Visual Branding pulls together analyses of logos, typeface, color, and spokes-characters to give a comprehensive account of the visual devices used in branding and advertising. The book places each avenue for visual branding within a rhetorical framework that explains what that device can accomplish for the brand. It lays out the available possibilities for constructing logos and distinguishes basic types along with examples of their use and evolution over time. Authors Edward McQuarrie and Barbara Phillips place visual branding within its historical context, covering the 120-year period since brand advertising first took modern form in the United States. Using copious real-life examples to illustrate how branding has evolved with the introduction of new technologies and opportunities, the book also critiques purely psychological perspectives on branding and explains how historical and rhetorical analyses can contribute new insights. This exploration of rhetoric as an alternative to economic and psychological perspectives in marketing, advertising, and consumer scholarship will be essential reading for students and scholars in graduate programs in marketing, advertising, and consumer psychology.

Rhetorical scholarship has found rich source material in the disciplines of advertising, communications research, and consumer behavior. Advertising, considered as a kind of communication, is distinguished by its focus on causing action. Its goal is not simply to communicate ideas, educate, or persuade, but to move a prospect closer to a purchase. The editors of "Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric" have been involved in developing the scholarship of advertising rhetoric for many years. In this volume they have assembled the most current and authoritative new perspectives on this topic. The chapter authors all present previously unpublished concepts that represent advances beyond what is already known about advertising rhetoric. In the opening and closing chapters editors Ed McQuarrie and Barbara Phillips provide an integrative view of the current state of the art in advertising rhetoric.