Explorations in Critical Studies of Advertising

James F. Hamilton, Robert Bodle, Ezequiel Korin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138649521
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317232971
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Marketing

This volume provides a thoughtful and wide-ranging exploration of approaches to the critical study of advertising. Current and impending practices of advertising have in many ways exceeded the grasp of traditional modes of critique, due at least in part to their being formulated in very different historical conditions. To begin to address this lag, this edited collection explores through critical discussion and application a variety of critical approaches to advertising. Authors address a variety of concrete examples in their chapters, drawing on existing research while presenting new findings where relevant. In order to maintain the relevance of this collection past this particular historical moment, however, chapters do not simply report on empirical work, but develop a theoretical argument.

Part I
Critical Political Economy

1 Marketers’ Influence on Media

Renewing the Radical Tradition for the Digital Age

Jonathan Hardy

The distinctive contribution of the critical political economy of media approaches has been to examine the implications of advertising as a system of financing media and the influence of marketers on media content, media provision, and access to communications. Classic contributions examined advertisers’ influence on non-advertising content and media firms’ behavior. The problems they identified are of central concern today, but critical political economy theory and analysis need to be updated to deal with transformations in the ways marketing communications are produced and circulated within the changing dynamics of media-advertising relationships. Key features include the expansion of marketers’ self-promotion (“owned” media), the “disaggregation” of media and advertising, as marketers bypass media to target and reach consumers directly through online behavioral advertising, and the “integration” of media and advertising through product placement, sponsored stories, and native advertising (Turow 2011; Hardy 2013). This chapter explores the strengths and limitations of political economy perspectives and offers guidelines for the contemporary analysis and critique of marketer influences on communications.

Advertising and Political Economy Critiques

Political economy addresses how resources are organized in societies. Critical political economy (CPE) refers to approaches that examine and critique the unequal distribution of resources and the power relations that sustain and reproduce such inequalities. In media and communication studies, critical political economy forms a distinctive sub-field, articulated in writings from the 1970s onwards. Its central claim is that different ways of organizing and financing communications have implications for the range and nature of media content and the ways in which these are consumed and used (Murdock and Golding 2005; Hardy 2014). Critical political economists generally share broader critiques of advertising as the leading ideological agency for capitalism due to its role in promoting consumerism and possessive individualism and for its regressive, stereotypical representations of gendered, racial, and other identities. 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). My focus, though, will be on another path of CPE inquiry that considers the consequences of media dependence on advertising finance and marketers’ influence on media content and on what range of content and services media provides. Such analysis of the relationship between media and advertising is where I argue CPE has made its most distinctive contribution (Hardy 2014, 2015).

Media and Advertising Relationships

The critical political economy literature has tended to advance instrumental or structural explanations of advertiser influence. Instrumentalist explanations focus on the intentional actions and behavior of actors who seek to control communications. These may range from marketers’ efforts to shape specific content or actions to influence the editorial environment to efforts to influence the broader orientation of media firms’ output and their allocation of resources for telling stories and reaching particular audiences. Numerous accounts such as Soley (2002) and Bagdikian (2004) examine instrumental power in the form of marketers intervening to censor or shape media content. Various studies have assessed advertisers’ use of economic pressure and the threat or actual withdrawal of advertising as a means of influencing media coverage and the extent of acquiescence or resistance by staff (Nyilasy and Reid 2011).

Structuralist explanations suggest that advertising operates as an “impersonal force” (Curran 1986) created by the cumulative decisions of advertisers seeking the most cost-effective vehicles to reach target consumers, thus creating a source of finance that is unevenly distributed across media. Advertising subsidy functions as a de facto licensing system, determining which ad-dependent media have the resources to survive and thrive. One basis for structuralist explanations lies in economic analyses of ad finance, whilst another is rooted in historical scholarship that considers how the professionalization of marketing nevertheless resulted in a shift to less politicized and more “neutral” decision making about advertising effectiveness, as media planners relied more heavily on quantitative data over subjective judgments (Curran 1978, 1986). Advertising influence can be impersonal too in that the “licensing” effect arises from the innumerable decisions of individual advertisers:

Advertiser influence is so built in to the market context that not only is it often difficult to prove, but advertiser influence frequently occurs without the advertiser’s inducing it by any specific act, sometimes even without the advertiser’s wanting it.

(Baker 1994, 103)

The implications of the uneven distribution of commercial subsidy for media serving poorer, ethnic minority audiences in the US are explored by Gandy (2000, 48; 1982, 2004) who finds: “[t]o the extent that advertisers place a lower value on gaining access to particular minority audiences, those who would produce content for that segment will be punished by the market….”

Accounts such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model combine structuralist and instrumentalist explanations, with advertising finance amongst the five “filters” that shape what news content is published by encouraging media to become advertising-friendly in order to compete for advertiser patronage (Herman and Chomsky 2008, 2, 15; Murdock 2011). Other studies have suggested that advertising influence is largely internalized by media management, influencing editorial strategies designed to maximize revenue (Curran 1978, 1986). For Baker (1994, 44), the influence of advertising on non-advertising content can include favorable editorial coverage of advertisers’ products and corporate interests, creating an editorial environment conducive to marketers’ promotions, favoring higher- income audiences and reducing partisan or controversial content that may divide or delimit target audiences (Baker 1994, 44).

The level of economic dependence on advertising revenue has always been a key factor shaping the structure and content of different media. Baker (1994: 45–49; see also Rinallo and Basuroy 2009) usefully summarizes factors that can affect the extent on advertising’s influence within a given media outlet. These include the level and kind of economic dependence on advertising, whether widely distributed amongst many advertisers or concentrated on individual advertisers or organized groups. Another factor is the acceptability of advertising influence on content decisions (and the “cost” of public disapproval arising from knowledge of influence). When this “cost” is internalized by media managers and workers, the influence of “professionalism” may act to resist advertiser pressure, with “accepted industry practice” another factor influencing behavior. Consumer expectations and awareness of ad disclosure and ad separation from editorial are other, increasingly significant factors. Finally, Baker includes the implications of conglomeration, citing examples of advertisers applying pressure on one part of the conglomerate’s business in order to influence another.

Political economists insist on examining interrelationships among corporate media, ad agencies, and big business. For example, the tobacco giant Phillip Morris held seats on News Corporation’s board, while News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch remained on the Morris board for 12 years. The pharmaceutical giant Pfizer had directors on the boards of Time Warner, Viacom, and Dow Jones. Such corporate interlocks indicate the “continuing symbiotic relationship between news, advertisers, and advertising” (Bettig and Hall 2012, 165; Bagdikian 2004). The ways in which executive boards influence operations and editorial decisions require situated analysis, yet the corporate integration of advertising and media raises profound issues for democracy, media, and culture about the powers of commercial speech. Transnational communications conglomerates such as Aegis, Omnicom, WPP, Havas, and Interpublic colonize media and political systems around the world (Sussman 2011).

Changing Conditions

The CPE literature is valuable both for its own efforts to address historical changes and as a resource for assessing changing conditions. It shows that the relations among marketers, media, and users are dynamic, suggesting in turn the need to consider different forms of power and influence by marketers in specific situations. Nevertheless, some general trends are discernible. First, marketer influence has increased across commercial media and media systems where commercial media predominate. Second, the countervailing influence of professional norms and institutionalized practices to restrict advertiser influence has tended to weaken, or in some cases collapse. Third, a complex range of challenges for marketers can mitigate and limit advertiser power. These range from the inherent risk and instability of cultural tastes to highly volatile market conditions. There are also on-going challenges from technological aids and cultural practices of ad avoidance, from remote control zapping (McAllister 1996) to contemporary ad blocking.

The results of surveys, interviews with practitioners, commentary, and analysis of corporate data indicate how pressures have increased on advertising-dependent media to comply with advertiser demands and offer a host of added benefits including exacting more and more “editorial support” beyond paid advertising (McAllister 1996, 2000). Studies of US news media show increasing advertiser pressures across local and national TV and convergent print/online news (PEW State of the News Media Reports at www.journalism.org; FAIR’s Fear and Favour reports www.fair.org; McChesney 2013). The variant findings are important too, in that they highlight how different factors influence outcomes in specific settings. Price (2003) found that US national news correspondents felt insulated from advertisers, with only 7 percent reporting pressure to report a story because of advertisers, although that set a relatively high threshold for advertiser influence. Indeed, indirect advertiser influence may be captured in the 20 percent who reported owner pressure to cover or censor stories. De Smet and Vanormelingen (2011, 12) surveyed 100 news journalists in Belgium and found 35 percent experienced pressure from advertisers, with 13 percent often approached to favor marketers by one of the four agents identified (editor-in-chief, direct editor, marketing department, advertiser). Further, professional journalism norms such as the “firewall” between editorial and advertising established in US news journalism (Gans 1980) were never as firmly established in the entertainment business or in media sectors like consumer magazines, which were based on closer interdependencies between media and marketers. Far from being a uniform dynamic, the intensification of ad pressure has varied and met varying responses in changing work cultures and conditions, from resistance (Steinem 1990) to normalization.

New Contexts: Issues and Challenges for Critique

The intensification of marketing communications within media content has been accompanied by largely uncritical responses from academics, including within “critical” studies of convergence culture. The latter includes the convergence culture approach of Henry Jenkins (2006), Mark Deuze (2005), and others; the creative industries approach of John Hartley et al. (2013); and the “new” critical media industries approach of Amanda Lotz, Tim Havens, and others (Havens and Lotz 2012). My argument (Hardy 2014, 2016) is that, while this culturalist scholarship is valuable and needed, it offers a problematic evaluation of media and marketing derived from its largely positive and affirmative reading of shifts toward greater consumer empowerment under capitalism. For instance, Deuze (2005) regards journalists’ defense of editorial integrity against marketers (the firewall) as part of a conservative ideology to resist change and welcomes greater accommodation and collaboration with marketers. Jenkins goes further by suggesting that marketers are involved in processes of innovative content creation and storytelling that serve consumers and empower users. The critical political economy tradition is needed here for its greater attention to power asymmetries under the structuring influence of capitalism and for its attention to regulation and governance, not least the weakening of protections designed to prevent advertisers who pay the piper from also playing the tunes and influencing the playlist.

Media and Advertising Integration and Disaggregation

Digital media is at the apex of two key trends: toward the disaggregation of advertising and media and toward their integration. The characteristic relationship between media and advertising in mid-20th century media was integration with separation: Advertisements appeared alongside editorial matter in publications or between broadcast programs. While advertisers controlled their ads, media businesses controlled editorial, packaging, and distribution of the ad-carrying media. It can be argued that this was in fact a short-lived period, between the advertiser-sponsored broadcasting of the early 20^th century and the growth of integrated content, such as ad-financed television, from the 1990s. Yet integration with separation reflected norms that “advertising—as the major funding system of the mass media—should not unduly influence the non-advertising content” (McAllister 2000, 101). While there have always been pressures and opportunities to integrate, the principles of separation were generally upheld by journalists and creative professionals, supported by managers, underpinned by self-regulatory codes of conduct in both media and advertising, and subject to stronger statutory regulation in sectors such as UK broadcasting (Hardy 2010).

The emergent relationship is integration without separation. The integration of media and advertising takes various forms, many with long histories, such as product placement, coterminous with the birth of cinema. However, the opportunities and challenges of convergence and digitalization, not least the struggles to finance an enormous expansion of media, has brought increased pressures from marketers and increased accommodation by media. Product placement, branded entertainment, advergames, and infomercials are the most familiar outcomes (Lehu 2009; Hardy 2010, 2013). The emergent form is integration without separation, but this coexists with trends toward disaggregation of media and advertising. Marketers are less dependent on the intermediary role of media and are able to profile, track, and target consumers directly, with the resulting demand to reduce their subsidy to media by paying only the costs of delivering an advertisement onto a selected platform (Turow 2011). The traditional subsidy supporting the news, information, or entertainment surrounding advertisements is diminishing, with profound consequences for communication resources, public media, and cultural pluralism (Couldry and Turow 2014). Both integration and disaggregation reflect a shift toward enhanced marketer power in an era of increased media dependence on advertising finance.

Convergence of Owned, Paid, Earned, and Shared

Marketing professionals identify four main types of media: paid, earned, owned, and shared. Traditional advertising means paying to insert advertisements into media vehicles or other advertising spaces. Earned media describes public relations activities to generate editorial coverage. The third area, owned media, refers to marketers’ own content, and here exponential growth has occurred across digital publishing and the production of branded content for online and mobile platforms, which has the effect of also increasing pressures on media for greater accommodation in paid and earned media. Finally, shared media refers to the circulation of marketing communications across social media and online as messages are created, shared, and adapted ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Critical Traditions
• PART I Critical Political Economy
• PART II Ideology Critique
• PART III Critical Textual Analysis
• PART IV Critical Discursive/Rhetorical Analysis
• PART V Emotion, Mood, Affect
• List of Contributors
• Index