The Extensions of Synergy

Abstract

Building brand identity becomes more difficult in a media-saturated culture, making it difficult to get a commercial message through to its audience, and requiring marketers to develop evermore omnipresent devices for reaching consumers. Corporations use synergy as a way of conveying consistent brand messages through multiple venues. Those venues have expanded beyond our conventional notions of the mass media, however, and increasingly rely on physical environments such as theme parks, casinos, and even residential communities to communicate and reinforce brand messages. These places, artificially constructed environmental simulacra, obscure the distinctions normally made between the cinematic world and the real world. The transformation of space into a new advertising medium has significant cultural implications.