Marketing, Media, and McLuhan: Rereading the Prophet at Century's End

Abstract

Canadian-born Herbert Marshall once was described as a contemporary Aristotle and was even declared a national resource in Canada. In 1967, everyone, it seemed, wanted to speak to them during the Year of McLuhan (Gordon 1997, p. 226). Yet, how much do marketing specialists know of his work today? Marshall McLuhan's considerable body of work-a real intellectual treasure-sadly is hidden from most marketing scholars. The purpose of this review is to help marketing scholars rediscover McLuhan. Why review McLuhan's work at this late date? Simple; many of his ideas ring more true today than they did when he first wrote them. It also may come as something of a surprise that had so much to say about marketing and that his work challenges many areas of received marketing wisdom. The once-enormously popular English professor pictured himself as a blind man tapping his cane in all directions to discover the nature of the media environment. He wanted everyone who would listen to understand that the new electronic media had radically altered the way people think, feel, and act. Above all, wanted people to understand that electronic media had changed the world forever. After lying largely dormant for almost 30 years, is being brought back into intellectual currency because he studied the very subjects that so interest educators, managers, technologists, and other members of society today. In the wake of globalization, postmodernism, deconstructionism, and other intellectual movements, no longer seems as eccentric as he once did (Benedetti and