This book critically examines the rhetoric surrounding current trends in the adoption of tropes of interactivity in marketing communication. Concepts such as viral advertising, customer-generated content, brand communities and the whole panoply of Web 2.0-mediated marketing technologies all have their foundations in an overt positioning of interactivity as the savior of effective marketing communication. Yet, what exactly is meant by interactivity in these contexts and how far does it represent a revolution in the methodologies of marketing? Anchoring his analysis in a critique of the assumptions of control embedded in current marketing communication models and the rhetorical analysis of exemplar texts from the Marketing Management, Customer Relationship Management, Viral Marketing and Buzz Marketing paradigms, Chris Miles investigates the constructions and reconstructions of discourse that surround the uses of interactivity in contemporary marketing discourses. In doing so, he offers a radical new model of marketing based upon a recursive, constructivist understanding of communication that uses metaphors of invitation and exploration to rebuild interactivity at the center of marketing. The work culminates in a reading of the theory of Relationship Marketing that uses autism as an allegory to interrogate the communicative paradox at the heart of this contemporary marketing panacea.

Marketing, Rhetoric and Control investigates the tensions that surround the place of persuasion (and, more broadly, control) in marketing. Persuasion has variously been seen as an embarrassment to the discipline, a target for anti-marketing sentiment, the source of marketing's value in the modern organisation, a mysterious black box inside the otherwise rational and logical endeavour of enterprise, and a rather insignificant part of the marketing programme. This book argues that this multifarious reputation for persuasion within marketing stems from the influence of two quite oppositional paradigms - the scientific and the magico-rhetorical - that ebb and flow across the discourses of its discipline and practice. Constructing an interface between original, challenging close readings of texts from the beginnings of the Western rhetorical tradition and an examination of the ways in which marketing has set about describing itself, this text argues for a Sophistic interpretation of marketing. From this perspective, marketing is understood as providing intermediary services to facilitate the continuing exchange of attention and regard between firm/client and stakeholders. It seeks to manage and direct this exchange through an appreciation of the changing rational and irrational motivations of the firm and stakeholders, using these as resources for the construction of both planned and improvised persuasive interactions in agonistic (or competitive) environments. This book is aimed primarily at researchers and academics working in the fields of marketing, marketing communications, and the related disciplines of marketing theory, critical marketing, and digital marketing. It will also be of value to marketing academics in business schools, including those working in the areas of media and communication studies who have an interest in commercial and corporate communication, brand use of interactive media, and communication theory.

Marketing, Rhetoric and Control investigates the tensions that surround the place of persuasion (and, more broadly, control) in marketing. Persuasion has variously been seen as an embarrassment to the discipline, a target for anti-marketing sentiment, the source of marketing's value in the modern organisation, a mysterious black box inside the otherwise rational and logical endeavour of enterprise, and a rather insignificant part of the marketing programme. This book argues that this multifarious reputation for persuasion within marketing stems from the influence of two quite oppositional paradigms - the scientific and the magico-rhetorical - that ebb and flow across the discourses of its discipline and practice. Constructing an interface between original, challenging close readings of texts from the beginnings of the Western rhetorical tradition and an examination of the ways in which marketing has set about describing itself, this text argues for a Sophistic interpretation of marketing. From this perspective, marketing is understood as providing intermediary services to facilitate the continuing exchange of attention and regard between firm/client and stakeholders. It seeks to manage and direct this exchange through an appreciation of the changing rational and irrational motivations of the firm and stakeholders, using these as resources for the construction of both planned and improvised persuasive interactions in agonistic (or competitive) environments. This book is aimed primarily at researchers and academics working in the fields of marketing, marketing communications, and the related disciplines of marketing theory, critical marketing, and digital marketing. It will also be of value to marketing academics in business schools, including those working in the areas of media and communication studies who have an interest in commercial and corporate communication, brand use of interactive media, and communication theory.

This book critically examines the rhetoric surrounding current trends in the adoption of tropes of interactivity in marketing communication. Concepts such as viral advertising, customer-generated content, brand communities and the whole panoply of Web 2.0-mediated marketing technologies all have their foundations in an overt positioning of interactivity as the savior of effective marketing communication. Yet, what exactly is meant by interactivity in these contexts and how far does it represent a revolution in the methodologies of marketing? Anchoring his analysis in a critique of the assumptions of control embedded in current marketing communication models and the rhetorical analysis of exemplar texts from the Marketing Management, Customer Relationship Management, Viral Marketing and Buzz Marketing paradigms, Chris Miles investigates the constructions and reconstructions of discourse that surround the uses of interactivity in contemporary marketing discourses. In doing so, he offers a radical new model of marketing based upon a recursive, constructivist understanding of communication that uses metaphors of invitation and exploration to rebuild interactivity at the center of marketing. The work culminates in a reading of the theory of Relationship Marketing that uses autism as an allegory to interrogate the communicative paradox at the heart of this contemporary marketing panacea.

In and Out of View models an expansion in how censorship is discursively framed. Contributors from diverse backgrounds, including artists, art historians, museum specialists, and students, address controversial instances of art production and reception from the mid-20th century to the present in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Their essays, interviews, and statements invite consideration of the shifting contexts, values, and needs through which artwork moves in and out of view. At issue are governmental restrictions and discursive effects, including erasure and distortion resulting from institutional policies, canonical processes, and interpretive methods. Crucial considerations concerning death/violence, authoritarianism, (neo)colonialism, global capitalism, immigration, race, religion, sexuality, activism/social justice, disability, campus speech, and cultural destruction are highlighted. The anthology-a thought-provoking resource for students and scholars in art history, museum and cultural studies, and creative practices-represents a timely and significant contribution to the literature on censorship.

Today's highly industrialized and technologically controlled global food systems dominate our lives, shaping our access and attitudes towards food and deeply influencing and defining our identities. At the same time, these food systems are profoundly and destructively impacting the health of the environment and threatening all of us, human and nonhuman, who must subsist in ecological conditions of increasing fragility and scarcity. This collection examines and exposes the myriad ways that the food systems, driven by global commodity capitalism and its imperative of growth at any cost, increasingly controls us and conforms us to our roles as consumers and producers. This collection covers a range of topics from the excess of consumers in the post-industrial world and the often unacknowledged yet intrinsic connection of their consumption to the growing ecological and health crises in developing nations, to topics of surveillance and control of human and nonhuman bodies through food, to the deep linkages of cultural values and norms toward food to the myriad crises we face on a global scale.

Today's highly industrialized and technologically controlled global food systems dominate our lives, shaping our access and attitudes towards food and deeply influencing and defining our identities. At the same time, these food systems are profoundly and destructively impacting the health of the environment and threatening all of us, human and nonhuman, who must subsist in ecological conditions of increasing fragility and scarcity. This collection examines and exposes the myriad ways that the food systems, driven by global commodity capitalism and its imperative of growth at any cost, increasingly controls us and conforms us to our roles as consumers and producers. This collection covers a range of topics from the excess of consumers in the post-industrial world and the often unacknowledged yet intrinsic connection of their consumption to the growing ecological and health crises in developing nations, to topics of surveillance and control of human and nonhuman bodies through food, to the deep linkages of cultural values and norms toward food to the myriad crises we face on a global scale.