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9781566392457

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Savan straps one ad campaign after another to here lab table and dissects each with humor, insight and a healthy dose of rage...This thoughtful collection will appeal to anyone concerned with how ads work, what they're hiding and why they have such a hold on us. --Publishers Weekly [A] smart, stingingly funny collection... Ms. Savan brings to bear a pithy style, a peppery wit and an unerring moral compass that enables her to score hits on the corporate fictions that increasingly structure our world view. --New York Times Book Review Her delectably sarcastic analyses offer disturbing insights into the images that millions of citizens seek to adopt. --Los Angeles Times Book Review Savan has a keen eye for baloney, and she peels off layers of it to reveal the moldy Wonder Bread of corporate greed-without losing her sense of humor. --UTNE Reader When, decades from now, historians look back and try to understand how advertising overwhelmed our culture in the 1980s, they will surely start by reading Leslie Savan's bright and trenchant reportage. For those likewise concerned right now, The Sponsored Life is an indispensable collection--as well-informed as the account of any cool insider, yet powerfully critical throughout. --Mark Crispin Miller, Johns Hopkins University, author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV This is one of those books you see, and say, Oh! And just reach for and purchase without even thinking--the ultimate dream, no doubt, of the advertisers who generated the TV commercials she so crisply analyzes inside. --Douglas Coupland, author of Generation X and Life After God Original. Provocative. Breathtakingly insightful. --Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dean, The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania Savan is one of the best new cultural critics--her voice is strong, clever; her writing has verve, passion; her quick and feisty rejoinders talk back to commerce... By paying attention to social issues, particularly women and race, she makes us notice the politics at work in the spaces between news and entertainment. --Patricia Mellencamp, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Almost as funny as it is infuriating, this is an impressive collection of pieces about the impact of advertising on American society. Savan, the advertising columnist for the Village Voice (where most of these pieces originally appeared) aims to illuminate the mechanics and psychological ploys routinely used by advertisers to manipulate the public into buying anything and everything. Whether ads are hocking hair products, dog food, or luxury sedans, the goal is the same - to recreate the viewer in the ad's image. To this end, advertisers invest billions of dollars in market research designed to plumb consumers' psyches. Guilt and fear are particularly effective in targeting women, who are still the primary purchasers and users of household cleaners; kids respond well to images of anti-authoritarianism and nonconformity; and everyone falls for flattery, including the too-hip-and-wise-to-be-fooled Generation Xers Oust make sure the ad is ironic and cynical enough to let them know that you know they can't be fooled). Savan illustrates how little ads have to do with reality (e.g., the link they imply between self-image and soda or cigarette brands). Not satisfied with merely getting us to purchase products, Madison Avenue strives to control the very beliefs and desires that make us human. Nothing is sacrosanct: Historical moments such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall are incorporated into lightbulb commercials; and even the one force that traditionally has battled materialism - religion, often of the New Age variety, symbolized by images of sky and clouds - is co-opted into convincing consumers that buying certain products will exorcise their guilty consciences. As a counterbalance, Savan offers advice on how to read the true messages of ads (follow the flattery, calculate style-to-information ratio, etc.). Though inevitably such a collection is sometimes redundant, this is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand how advertising presses our buttons while convincing us that we are in control. (Kirkus Reviews)

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Leslie Savan is the advertising columnist for The Village Voice and was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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