Book Description
This book is an examination of how American advertising both mirrors society and creates it. From the first newspaper advertisement in colonial times to the latest Web sites for advertising agencies, Soap, Sex and Cigarettes explores how advertising grew in America, how products and brands were produced and promoted, and how advertisements and agencies reflect and introduce cultural trends and issues. The threads of art, industry, culture, and technology unify the work. The text is chronological in its organization and is lavishly illustrated with advertisements.
Customer Reviews:
Neither History nor Cultural History.......2002-07-26
The Sivulkas' work is a rather long narrative of American advertising -- with very little to offer beyond reproductions of some rather commonplace ads from the last two hundred years. Much of the information they offer seems to come from other sources, and there is no real bibliography to the book. It is most misleadingly titled "cultural history" since there is so very little to the book beyond a chronology, and that is full of mistakes, over-simplifications, and such bland statements that there is nothing to be learned from this book. Others have written much better and more meaningful things about the history of advertising, and charged less than [$$] for it.
Look at yourself.......2002-03-23
If you want to understand American culture you can see how advertising has taken what is already in the culture and made it an industry to sell dreams...and of course the products these dreams represent.
As someone who teaches advertising concepts I found this book a very good intro to understanding advertising and having students see how it is not separate from the culture.
Written in a very readable style, I recco the book to anyone teaching advertising to creatives or to anyone interested in American culture.
Great reference, name is a bit of a misnomer, though..........2001-06-22
Advertising has been around since the dawn of civilization. The ancient Greeks created signs for their theatres and any open-air market of any ancient culture shows evidence of signage advertising different wares. With the invention of the printing press and movable type, however, the age of information and advertising truly began.
The history of American advertising is as packed with dates, places, people and events as any other slice of American history, and in "Soap, Sex and Cigarettes" Juliann Sivulka has done an exhaustive job of outlining these very things. With chapters going from 1492-1800, beginning with the colonization of the States, through the Roaring 20's and ending with "1990s and Beyond: The Media Revolution", this book should be required reading for any marketing/advertising undergrad. Indeed, considering the density of the material-- as thorough as any text on the Revolutionary War-- I imagine it IS required collegiate reading for students entering these professions.
The book is packed with various illustrations of real ads from the time periods, and one could easily get an overview of American advertising by simply leafing through the pages and looking at the ads and how they evolve from a 1608 London woodcut pamphlet advertising the New World ("Excellent fruites by Planting in Virginia") to the modern "Just Do It" and "Got Milk?" high glossy ad campaigns. The text is ordered and well written and can be read both as collegiate material and as casual reading (though there are a LOT of dates, places, times and events for the casual reader). The author frequently includes common ad slogans throughout the book that have become staples of American advertising: "His masters voice", "I'd walk a mile for a Camel", "Remember: only YOU can prevent forest fires" and "melts in your mouth, not in your hand" to name just a VERY few. There are also brief timelines of some of the highlights of product inventions that advertising impacted, such as Twinkies introduction in 1930 (originally filled with banana creme), pet rocks in 1975 and the new age of advertising begun in 1989 by Nissan's Infiniti where the actual product was never shown.
The book is subtitled "A Cultural History of American Advertising", but it is here where it falls short. It's an excellent resource for the history of advertising, but it's not so great at demonstrating how advertising has influenced our society. There are short parts demonstrating the stereotype of people of color and women, for example African-American people portrayed as grinning Sambos who are thrilled to ecstasy that Gold Dust washing powder makes your pots n' pans sparkle; Asian people with long pigtails and coolie hats in outlandish dress; women typically in household roles advertising everything from soap to washing machines (while trying to appear sexy at the same time: "You'd think I'm a flapper, but I CAN keep house"-- S.O.S. Pads, 1927). However, this aspect is not nearly as well fleshed-out as I would have expected from the title. I was expecting something more along the lines of cultural anthropology or Noam Chomsky-- explaining how advertising not only reflected society but INFLUENCED it-- and found little to be had.
No one would argue the fact that sex and celebrity status are constantly being used to sell everything from cars to toothpaste, and the unspoken meaning of most ads is something like "Drink Figgy-Fiz Cola and you'll have to beat the beautiful babes away with a lug wrench!" Most people ignore advertisements or complain about them and generally pay little or no attention to them at all. Still, the amount of advertising is only INCREASING as time goes on and the ads do influence our culture substantially. Should you doubt me, ask yourself why were children murdering other children for Nike shoes during the late 80's? No one was attacking me for my black Keds, and God help you if you wore Buster Browns after the age of 4. Why? Because the ads told us there were certain products to value above others (and therefore we could justify paying 120% more for those products as well) and we believed them. THIS sort of "cultural history" and analysis was missing from this book, which is a shame because Ms. Sivulka could have shed quite a lot of light onto this still-dark corner of our society. Perhaps she didn't because the more we know about advertising and how it works, the less power it holds over us.
In closing, "Soap, Sex and Cigarettes" is a great resource both for the professional marketer/advertiser and a fascinating read for the casual thinker of pop/modern culture. It's a bit expensive (though college texts always are), but it's exhaustively researched and very well written. Highly recommended!
Average Reference Book.......2001-02-02
While this book has quite a bit of useful history, it is not meant to be read cover to cover. It works in a very straightforward format providing a mostly chronological laundry list of advertisers and advertising agencies. The book lacks an in-depth analysis of the relationship between advertising and American culture as its subtitle seems to suggest. The sections on minority and web-based advertising are woefully out of date and simplistic. However, the book has some great ad illustrations and there are several supplementary list which are quite interesting. Basically, it's a decent reference book, but not for anyone looking for an interesting take on the history of American advertising.
Not just for the classroom!.......1998-01-12
When I ordered this book, I thought it might be just another text book, however, Ms. Sivulka is a skillful writer worth reading at any level. Her subject matter is interesting, obviously carefully selected and well-coordinated. The illustrations are entertaining and pertinent. It's a fun read with lots of know-how apparent.
Book Description
Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal is the first book to thoroughly tackle important issues about sex in advertising. What is it? Does it work? How does it affect individuals and society? Well-respected scholars and popular writers answer these questions as they address the following issues associated with sex in today's advertising environment: gender differences and representation, unintended social effects, subliminal embeds, appeals to the homosexual community, and new media. The book contains a blend of perspectives, including original experimental studies, interpretive and historical analyses, and cultural critiques.
The definitive source on sex in advertising, this book:
*is centralized around a singular theme: Understanding how sex in advertising appeals work and why they are so prevalent;
*includes multiple perspectives to capture the richness of sexual appeals;
*brings together viewpoints from both well-known scholars and writers;
*provides a wealth of ideas and research questions for those interested in the topic; and
*contains discussions of sex in advertising from its roots in the 1700s to online advertising today and beyond.
The book is must reading for advertising and gender researchers, scholars, and students. Anyone interested in mass media, consumer psychology, and popular culture will find this book an essential resource.
Customer Reviews:
grab bag of interesting and dull.......2005-06-03
It should be noted that this is a compilation of several different author's works on the subject of sex in advertising. The first chapter discusses the types of sexual content, such as nudity, behavior, attractiveness, referents and embeds. Next, there is a historical perspective on the beginnings and changing mores toward the use of sex to sell. The following chapter is devoted to fetish aspects of advertising including an analysis of leather and its erotic appeals. The proceeding couple chapters are quite dull because they are written as a scientific experimentation of the effectiveness of sex in advertising. However, the next chapter is quit interesting because it tells the evolving techniques of advertisng and considers the topic of saturation. Is it better to cater to the human desire for simplicity instead of creating a tension that is released through purchase. The book then turns to a discussion of the negative effects of using sex in advertising. A notion that sexiness comes from the outside rather that from within is very damaging, as well as the concept of divorcing sex from desire and relationships. What I considered to be the most bizarre topic was Wilson Key's chapter on subliminal sexuality. He claims that there are sexual embeds in nearly every type of ad. Males as victims of sexual objectification is covered in a chapter by barbara Stern. Next, there is a chapter on the depiction of homosexuals in advertising. The author believes that the media often portrays gay life as "one-dimentional, usually revolving around sex." The final chapter covers the marketing of sex online. Overall, the book is worth reading, I would have given it a rating of 4 if it didn't have the few boring chapter I mentions. There are useful illustations throughout.
Customer Reviews:
Classic on How to "read" images and ads.......2002-12-17
OK, this book can be hard to find. But it is THE essential source at the foundation of how to interpret visual images, especially as they depict gender roles. It takes a lot of studying to learn to "see" -- to see the patterns of symbolism in ads, for example. Recent books tend to rush this process or to be satisfied with only the most obvious, superficial layer of symbolism. I recommend taking the time to see more perceptively -- and Goffman is a great place to start.
Average customer rating:
- Fascinating and Forthcoming!
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Sex Design
Max Rippon
Manufacturer: Collins Design
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Pervy Girls: Erotic Fashion Photography
ASIN: 0060829893
Release Date: 2006-11-07 |
Book Description
It's undeniable: sex is everywhere: advertisements, fashion, art, film, music and television. All proliferating the "sex sells" adage. SEX DESIGN is a great looking, graphic, and entertaining book presenting an exciting selection of designers and their work on the pursuit of pleasure. Included are both product and graphic designs, objects relating to sex, hearts, love, provocative ads using sex as an enticement, phallic architecture, sex toys, and lots of sexual innuendo.
This amusing collection is amassed from sources around the world, from a diverse group of designers who are happy to cross the line into risqué territory. From the subliminal to the overt, SEX DESIGN takes a look at the way this subject has become ingrained in popular culture and brings ingenious new meaning to the word "erotica".
Customer Reviews:
Fascinating and Forthcoming!.......2007-01-27
I own a copy of this book, the array of original work in this book is superb, sex is interesting again! One can only hope that if so many good designers are creating such stylish images and design that sex will eventually become more acceptable and on display in the average home. It is good to see artist Julian Murphy's work is deservedly amongst this contemporary collection. Five stars for this book; well done Max Rippon!
Book Description
Bargain Books are non-returnable.
What does it mean to be a man? Is it the size of your quadraphonic hi-fi equipment or the fit of your flares? The Male Mystique presents a swinging vision of the ideal male-dominated lifestyle -- at least, as seen through the looking-glass of men's magazine ads of the 1960s and '70s. This is Total Male Living as it was meant to be: a world of musk, whiskey, polyester slacks, "male comfort spray," and, of course, babes. With 150 swaggering print advertisements presenting an astonishing array of swarthy delights, crass copy, and surprise celebrity sightings, The Male Mystique is tribute to the time when testosterone was in vogue and Stay-Prest stayed pants at the ready. Ladies, please don't crush the velour.
Customer Reviews:
The Macho Man Revisted.......2005-11-24
The Male Mystique offers an illuminating study of the "real man" archetype on which so many of us guys were raised: a hostile, arrogant, emotionally crippled ninny, slowly destroying himself with booze and cigarettes while being fawned over by non-threatening, sexually compliant child-women who somehow manage to be even dumber than he is. Not a pretty picture. However, the most disturbing element of the book lies in the author's attitude: Boyreau seems to regard Madison Avenue's monstrosity as admirable and romantic, an ideal to be cherished. His pretentious text is mercifully brief.
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Head, Heart, & Hips
Manufacturer: Gestalten Verlag
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Binding: Hardcover
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Wonderland
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Romantik
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Illusive: Contemporary Illustration And Its Context
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ABC: Laurent Fetis
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Sonic: Visuals for Music
ASIN: 3899550609 |
Book Description
Best known for their bold and spirited design sense, Big Active have built a formidable international reputation in the areas of music and editorial graphics. Believers in the seductive spirit of collaboration, the London-based studio is associated with a number of influential illustrators and photographers. The creative synergy of these image-makers with the core design team is an essential part of Big Active's aesthetic and way of working.
Playing with a theme of seduction and pleasure, this book explores the sexier fantasies of commercial art and its application. It presents current artwork and commercial projects that demand to be appreciated by the head, heart AND hips. Although it also features some classic images, the volume primarily contains specially commissioned new work by Big Active and their associated collaborators.
Head, Heart and Hips offers an alluring and colorful landscape of ideas, styles and applications. It includes sections by Jasper Goodall, David Foldvari, Kristian Russell, Shiv, Kate Gibb, René Habermacher & Jannis Tsipoulanis, Simon Henwood, Vava Ribeiro, Daniel Stier, Will Sweeney, Geneviève Gauckler, Patrick Ibanez, Mat Maitland, Kam Tang, Rachel Thomas and Erwan Frotin. Each artist is fully profiled with insights and explorations into future possibilities for the application of their artwork.
Customer Reviews:
Just good.......2006-07-07
It's a goob book but just that. It's content isn't really amazing and I would say it looks better from it's cover.
Book Description
Modern advertising has changed dramatically since the early twentieth century, but when it comes to food, Katherine Parkin writes, the message has remained consistent. Advertisers have historically promoted food in distinctly gendered terms, returning repeatedly to themes that associated shopping and cooking with women. Foremost among them was that, regardless of the actual work involved, women should serve food to demonstrate love for their families. In identifying shopping and cooking as an expression of love, ads helped to both establish and reinforce the belief that kitchen work was women's work, even as women's participation in the labor force dramatically increased. Alternately flattering her skills as a homemaker and preying on her insecurities, advertisers suggested that using their products would give a woman irresistible sexual allure, a happy marriage, and healthy children. Beyond their own individual success, ads also promised that by buying and making the right foods, a woman could help her family achieve social status, maintain its racial or ethnic identity, and assimilate into the American mainstream.
Advertisers clung tenaciously to this paradigm throughout great upheavals in the patterns of American work, diet, and gender roles. To discover why, Food Is Love draws on thousands of ads that appeared in the most popular magazines of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, including the Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Ebony, and the Saturday Evening Post. The book also cites the records of one of the nation's preeminent advertising firms, as well as the motivational research advertisers utilized to reach their customers.
Customer Reviews:
Food is Love is a singularly revealing insight into this consumptive and surprisingly constant dimension.......2006-11-05
Written by Katherine J. Parkin, Food is Love: Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America is a scholarly examination of the American cultural precept that women should express love by serving food to their families (regardless of the actual amount of work involved in its preparation). In particular, the concept that women could use food preparation to give themselves sexual allure, make their marriage happy, and improve their family's social standings and prospects became the favored revolving theme of advertisers. Food advertisements at once both celebrated women's homemaking talents, and threatened women's insecurities to coerce the female demographic to buy the right products - their products. Heavily researched, with extensive notes and an index, Food is Love is a singularly revealing insight into this consumptive and surprisingly constant dimension of the American female and cultural psyche.
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Living Up to the Ads: Gender Fictions of the 1920s (New Americanists)
Simone Weil Davis , and
Simone Weil Davis
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0822324466 |
Book Description
In Living Up to the Ads Simone Weil Davis examines commodity culture’s impact on popular notions of gender and identity during the 1920s. Arguing that the newly ascendant advertising industry introduced three new metaphors for personhoodâthe ad man, the female consumer, and the often female advertising model or spokespersonâDavis traces the emergence of the pervasive gendering of American consumerism.
Materials from advertising firmsâincluding memos, manuals, meeting minutes, and newslettersâare considered alongside the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, Bruce Barton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zelda Fitzgerald. Davis engages such books as Babbitt, Quicksand, and Save Me the Waltz in original and imaginative ways, asking each to participate in her discussion of commodity culture, gender, and identity. To illuminate the subjective, day-to-day experiences of 1920s consumerism in the United States, Davis juxtaposes print ads and industry manuals with works of fiction. Capturing the maverick voices of some of the decade’s most influential advertisers and writers, Davis reveals the lines that were drawn between truths and lies, seduction and selling, white and black, and men and women.
Davis’s methodology challenges disciplinary borders by employing historical, sociological, and literary practices to discuss the enduring links between commodity culture, gender, and identity construction. Living Up to the Ads will appeal to students and scholars of advertising, American studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, and early-twentieth-century American history.
Product Description
Sex in Consumer Culture: The Erotic Content of Media and Marketing considers the use of sex to promote brands, magazines, video games, TV programming, music and movies. Offering both quantitative and qualitative perspectives from leading scholars in a variety of disciplines, this volume addresses a range of integral issues such as media promotion, gender differences and representation, racial representations, appeals to gay and lesbian communities, interpretive analyses, historical perspectives, content analyses, and case studies. Chapters represent diverse perspectives, addressing such questions as: What happens when sexual content created for adults reaches children? What meaning do sexual words and images have within the contexts of sporting events, trade shows, video games, personal ads, or consumer Web sites? How might erotic content created for 21st-century audiences evoke racial or gender stereotypes of ages past, and how do these stereotypes affect human relationships? What effects might sex-tinged images have on audiences and where should the focus be for new effects research? Where are the current boundaries between pornography and mainstream sexual depictions? Exploring sexual information as it is used in mass media to sell products and programs, Sex in Consumer Culture is an important collection, and it will be of great interest for scholars and students in advertising, marketing, media promotion, persuasion, mass communication & society, and gender studies.
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Advertising (Opposing Viewpoints Series)
Manufacturer: Greenhaven Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0737732288 |
Book Description
Advertising is an inescapable element of modern life. In this anthology the authors consider the impact of advertising in the following chapters: Is Advertising Harmful? Does Advertising Exploit Children? Should Political Advertising Be Reformed? What Is the Future of Advertising?
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Decoding Advertisements (Ideas in Progress)
