Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Advertising is the key link in the mutually sustained global expansion of consumer goods and services industries and the media of communication that carry their commercial messages. In this structural context, → advertising is much more than the → images and brand names (→ Brands ; Branding ) that form the surface of → consumer culture . It is the life-blood of the media, and the motive force behind media industry development. Further, it is the publicly most visible dimension of → marketing , that is, the cultural industry that seeks to connect the producers of consumer goods and services with their potential markets, and in fact, to bring those markets into being. This integrated institutional relationship between production and consumption, with the advertising agency at its center, may be referred to as the “manufacturing–marketing–media complex.” Advertising agencies produce and place advertising for their “clients,” the consumer goods or service companies that are the actual advertisers (not just “manufacturers”). However, although the clients pay their “agents” for these services, agencies also traditionally have derived income directly or indirectly from the media in the form of a sales commission paid in consideration of the media space and time, such as newspaper pages or television “spots,” that the agencies purchase on behalf of their clients (→ Advertising, ... log in or subscribe to read full text