Overview

Examining theory and practice, Advertising and Anthropology is a lively and important contribution to the study of organizational culture, consumption practices, marketing to consumers and the production of creativity in corporate settings. The chapters reflect the authors' extensive lived experienced as professionals in the advertising business and marketing research industry. Essays analyze internal agency and client meetings, competitive pressures and professional relationships and include multiple case studies. The authors describe the structure, function and process of advertising agency work, the mediation and formation of creativity, the centrality of human interactions in agency work, the production of consumer insights and industry ethics. Throughout the book, the authors offer concrete advice for practitioners.Advertising and Anthropology is written by anthropologists for anthropologists as well as students and scholars interested in advertising and related industries such as marketing, marketing research and design.

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9780857852021

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Reviews

This work makes huge strides in expanding the dialogue between applied and academic anthropology. Quite aside from the unprecedented depth of ethnography that Malefyt and Morais provide of the craft of advertizing and that of anthropology within it, they also offer a primer of new thinking about how contemporary fieldwork might be practiced in anthropology at its core. George Marcus, Director, Center for Ethnography, University of California, Irvine This volume presents an insider's perspective of complementary professions that is sure to provoke a swift reaction from agencies and the academy. Advertising is a way of construing the world, and anthropology can inform and unpack that construal. Apprentices, read this book as you plan a career. Journeymen, study this book as you rethink your career. Mentors, teach this book as you guide the careers of others. John F. Sherry, Herrick Professor & Department Chair of Marketing, University of Notre Dame A candid portrayal of life in the advertising world, this book is replete with nail biters in the C-suite, tensions and rituals among advertising's fragmented subcultures, and the authors' accounts of personal ethical dilemmas -- all illuminating aspects of capitalist practice seldom witnessed by anthropologists... This is a unique and courageous contribution to business anthropology by two of its most experienced practitioners. Marietta Baba, Dean and Professor at the College of Social Science, Michigan State University Ethnography is Anthropology's biggest export. Malefyt and Morais take the practice of ethnography to the world of advertising, and offer us an ethnography of that world. The results are profoundly illuminating, and make this book essential reading for advertisers and anthropologists alike. It contains insider insights into everything from how to win an account to how to probe consumers' secret fantasies, and also reflects candidly and critically on advertising ethics. You will be sold. David Howes, Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal Malefyt and Morais' book Advertising and Anthropology: Ethnographic Practice and Cultural perspectives is an excellent behind-the-scenes manual for students and young professionals looking to break into the advertising business. Readers learn how to talk the talk and walk the walk while gaining insight into what it takes to succeed. The book is chock full of case studies from the authors' own real-world experience. And they don't hold back, sharing not only their successes but also their failures and the dilemmas- ethical and otherwise-that they've faced in this glamorized but also oft-criticized industry. A basic premise of the book is that the advertising industry, if not the larger world of marketing, needs anthropologists as they offer a different, if not more holistic view of consumers. If marketing-both as a discipline and a function- is to live up to its promise to satisfy consumers' unfulfilled needs, agencies and clients would do well to heed the authors' advice and add anthropologists to their research teams. At the same time, those who aspire to break into the business would be wise to learn something about anthropology. Dawn Lerman, Director, Centre for Positive Marketing, Fordham University, USA

With an unprecedented depth of ethnography, Malefyt and Morais' primer makes huge strides in expanding the dialogue between applied and academic anthropology. George Marcus, Director, Center for Ethnography, University of California, Irvine This volume presents an insider's perspective of complementary professions that is sure to provoke a swift reaction from agencies and the academy. Advertising is a way of construing the world, and anthropology can inform and unpack that construal. Apprentices, read this book as you plan a career. Journeymen, study this book as you rethink your career. Mentors, teach this book as you guide the careers of others. John F. Sherry, Herrick Professor & Department Chair of Marketing, University of Notre Dame A candid portrayal of life in the advertising world... this is a unique and courageous contribution to business anthropology by two of its most experienced practitioners. Marietta Baba, Dean and Professor at the College of Social Science, Michigan State University Ethnography is Anthropology's biggest export. Malefyt and Morais take the practice of ethnography to the world of advertising, and do an ethnography of that world. The results are profoundly illuminating, and make this book essential reading for advertisers and anthropologists alike. David Howes, Professor of Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal Malefyt and Morais' book, Advertising and Anthropology, is an excellent behind-the-scenes manual for students and young professionals looking to break into the advertising business... those who aspire to break into the business would be wise to learn something about anthropology. Dawn Lerman, Director, Centre for Positive Marketing, Fordham University, USA Advertising and Anthropology provides valuable insight into the ways that anthropology can effectively (if controversially) participate in the modern corporate world as well as ways that advertising/business anthropology reflects and rethinks conventional disciplinary tools and concepts. -- Jack David Eller Anthropology Review Database Malefyt and Morais have made a significant contribution to applied anthropology with this work. It joins works of others, like Jordan's Business Anthropology, in building the methods and reputation for anthropology in the non-academic arena. -- Don Arp, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA Anthropological Notebooks

Author Information

Timothy de Waal Malefyt is Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Positive Marketing, School of Business, Fordham University, New York.Robert J. Morais is a Principal of Weinman Schnee Morais Inc., a marketing research firm in New York, USA.

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