Consumer-brand assemblages in advertising

An Analysis of Skin, Identity, and Tattoos in Ads

Bibliographic Data

ID2165852
AuthorsSofie Møller Bjerrisgaard (University of Southern Denmark), Dannie Kjeldgaard (0000-0001-5306-7928, University of Southern Denmark, corresponding author), Anders Bengtsson (0000-0001-7752-0432, b Protobrand , 560 Harrison Avenue, Boston , MA , 02118 , USA)
Year2013
Volume16
Issue3
Pages223-239
Publication date2013-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueConsumption Markets & Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1025-3866 • E-ISSN: 1477-223X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10253866.2012.738067
OpenAlexW2062706456
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited45

This paper discusses how the use of tattoos in advertising renders diverse brand–consumer assemblages visible. In considering advertising practitioners as professionals of entanglement, the paper emphasizes the embeddedness of practitioners’ use of tattoo symbolism in institutionalized marketing systems and in the cultural history of tattooing. In accordance with the recent emphasis on the importance of material devices for understanding contemporary sociality, this paper presents a semiotic analysis of a convenience sample of advertisements depicting tattoos. Tattoos are productive for the study of brand–consumer assemblages because they are situated on the human skin, which is a mediator between the individual and the socio-material world. Furthermore, tattoos reproduce discourses of both mainstream fashion and deviant subcultural identification, which imbue tattoo symbolism with communicative potency. This analysis demonstrates how the emergence of brand tattoos in advertising challenges the dominant consumer centrism in consumer research and suggests a networked, emerging understanding of the subject in which agency is distributed in socio-technical assemblages

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Brand identity · Business · Identity (music · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Media, Gender, and Advertising