Title:
The sponsored life : ads, TV, and American culture
Author:
Savan, Leslie.
ISBN:
9781566392457
Personal Author:
Publication Information:
Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1994.
Physical Description:
xi, 354 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Series:
Culture and the moving image
Culture and the moving image.
General Note:
Includes index.
Contents:
1. Too cool for words -- This typeface if changing your life -- The neo-Calvinists -- Timekeeping is money -- In living B & W -- Honest engine -- Avant-hard sell -- Guess again -- The lifestyle lifestyle -- On background -- The fat lady sings -- It's the rote thing to do -- Titular head -- Listless is more -- Local anesthetic -- Bookends, pods, and piggybacks -- The sound of nine ads hyping -- Sneakers and nothingness -- Heaven can bait -- Burying messages -- 2. Corporate image adjustment -- Soldiers of fortune -- Born-again Dow -- Real forced -- Mr. Liberty -- Hands down -- Touchy-Feely, Inc. -- Defense spending -- Rock of agents -- Car-nal knowledge -- Big apple -- Mass mascot -- Takeover makeover -- Anxiety calls -- Bull -- God's little agency -- The tie-ins that bind -- The brand with two brains -- Whom Ma Bell tolls -- Beam me up -- Let's face it -- Getting carded -- Gotta hack it -- 3. Real problems, surreal ads -- Du pontificates -- Point of purchase -- Forget the dead babies -- Uniform standard -- Where the boycotts are -- 30 seconds over Washington -- A piece of the wall -- Don't leave Romania without it -- The face of the people -- Stay Hungary -- Puff piece -- Toxic moxie -- Hawking war -- Green monsters -- War is bell -- Watts nuke? -- Ad-free ads -- In the red again -- The off-road to Rio -- 4. Our bodies, our sells -- At the end of a sentence -- The new, 1985 crotch -- The sound of sexism -- A hard man is easy to find -- Wipe out -- Wild thing, I think I smell you -- Women will be gals -- Flow jobs -- The trad trade -- Cockers -- Ragtime -- Getting olayed -- Leggo my ego -- Demagaga -- Friend or faux -- Operation miscue -- Fear of buying -- Boys under the hood -- 5. Shock of the hue -- Down and out on Mad Ave -- Little white lies -- Constructive engagement ring -- Cri de Coors -- Gut reaction -- Cereal rights -- Rube barbs -- Addictions and the drug war -- Shock of the hue -- Be-twixt & be-tween -- Rubber sold -- Bash & cash -- Buy-it riot -- Logo-rrhea -- Generation X-force -- 6. The sponsored life -- On the rox -- Rock rolls over -- Jean pool -- Inner tube -- Desperately selling soda -- The afterschlock -- Hip hop -- TV in its underwear -- Lemon-fresh apocalypse -- Miles to go -- Modern times -- Adblisters -- TVTV -- New word order -- Everything musts go -- The ad mission -- Pop culture.
Abstract:
How does a blatant lying in TV commercials like Joe Isuzu's manic claims create public trust in a product or a company? How does a company associated with a disaster, Exxon or Du Pont for example, restore its reputation? What is the real story behind the rendering of the now infamous Joe Camel? And what is the deeper meaning of living in an ad, ad, ad world? In the essays in this collection, the author penetrates beneath the slick surfaces of specific ads and marketing campaigns to show how they reflect and shape consumer desires. Her interviews with ad agencies and corporate clients along with her insightful analyses of influential TV sports reveal how successful advertising works. Ads do more than command attention. They are signposts to the political, cultural, and social trends that infiltrate the individual consumer's psyche. Think of the products associated with corporate mascots the drum-beating bunny, the cereal-pushing tiger, the doughboy that have become pop culture icons. Think cool. Think of the clothing manufacturer that uses multiracial imagery. Think progressive. Buy their worldview, buy their product. When virtually every product can be associated with some positive self-image, we are subtly refashioned into the advertiser's concept of a good citizen. Like it or not, we lead "the sponsored life."
Subject Term: