Robert Goldman & Stephen Papson

PREFACE

ADVERTISING IN THE AGE OF ACCELERATED MEANING

Sign Wars: Constructing Sign Values
The Logic of Appropriation: A Brief Introduction
Value Added: Appropriating Referent Systems
Floating Signifiers & the Image Bank
Spirals of Referential Density, Speed & Reflexivity
Cultural Crisis & Contradiction

1 SIGN WARS

Sign Wars & Semiotics
Differentiation, Imitation & the Circulation of Sign Values
Attacking Signs - Strategies For Sign Wars
The Anti-Sign
Rereading Image Disputes

2 ADVERTISING IN THE AGE OF HYPERSIGNIFICATION

Realist Conventions
Hyperreal Encoding
Hypersignification
Intertextuality
Reflexivity
Hyperactivity
The Contradictions of Sign Values

3 YO! HAILING THE ALIENATED SPECTATOR

Addressing the Savvy Spectator
Negative Appellation
Gender & Alienation in Sign Wars
Disguising the Alienated Mode of Address
No Advertising Tricks - Nothing Up Our Sleeve
Falsified Metacommunication: Metacommunication & Resistance
The Competition in Shock Value
The Profane
Before Your Future Gets Here You Know What You Gotta Do
The Self-Referential Sign: Grinning at the Annihilation of Everyday Life

4 THE FLIP SIDE OF JADEDNESS - MEMORY AND A SENSE OF PLACE

Schmaltzy Gemeinschaft
Reestablishing Relations With Our Past
Blasts From Our Past: Collapsing Personal & Public Memories
Saturn: A Study in the Hegemony of Memory
Corporate Revisionism: the Sign Wars Version
Collective Amnesia?

5 AUTHENTICITY IN THE AGE OF THE POSEUR

Mastercard -- Finding Yourself in a World of Commodity Relations
Authenticity And the Bourgeoisie
Commodifying Signs of the Organic
The Authenticity of Non-Alienated Relations
Auteurs in the Age of Flexible Accumulation
Nature as Authenticity
Nature as a Sign of Distinction
Otherness
The Spectacle of Ghetto Authenticity: Reebok's Blacktops
Aestheticizing the Authenticity of Otherness
Anti-Spectaclular Awareness
Levi's 1993 - Authenticity As Representation
The Authenticity of Death
The Death of Authenticity?

6 GREEN MARKETING AND THE COMMODITY SELF

The Commodity Self & the Death of Nature
From Nature Signifiers to Green Marketing
Consuming to Protect the Environment: Commodity Advertising
Deflecting Green Criticism: Legitimation Advertising
The Spectacle of the Environment
The Greening of Commodity Signs

7 THE CORPORATE POLITICS OF SIGN VALUES

Hybrid Ads
Building Corporate Sign Values
Selling Capitalism
Warm, Fuzzy & Inspirational
Combatting Crises: Image as Spin Control or Prophylactic
Motivation Ads: Championing the Work Ethic
Patriotic Homilies
Science & Technology
Going Global
Missionaries of Democracy
Abbreviating Public Discourse
Corporate Ads & Public Sphere(S) of Debate
The Era of Chronic Legitimation Crisis?

8 SNEAKERIZATION AND HYPERCULTURE

Competing to Hail the Channel Surfer
A Commodity Community?
The Spectacle in the Fractured Marketplace

Notes

Bibliography

Index