-creation, customisation and interactivity, while not losing sight of tribalism and potential for
fostering fragmented virtual communities.
5. These authors focus on the marketing macro-approach, without making much reference to the
character or tone of the marketing communications and media themselves. I would argue that these
also mark a shift from previous marketing approaches. Inasmuch as postmodern marketing takes on
the values of postmodernism, it reflects the tendency towards irony, self-mocking and anti-
authoritarian attitudes, as well as heavy use of intertextual visuals and narratives designed to spark
recognition with a media-savvy audience. (OâDonohoe 1997)
Like postmodernism itself, postmodern marketing is a concept open to varying interpretations,
However, through the insights above, a set of recurring themes emerges. I have used these to
construct a rudimentary framework of analysis, identifying salient features of what could be termed
a âpostmodern marketing approach:â
Focus on emotional and symbolic meaning
Customisation and audience interactivity
Emphasis on tribalism and identity
Irony, playfulness and intertextuality
I will now go on to consider the evidence and relevance of these components with specific regard to
the field of advertising, a mammoth of the creative and media industries, employing hundreds of
thousands of people worldwide, and attracting $467 billion of investment in 2011. (Wolfe 2011)
Postmodern marketing in contemporary advertising?
Advertising has obscure origins. When defined as âpaid-for communication intended to inform
and/or persuade,â (Fletcher 2010:2) it potentially encompasses even the earliest preliterate signs
and symbols created to attract trade or influence behaviour. However, the field of modern
advertising grew up with the advent of print and the Industrial Revolution, both of which
transformed Western societies and were central to the modernist world of technology and
commerce. By the time capitalist mass production reached its heyday in the first half of the 20th
6. century, advertising was big business. With its philosophy of aspirational progress through products,
and collective consumerist approach firmly geared towards the masses, modern advertising began
as a modernist marketing practice. Like all areas of the creative and media industries, however,
advertising has been placed under constant pressure to evolve, if it is to continue appealing to
audiences. Does it now display elements of postmodern marketing? We turn to the contemporary
advertising mediascape scene for evidence of the postmodern marketing traits and techniques
identified.
Focus on emotional and symbolic meaning
There is evidence in much of todayâs advertising, of an emphasis on the emotional aspect of a
product. While it has been a long-held adage for lifestyle products in particular, that one should âsell
the sizzle and not the sausage,â it appears advertisers of even the most functional products are now
acting in line with Covaâs assertion that the consumer of a product wants more than simply to meet
an end (Cova 1996).
Thus we have a multitude of such emotive advertising campaigns, that seek to attach feelings of
nostalgia and national pride to bread and butter (Hovis 1973-2008, Clover 2006), of freedom and
escape to a mobile service provider (O2 2012) and of romantic passion to household paint. (Dulux
2012). This technique has been used for many decades, but it marks a shift from earlier approaches
to advertising, in which the features and functions of the product itself, not the feelings associated
with it, were the exclusive or primary focus. (Fletcher 2010)
Customisation and audience interactivity
The age of mass consumption is far from behind us. In fact, identical products are created in ever
greater numbers thanks to advancing technology and industrial booms in the developing and
emergent markets. (MAPI 2011) However, what has occurred in the West, at least, is a shift in
consumer psychology. Simplistically put, in place of the old âKeeping Up With the Jonesesâ
philosophy that encouraged people to aspire to consume the same things in the same way as their
7. peers and neighbours (Turnock 2007), advertising now increasingly focuses on ways in which the
consumer can alter the product and use it to create personal distinction.
One prominent recent example is the television campaign for the Google Chrome browser. Dear
Sophie (2011) features a new father using various tools within the new browser to create a digital
video and email diary of his daughterâs life as she grows up. The browserâs functional object, to allow
access to and navigation of the Internet, seems almost secondary to the potential for personalisation
and identity-creation.
Emphasis on tribalism and identity
Advertising has long recognised that people like to think of themselves belonging to certain groups.
But âtribalismâ in advertising was traditionally based on pre-existing social tribes like class (the
marketing of Rolls-Royce as a car for discerning professionals: Fig. 1) or race (the advertising of
menthol cigarettes in the US to African-Americans: Johnson 2008). Increasingly, the creation of a
tribal identity around a product or brand has become a key feature of advertising campaigns. Brands
like Apple aim to create a loyalty to the brand by making it central to a sense of belonging to a club:
âIf you donât have an iPhone, well, you donât have an iPhone.â (2011) This development extends
beyond technology brands into fast moving consumer goods. Both Marmite and Cadburys (Spots v
Stripes 2010) ran successful cross-media campaigns designed to engage consumers by encouraging
tribal feeling and action. The 15 year-old âLove it or Hate itâ Marmite campaign, itself reflecting a
playfully postmodern approach by frankly admitting and glorifying a potential downside of the
product, was taken to a new level in 2009. People were encouraged to declare their love or hatred of
the spread on social media and website platforms, where they could join either âmovement.â They
did so in their thousands, sharing their opposing views on Facebook and Twitter. Even seemingly
trivial divisions can be exploited for advertising purposes, in a world where people are constantly
concerned with building and sharing their identities. (Kellner 1992:141-77)
9. connotations of masculinity, feminism and even health. (Kellner 1992:158-72) The clue to the shift,
however, comes when we look further into the history of advertising and realise that while this
emotive approach appeared early on, it was preceded by a more rational modernist strategy of
declaring the practical benefits of the products being advertised. (Fig 1, Appendix)
Another potential critique is that the role of technology is the real instigator of change, and the
phenomena of customisation and increased consumer interactivity are simply consequences of the
appearance of new media like the Internet with its social media platforms. While this may be true, it
merely offers a way to explain one aspect of the shift rather than to explain it away. Advancement of
interactive technologies is indeed a key feature of postmodernism, and I argue that postmodern
marketing harnesses the new spirit of co-creation and individualisation they encourage, in the same
way that earlier advertising made use of the mass medium of the television to address large
audiences via a distinctly modernist model of one-way communication.
Finally, it may be advanced that these postmodern marketing techniques are not universally
effective. Certainly when we consider interactivity, customisation and intertextuality, it appears that
the audiences best placed to respond to these are younger and media-savvy. (OâDonohoe, 1997)
This raises the issue of whether postmodern marketing in fact boils down to a tailored approach
targeted at a particular, albeit diverse, demographic. But given the vast range of products and
services that now employ these techniques to varying degrees, this seems implausible. While
products aimed at the young, for example Lynx body spray (Fig. 4) do show frequent evidence of
postmodernist self-mocking tones, it also features strongly in advertisements for âolderâ products
such as mortgages (Barclays 2011) . And the focus on building emotional engagement with brands,
rather than simply winning a sale, is almost nowhere more apparent than in advertising for near-
universal products like washing-up liquid (Fairy 2011). Postmodern marketing cannot be dismissed
as a narrow question of demographics; it is an approach marked by a pervasive set of attitudes and
emphases.
10. Conclusion
The concept of postmodernism is not merely an abstract philosophy, but a real observation of
cultural shifts during the second half of the 20th century and into the 21st, marked by a move towards
plurality of interpretations, individualism, identity-building through consumption and a jaded
familiarity with the media and its techniques. Postmodernist marketing attempts to explain how the
loosely linked set of phenomena can be used to inform how products and services are marketed.
Through the study of postmodern marketing texts, I suggested a framework of features for this
approach, choosing to examine contemporary advertising for evidence of a shift to postmodern
marketing. Examples abound supporting the hypothesis that advertising has moved from a rational
modernist model towards the postmodern traits of focus on emotional and symbolic meaning,
customisation and audience interactivity, emphasis on tribalism and identity and irony, playfulness
and intertextuality. I would further argue that the status of advertising as a large and culturally
influential sector means that its embrace of postmodern marketing inevitably gives the approach
relevance not only within its own boundaries, but almost certainly across the creative and media
industries.
13. References
Ang I (1991). Desperately seeking the audience. London: Routledge
Bennett, O (2001). Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Modern World. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press
Brown S (1995). Postmodern Marketing. New York: Routledge
Cadburys (2010). Spots v Stripes [online]: http://www.spotsvstripes.com/default.aspx [accessed
March 2011]
Cova, B (1996) The Postmodern Explained to Managers: Implications For Marketing. Business
Horizons: 15 â 23
Featherstone M. (1991) Consumer Culture and Postmodernism: London: Sage
Firat A, Dholakia N, Venkatesh A (1995). Marketing in a postmodern world. European Journal of
Marketing 29:1:40-56
Fletcher W (2010). Advertising: a very short introduction. New York: OUP
Johnson, F. L. (2008). Imaging in advertising. New York: Routledge.
Kellner, Do (1992): Popular culture and the construction of postmodern identities in Lash S, Friedman
J (eds.), Modernity and Identity (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 141 â 177
MAPI (2011). An Anatomy of the Growth in the BRICs: Past Trends and Future Prospects. Industry
Today [online]: http://www.industrytoday.com/article_view.asp?ArticleID=we344 [accessed March
2012]
Marmite (2009). Love it or Hate it [online]: http://www.marmite.com/ [accessed March 2011]
O'Donohoe S (1994). Advertising Uses and Gratifications. European Journal of Marketing 28:8:52-75
O'Donohoe S (1997). Raiding the postmodern pantry: Advertising intertextuality and the young adult
audience. European Journal of Marketing: 31:3:234 â 253
Ogilvy D (1995). Ogilvy on Advertising. London: Prion Books
Sipe L, Pantaleo S (2008) Postmodern picturebooks: play, parody and self-referentiality. New York:
Routledge
Turnock R (2007). Television and consumer culture. New York: IB Tauris & Co.
Wakefield N (1990) Postmodernism: the twilight of the real. London: Pluto Press
Wolfe J. (2011) GroupM forecasts global ad spending to increase 6.4%. WPP [online]:
http://www.wpp.com/wpp/press/press/default.htm?guid={23ebd8df-51a5-4a1d-b139-
576d711e77ac} [accessed March 2012]
14. Video media referenced
Apple iPhone 4 TV commercial (2011) If you donât have an iPhone [online]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onLYKU-CNhM [accessed March 2012]
Dulux TV commercial (2012). Boudoir [online[:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssnxi2eDV9g
[accessed March 2012]
Google Chrome TV commercial (2011). Dear Sophie [online]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk [accessed March 2012]
Hovis TV Commercial (2008). Hovis boy. [online]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4tFzuFGUOI
[accessed March 2012]
O2 TV Commercial (2012). Things are changing [online]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbbmfB6NZxI [accessed March 2012]
Old Spice TV commercial (2012). Vending Machine [online]:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ziwz5Ltn-w [accessed March 2012]