CMNS 323W Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Toyota Sienna, Kurt Vile, Commodity Fetishism
29 May 2018
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Promotional culture: origins & contemporary forms
Werick’s ore expasie model of promotional culture
• Emerges right alongside the rise of industrialism in the 18th century.
• His discussio of Wedgeood’s attepts to create a cultural identity to brand its pottery
o Its name and the firm itself in the late 1700s is not only interesting as history but as you
can see from current Wedgewood promotional videos, its branding strategy has
remained consistent for two and a half centuries.
• Wedgeood’s inovation was to rationalize not only the production of pottery but also to
rationalize product symbolism (14-17).
• Wernick asserts, then, that promotional signs were an integral part of industrial capitalism and
the mass production of consumer goods.
o It was a manufacturing/promotion strategy that grew from the economic necessity of a
competitive market for those goods.
The commodity-sign provides the structural logic of consumer capitalism and upon this basic
economic/cultural foundation is build the vast superstructure of promotional culture of late capitalism.
• Over the last century this logic pervades and then shapes our fashion, music entertainment,
media, social/personal experiences and sense of self.
• Looking beyond advertising to begin to see promotional culture as a whole requires that we also
look beyond behavioral psychology and recognize the ways promotion structures the cultural
frameworks within which social life is experienced and shapes the ways we can participate in
social relations.
Learning Objectives:
• When you have completed this week, you should be able to:
o Define the commodity sign
o Defie Werick’s cocept of promotional culture
o Identify past and present examples of promotional culture
o Identify promotional commodities
o Connect promotional culture to the commodity form and the industrial process
o Recognize the ways selfhood or subjectivity is shaped by promotional culture
Damn, Daniel ad: genuine, does’t feel prootioal
Definition of commodity: use-value and exchange-value
• Value comes from not the thing itself but rather the relation with quantity, how much can you
trade for with it.
• Exchange value allows for symbolic value, the commodity sign: the thing plus its meaning (e.g.
Thrush pipes ad, promoting douchebaggery, sexualize masculinity)
• Joining material thing with meaning, consumer capitalism
o Exchange-value on top of culture: exchange for meaning (works both ways)
o Convert economic exchange-value into cultural sign-value
• Commodities: signs become produces as commodities, all about promotion
o Invest objects with symbolic meanings, create cohesive culture
o Who gets to create the meaning of our lives? Corporates (for commercial purposes).
▪ Serves the interest of capital/economic exchange
o It is the advertiser and the brand rather than religious leaders or politicians who
organize our symbolic universe.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Wer(cid:374)ick"s (cid:373)ore expa(cid:374)si(cid:448)e model of (cid:862)promotional culture(cid:863: emerges right alongside the rise of industrialism in the 18th century, his discussio(cid:374) of wedge(cid:449)ood"s atte(cid:373)pts to create a (cid:862)cultural identity(cid:863) to brand its pottery. It was a manufacturing/promotion strategy that grew from the economic necessity of a competitive market for those goods. Learning objectives: when you have completed this week, you should be able to, define the commodity sign, defi(cid:374)e wer(cid:374)ick"s co(cid:374)cept of (cid:862)promotional culture(cid:863) Identify past and present examples of promotional culture. Identify (cid:862)promotional commodities(cid:863: connect promotional culture to the commodity form and the industrial process, recognize the ways selfhood or subjectivity is shaped by promotional culture. Joining material thing with meaning, consumer capitalism: exchange-value on top of culture: exchange for meaning (works both ways, convert economic exchange-value into cultural sign-value, commodities: signs become produces as commodities, all about promotion. Corporates (for commercial purposes): serves the interest of capital/economic exchange.
