ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to demonstrate how advertising circulates a variety of imageries of consumer-brand relationships that are assembled through the use of tattoos in ads. By stressing advertising as a significant realm for the reproduction of institutionalized consumer-brand relations, the chapter examines how the use of tattoos in market communication is part of three different consumer-brand assemblages contained in the field of interpretive consumer research. Conceptualizations of advertising as a central institution that mediates the commercial realm of the market and the cultural realm of everyday life are relatively widespread and are encapsulated in the notion of cultural economy. The assemblage of subjects and objects into socio-technical agencements offers a fruitful course for analyzing the contemporary brand culture. An assemblage perspective could fruitfully be applied in more complex social contexts, such as identity performance in a Goth context, to analyze the emergence of consumer-object relations beyond a mere contextual or consumer-centric analysis.
