Milleniage Advertising

Abstract

Advertising is often characterized as an art form and/or a form of business communication. While this dominant understanding of advertising speaks to a large portion of what advertising is and the means through which it is done, it fails to encapsulate the full depth and breadth of the industry’s impact, particularly its social impact. We posit that the marrying of brands and culture results in the formation of a third critical function of advertising, that of a socializing agent. Identities along with the values and lifestyles that accompany them are largely understood through the lens of advertisements—a site from which the social norms associated with a given identity are learned. The purpose of this chapter is to underscore the ways in which the social impact of advertising has and continues to be underexamined by advertising scholars. We do so by demonstrating how current conceptualizations of advertising, which emphasize its artistic and commerce-related dimensions, are inadequate and ineffectual for investigating the broad and deeply meaningful ways that advertising influences how identities are understood and performed. We then introduce our reconceptualization of advertising, termed “Milleniage Advertising,” that acknowledges and attempts to integrate advertising’s three core functions (art form, business communication, and socializing agent) so that the full scope of advertising’s societal effects can be researched.