Marketing Graffiti: The View from the Street

Citation

O'Reilly, D. (2007), "Marketing Graffiti: The View from the Street", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 41 No. 5/6, pp. 704-706. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090560710737705

This is a readable, appropriately priced, and worthwhile introductory book on marketing written from a non‐managerial perspective. It is aimed at advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students who “want an alternative type of text”, and can be seen as part of a gradual change in the way in which the subject of marketing is being presented for study.

The “view from the street” mentioned in the sub‐title appears to refer to the fact that the book “explains marketing from the perspective of the pivotal figure in the process: the consumer”. It “seeks to explain how consumers, organisations, society can and do use marketing”. This differentiates the book from those which focus on the marketing manager's perspective; it is not organised according to marketing functions, and distances itself from the “highly gendered, militarised language of traditional marketing”. The book covers a lot of ground in its relatively compact 292 pages; the variety of sub‐topics is wide. It encompasses the more interesting thinking from what one might call the interpretive side of consumer studies, with an emphasis on the social and cultural aspects of consumption, as well as some critical handling of mainstream managerial marketing thinking.

It would appear that the author and publisher have invested considerable time and thought in the book's design. The colour, layout and font is attractive. There are plenty of (uncaptioned) photographs, graphics, quotation panels, as well as further reading tips, useful lists of references and an index. It does not come with the case studies, internet exercises, and test banks associated with the traditional marketing textbooks. There has also been some effort expended on a sort of content “re‐hang”. Turn to the contents page and you will find six topics: marketing contexts, building relations, consuming experiences, creating solutions, brand selection, and moving space. These are printed with a coloured handwritten effect and presented out of sequence – for example, the topic list begins with “Consuming Experience Page 93”, and “Marketing Contexts Page 1” finds itself half way down the page. This is intended to convey the idea of a web, rather than linear, structure. Once the reader gets used to this, it works quite well.

The book includes contributions from 12 other writers – to name them all would take too much space, and to name a few would be invidious. Suffice it to say that this is a pleasing aspect of the book in that it adds diversity of voice. Most of the authors are European‐based, and, combined with the non‐managerial focus, this seems to make the book less dogmatic or prescriptive. The book is immensely readable, both because of the writing style(s) and the variety of interrelated topics. It can also act as a useful resource or reference to find a quick way into topics, such as value, or identity. It lends itself to a course design that would require students to engage with the journal literature and relate this to contemporary social issues. It is a useful resource for the kind of class where ideas can be discussed and argued about. Its treatment of issues is helpful, as it brings several different ideas to bear on the same question. At times, the book strays from its mission, and spends a little too much time giving the managerial view. However, the overall de‐privileging of the marketing manager is very welcome indeed ‐ though whether the consumer's viewpoint is the only appropriate alternative perspective to work from is a matter for debate.

Nowadays, the module leader's text adoption decision has become complex. There are many institutional, programme and subject pressures to take into account. There is, firstly, the overriding question of whether the academic institution sees itself as a site for critically engaging with, and challenging, marketing and other managerial practices or as a school for the training of those who were born to steward their employers' brands. The latter kind of production culture believes it is more important that students should learn to see the world through marketing‐coloured spectacles, especially managerially‐tinted ones, so that they can “function effectively” in the world of business, and live, love, or perhaps even be the brand. Secondly, modularisation lends added pressure for this kind of approach by enabling educational engineers to lay modules one on top of the other from semester to semester, and level to level, in order to construct the complete marketing edifice, with Marketing Strategy as the capstone module (what Pink Floyd might call the final “brick in the wall”?). Thirdly, a consensus then emerges about what modules a marketing student should have covered by which level. Co‐ and pre‐requisites are specified for each module, which is cast in stone in the institution's module catalogue, and policed by teaching and learning committees. Finally, there is more and more marketing to teach. In order to provide coverage of the subject's ever‐growing “evidence base”, textbook authors need to write ever longer texts, leading to the door‐stop phenomenon, massive 1,000‐page textbooks which try to say everything about the subject.

The preface suggests that the book “can be used as an alternative or supplementary text”. Given conventional business school approaches to marketing, with their expectation of the marketing managerial approach, and particularly the other pressures mentioned above, this seems at first sight a sensibly modest proposal. I think this is a function it performs very well, in practice acting as a useful complement to the functional core textbook. Certainly, it would be difficult to see Marketing Graffiti as a core text on, e.g. a conventional marketing principles or management module.

However, I think the book points the way to something far more worthwhile. It could function as a core text on an introductory marketing module with a substantially different focus, for example one that dared to look more broadly and critically at marketing and consumption within their socio‐cultural‐political context, with roughly equal attention being paid to each of these three areas. This kind of module may initially be more likely to occur on leisure, tourism or cultural and creative industries programmes, though there are signs that some management schools are already thinking this way. From this point of view, Marketing Graffiti already has a considerable contribution to make and ample scope for ongoing development as a text. And, finally, at £19.99, it will encounter a lot less resistance from hard‐up students.