ADText - An Interdisciplinary Curriculum for Advertising - AEF

Now on Coursera
About ADText

ADText is a project of the Advertising Educational Foundation. Professors William M. O’Barr and Edward Timke, specialists in advertising and its relationship to society, culture and history, are authors of the curriculum units.
Social Media and Advertising

Most people trust others they know for recommendations on what to see, do, and buy. Social media make it easy to stay in touch and share with colleagues, friends, and family. As such, advertisers have taken advantage of various social media spaces to make closer, direct relationships with consumers and encourage them to do the selling and telling for advertisers among their social connections.
What Is Advertising?

We know it when we see it. We are exposed to it thousands of times every day. Most of us are reasonably good, although seldom perfect, at distinguishing it from other kinds of messages. It is something that we tend to take for granted, seldom thinking about what it is or how it came into existence. But what is this thing called advertising?
A Brief History of Advertising in America

The history of advertising chronicles the movement from face-to-face selling messages to the stilted, repetitive, printed advertisements of early newspapers to the dynamism of mass communication by radio and television to the re-personalization of messages via cable, Internet, and direct mail.
"Subliminal" Advertising

This unit examines subliminal communication, its supposed applications in advertising, and the public's fascination and horror of it. It is a story that has been told over and over but not without frightening the public, and making advertisers angry.
High Culture/Low Culture

Advertising in Literature, Art, Film, and Popular Culture

To many people, high culture and lowbrow seem worlds apart. A more careful examination shows that literature, art, and film are intimately linked to advertising.
Advertising in the Public's Eye

Varying points of view of advertising's role in society reflect significant differences in opinion about the worth of advertising. This unit examines the public's ideas about the advertising profession and the role it plays.
Public Service Advertising and Propaganda

The need to mobilize the public to take action for the good of the community is as old as governance itself. In modern times, the mass media provide an important vehicle for calling on citizens to act in their best interests and those of society.
Gender and Advertising

Representations of Femininities, Masculinities, and Nonbinary Identities

Representations of gender in advertisements appear repeatedly in popular culture (including advertisements) and are often accepted by those who see them as natural aspects of the human condition. They provide powerful models of behavior to emulate or react against.
Disability and Advertising

Advertisements have tended to show able-bodied perfection. This unit defines the concept of disability, explains how disability is a complex social category and identity, and covers common representations of disability in advertising. There are positive signs of change, but fair treatments of people with disabilities in advertising are still needed.
Advertising and Christmas

The complex story of the evolution of modern Christmas celebrations reveals that some "traditions" are not so very old at all. This unit focuses on the role that advertising has played in shaping the myths and rituals of Christmas.
The Interpretation of Advertisements

The process of interpreting ads often requires active participation of consumers who thereby become collaborators in determining the meanings of particular advertisements. As with other forms of artistic expression, commercial narratives function within the context of larger master narratives about production, consumption, and the "good life."
The Role of Research in Advertising

What makes us buy some products and not others? Why do we prefer some brands over others? In an effort to answer these questions, advertisers look to research.
Multiculturalism in the Marketplace

Targeting Latinas, African-American Women, and Gay Consumers

Multiculturalism has emerged as one of America's most important social agendas in the 21st century. In advertising and marketing, it simply makes good business sense to take the culture of the consumer into account.
The Management of Brands

Contemporary advertising is the management of brands. Commercial messages encourage consumers to buy not just any soft drink, but a Coke, Pepsi, or Mountain Dew.
Ethics and Advertising

This unit focuses on truth and deception in advertising and on the ethical dilemmas of those who produce advertising. These case studies show that in advertising, just as in the world at large, there are not only clear instances of good and bad behaviors but also a vast grey area.
Advertising in China

Nothing seems more contradictory to outsiders than the seemingly opposing economic philosophies of capitalism and communism—but both are robust forces in the China of the new millennium.
Creativity in Advertising

The creative process follows no prescribed formula, but rather its genius lies in the ability of "creatives" to find simple and elegant means to express their clients' messages in ways that will be noticed and remembered by potential consumers.
Advertising in Brazil

Brazil enjoys an international reputation for producing some of the world’s most creative advertising. This chapter explores some of the factors giving rise to the high level of creativity in Brazilian advertising and examines some recent campaigns that reflect the Brazilian style of advertising.
Advertising in India

India is a land where the old and the new, the traditional and the modern, the local and the international coexist. Advertising must understand and contend with the social and cultural diversity of India. If advertising is to reflect society, the question becomes: Which India to reflect?
Children and Advertising

The socialization of children into market behavior and their indoctrination into the values of consumption are vital to the continuity of a capitalist society like the United States . This chapter focuses on the period of childhood when new consumers are coming of age, the ways marketers shape their buying behavior, the images and values that ads associate with childhood, and the controversies and ethical questions that emerge from marketing to children.
Global Advertising

The emergence of global brands—that is, of brands that are available in many or even most parts of the world—makes it necessary for advertising to operate globally. Global advertising campaigns share many features with advertising in more restricted markets, but they also occasion some unique issues and solutions.
Media and Advertising

The history of modern advertising is a story that originates in messages delivered personally by sellers to one or a few consumers at a time, then of messages delivered to multitudes through mass media, and finally of messages tailored for and delivered to individual consumers through complex technologies.
The Rise and Fall of the TV Commercial

Following the end of World War II, television began a meteoric rise from an obscure and expensive technology available in only a few large American cities to become the ascendant mass medium within a few short years. By the early 1950s, a television set was a regular furnishing in most American living rooms, and the uninvited salesmen who came along had a new platform for pitching every manner of goods and services.
Mad Men: Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Sexuality, and Class

The issues of gender, race, sexuality, and class underpin the very nature of American culture and society. Mad Men depicts the culture of 1960s American advertising—both those who do the work of advertising and the advertisements they produce. It probes and comments on these basic social themes through the many episodes. Although one or another of the themes may be played up in a particular episode, they all appear in full force.
Sex in Advertising

Does sex sell? This is invariably asked by marketers. There is no simple, conclusive answer. However, it is clear that whatever role erotic imagery actually plays in selling soap, beer, cars, underwear, and other products, such ads sell us ideas about sex itself.
Hollywood Looks at Advertising

Advertising looms large in Hollywood films and TV shows. It is from these representations that the public gets nearly all of its information about the business of advertising and the people who work in it.
Niche Advertising: Gay Consumers

Change in advertising’s representation of gays is a matter of business, not politics. Only when a particular sub-group of consumers has sufficient spending power does advertising treat it as a specialized market segment. Over the past two decades, advertisers have discovered the gay niche market and begun showing corresponding sensitivity in addressing and portraying gay men.
Super Bowl Commercials: America's Annual Festival of Advertising

This unit focuses on the Super Bowl as America’s annual festival of advertising. It examines the game’s spectators and the social setting in which they watch it; the making, content, and cost of Super Bowl commercials; the meaning and impact of the commercials; and public and critical assessments as well as the publicity surrounding the ads.
Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity in Advertising

This unit focuses on sexuality in advertising (as distinct from gender) but does so with the full recognition that a contemporary discussion of sexuality isolated from other major forms of social distinction is shortsighted. Accordingly, it considers sexuality in advertising along with its entanglement with race, ethnicity, and other social categories with which it is deeply entangled.
Native Americans in Advertising

This unit focuses specifically on Native American ethnic imagery in advertising. It examines both older representations and some more contemporary ones. It seeks not only to survey the story of Native Americans and advertising but also to serve as a model for similar investigations of the relationship between other ethnic/racial groups and advertising.
Suggestions for Further Reading

Most ADText topics are also discussed in other scholarly articles and books, in the advertising trade press, and elsewhere on the Internet. This guide suggests sources in Advertising & Society Review that contain further discussion of ADText topics.