The Consumerist Manifesto

Advertising in Postmodern Times

Martin P. Davidson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136109805
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Advertising is no longer on the defensive. It has survived the snobbery of the 50s, the conspiracy theories of the 60s and the semiology of the 70s to be embraced and apotheosised by the 80s.
The Consumerist Manifesto is the first book to examine the advertising process from within the agency itself, and from the wider perspective of advertising's dual relationship as both consumer and object, with contemporary cultural theory. Martin Davidson follows the creation of successful campaigns and explores how advertising has succeeded in setting the tone for even larger aspects of our material and personal lives.
With the impact of postmodernism and popular culture, and the subsequent collapse of the old anti-advertising critique, the books reveals how advertising came to be embraced as the idiom of the enterprise culture, and how it became central to the decades assault on traditional notions of political and cultural value. Martin Davidson explores the wider implications of advertising's dominance for cultural theory, art, anthropology and language.
Finally, Martin Davidson asks how this new critique will have to develop if the industry's new credibility is to be maintained.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations and Figures
• Introduction
• 1 Objects of Desire How advertising works
• 2 Designer Decades Advertising and the 80s
• 3 Martian Postcards Culture as critique
• 4 Reasoning the Need Advertising, art and junk
• 5 Page Traffic The language of advertising
• 6 Knocking Copy Advertising and its critics
• 7 Lost in the Post Advertising and the future
• Notes
• Index