Promotional Culture

The term promotional culture was coined and developed by Andrew Wernick in his groundbreaking book, Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression, published in English by Sage in 1991. Anticipating the precipitous rise and subsequent dominance of branding and marketing activities in the West over the past twenty years, Wernick breaks with traditional views of advertising, production, and consumption as conceptually distinct areas of consumer culture, arguing that the commodity form cannot be separated from its promotional form and that consumption activity is bound to the production of promotional meanings and brands. Promotionalism names the extension of market values and commodity relations in all areas of life.

Promotionalism has been on the rise in the West since the beginning of the mass production of goods, addressing ...