Week 2
- We cannot access audience’s thoughts
- Brand is cultural exchange, contain much more than ads
- Ex: “Red Bull gives you a pair of wing” -> methodology, it actually doesn’t
Cultural dimension
- Ads are a discursive practice and have meaning of exchange
- Building brand value so that we can begin to understand the ad
- Meanings have to circulate the meaning of capitalism
- Depends on the movement of circulation
Practice that incorporates culture
- Ads / brands are a linguistics system, have their own language
- Ads show that the history is changing
- We assume there are human characteristics in ads -> ppl are selfish, they are not cuz
they live in a capital society -> ppl need to survive
- Appeals to human nature (politics and culture) -> removes language cuz individual
doesn’t speak
- Removes human agency, understand how brands work
- Ads don’t tell us what we should buy
- Human nature changes due to the society landscape
Tutorial
Key terms / concept from Arvidsson’s Brand
Ethical surplus, productive communication, consumer community, brand value, brands as
cultural resources, immaterial production / labour, post fordist / frodist advertising, brand equity,
‘socializing worker’, brand management, biopolitical governance
Week 3
Commodity: anything that can be exchanged in the marketplace
Convert economic exchange value into cultural exchange value
- Use of meaningful images
- Exchange value <-> sign value, works both directions
- Production of value is build from exchange value
- Commodities not only join into signs but get produced as signs -> signs become
commodity -> commercial mass media (all promotional)
- We invest objects w symbolic value -> makes life worth living
- Ex: the meaning we give food (sharing in society)
- Social condition organize for certain commercial uses
- Ex: symbols of Trump building is for promotion
