Reading Response to "The Consumer Society and Advertising" by Paul Long and Tim Wall

The key points that I have found in the readings are:

“The history of consumption and advertising are intimately and perhaps innately tied together.”

“The industrial revolution brought with it a drive to consume and thus challenged all of thus previously necessary virtues.”

“Many ecenomists argue that consumers are rational and purchase products on the basis of functional decision making to further their own interests (miller, 1995).”

“Consumption is, in this case, a stage in the process of communication, that is, an act of deciphering, decoding, which presupposes practical or explicit mastery of a cipher or code.(Bourdieu, 1984: 2).”

“Baudrillard argues that mass media and, of course, advertising in Particular have greatly enhanced and generalised what he calls a process of ‘simulation’. “

“In consumer society, advertising agencies thus represent expertise in reading trends, fashions, signs and other codes.”

“Brands are much more than product identifiers, then: they are a way of being.”

“Bauman observes that the avid, never ending search for new and improved recipes for lives is also a variety of shopping.”

“Advertising can be thought as a form of communication designed to generate awareness of products, services and organisations.”

“Marketing refers to the process of identifying consumer needs and thus producing products and services.”

“Public relations (PR) refer to the management of communication between organisations and publics.”

“Culture jamming is the disturbance of the cultural logic of branding.”

“Culture jamming intends to throw a spanner into circuits of culture and what its practitioners believe to be the predominance of advertising and corporate culture in defining that we are what we purchase and the identities that are created and sold to us by advertisers.”