Abstract
After more than a century of scholarship in advertising theory and practice, the discipline is thirsty for a collection that offers a comprehensive synthesis of the vast literature in the area and that provides a deeper understanding of the underlying facets of advertising. Shelly Rodgers, associate professor of strategic communication at Missouri School of Journalism, and Esther Thorson, the associate dean for Graduate Studies and Research and director of Research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, have edited a volume that compares, contrasts, and evaluates advertising theories to give a new generation of students, scholars, and practitioners a working knowledge of the primary theoretical approaches to advertising today.
Advertising Theory aims to provide “a comprehensive set of theories about advertising that challenge and advance current definitions, concepts, and theories of advertising” as conversations at the 2009 annual conference of the American Academy of Advertising in Cincinnati, Ohio, indicated a need for richer theoretical perspectives in undergraduate advertising courses, preferably unified under a common framework. Utilizing a pragmatic approach as the foundation to thinking about theories presented in this volume, the authors explore deeply and synthesize key concepts related to modern advertising, marketing, and strategic communication practices.
The book begins by determining three contrasting approaches to thinking about advertising theory, which help guide the reading of the subsequent chapters. Thorson and Rodgers suggest that the McGuire’s persuasion matrix is a good structural model for considering questions about advertising. Chapters in Part I compare and contrast academic theories from “professional” theories. They provide an insider insight of why there is little communication between advertising scholars and practitioners. Part II of the book focuses on the psychological interface with advertising, which includes a thirty-year review of the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Embodied Motivated Cognition, theory of involvement, and theories of emotion and affect and their roles in processing advertising.
Part III provides an overview on specific audiences by examining theories of advertising to children, and issues in dealing with international strategic management, working within cultural contexts, and using target and agent persuasion knowledge to improve advertising persuasion. Part IV looks at the crafting of advertising messages by considering creativity, risk theories, rhetorical theory, narrative processing, direct-to-consumer messages, health communication, and political advertising. The next part of the volume delves into the importance of analyzing the channels through which advertising reaches people, the role of technology in online and offline settings, in-game advertising, and social media. Part VI looks at how organizations function within advertising by synthesizing the concepts of social ecology, branding, and corporate social responsibility initiatives.
The editors believe there is value in recognizing the contexts within which advertising occurs. Part VII examines the roles and impacts of ethical and legal concerns in advertising, models of Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC), and public health environment of advertising. Finally, Part VIII discusses the development of advertising theory in the future and innovations in new media advertising and research.
All in all, Rodgers and Thorson have done a great service to the field of advertising by compiling a comprehensive theoretical foundation that underpins messages, media, and other practical aspects in advertising. As a graduate student in a strategic media communication program, I find this book helpful in offering a wider lens through which I can recognize and reflect on the phenomena of advertising and strategic communications.
But there is more. This book also collects relevant theories from cognate disciplines, including behavioral, social, rhetorical, cultural, and political aspects. These integrations enlighten behavioral, legal, and ethical theories as they relate to advertising. In my humble opinion, such attention to interdisciplinary work is what is lacking in most advertising education today. There is a need for students and scholars to explore and define specific traditions of advertising and to acknowledge those borrowed from other disciplines so they can cultivate a deeper understanding of the philosophical as well as practical aspects of advertising.
The way the chapters are organized gradually addresses every component of the Advertising Process Circle—introduced by Thorson and Rodgers in Chapter 1—and points to the fundamental starting points that bring together the work that comprises advertising scholarship. While the book is not set up to be a leisure read over the weekend, readers will find it helpful to engage the text thoughtfully as this volume digs into some really critical perspectives to advertising theories. For instance, Jack Rotfeld in Chapter 37 suggests that some advertising theories have “worn out their utility,” and he argues that there is a “pragmatic need to connect theory and research.” The organization of this book also makes it easy for readers to use the articles in isolation.
Nonetheless, the volume could benefit from perhaps a few more perspectives on advertising education and its place in the teaching of mass communication in portfolio schools and universities. The addition of topics demonstrating trends in collegiate advertising courses and development of advertising education as an academic discipline could make this book more beneficial to the student reader. Yet, the editors have done sufficiently well in collecting some “big thinking” in the final section of the volume to reevaluate advertising and what will come next.
Summing up, Advertising Theory is a highly recommended literature for upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professional level. For advertising students, this is a handbook of the benchmark for the current state of advertising theory. For educators, the articles in this collection will help to accelerate students’ understanding of key theories. For practitioners, this book can help to facilitate conversations revolving around the relationship among scholars, researchers, and advertising professionals. And for those who are seeking to learn the concepts but without substantial background in advertising, Advertising Theory serves as the perfect entry point to understanding the fundamentals of the growing discipline.