Brand Texts and Meaning in Post-Digital Consumer Culture

Chris Hackley; Amy Hackley Rungpaka

doi:10.25038/am.v0i22.391

Authors

Chris Hackley
Amy Hackley Rungpaka

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i22.391

Keywords:

media, paratexts, advertising, intertextuality, convergence, meaning

Abstract

This paper discusses the mechanisms of post-digital consumer cultural meaning-making using advertising as its point of departure. The assumption is that the post-digital is neither an era nor an epoch but a characterisation that reflects a consumer cultural world of digitised content that operates as a default for many consumers, while the analogue world hovers ghost-like, re-asserting itself where digital technologies cannot serve, where and when they cannot be accessed, or when they fail. In this post-digital world, the locus of consumer cultural meaning-making has shifted, from long-form advertising campaigns, to fragmented and polysemous intertexts that circulate kinetically via social media. In other words, the locus of consumer cultural meaning-making has shifted from the primary texts of brand marketing, to secondary or paratexts. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s theory of transtextuality, the paper discusses how this post-digital meaning-making mechanism plays out, for brands, and beyond, within a post-digital consumer culture.

Article received: May 25, 2020; Article accepted: June 30, 2020; Published online: September 15, 2020; Original scholarly paper

Author Biographies

Chris Hackley

Chris Hackley (Ph.D., Strathclyde) is a Professor at Royal Holloway University in London and founding Chair of its Marketing Department, ranked one of the top ten UK Marketing departments. Before his appointment at Royal Holloway, he was Senior Lecturer, Head of the Marketing Group, and Director of the M.Sc. programme in Marketing at the University of Birmingham Business School. His research and teaching interests include advertising and promotion, advertising regulation and ethics, critical marketing and rhetoric, marketing communication, theory, and consumer policy, interpretive and qualitative research methods. His most recent book is Qualitative Research in Marketing and Management (2nd edition), published by Routledge in 2020. Prof. Hackley’s other research publications include some 200 refereed papers, books, and conference papers. As a visiting scholar, Prof. Hackley has taught at Greenwich University, University of California at Irvine, King’s College London, and Warwick University. As an editorial board member, he is affiliated with the Marketing Theory journal, Journal of Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, and the International Journal of Market Research.

Amy Hackley Rungpaka

Amy Hackley Rungpaka (Ph.D., Royal Holloway, London) is Senior Lecture in Marketing at Birkbeck, University of London. Prior to this she was Lecturer in Marketing at Queen Mary, University of London, Durham University, and before that at University of Surrey. At Royal Holloway, Dr Hackley also worked as a Teaching and Research Associate. Her doctoral project entailed a cross-cultural study of young consumers’ experience of TV product placement. Her other qualifications include an M.Sc. degree in Marketing from the University of Birmingham, UK and a first degree in Mass Communications. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of Consumer Culture Theory. Dr Hackley has presented and published her work at scholarly conferences across the world and leading peer-reviewed journals in her field.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i22.391 DOI: https://doi.org/10.25038/am.v0i22.391