ABSTRACT
What do you already know about advertising? Probably quite a lot; there are a number of sources of information and analysis in circulation, including our everyday knowledge and experience of advertisements. In addition you might have come across professional and technical information, as well as advertising discussions in current affairs coverage and, possibly, academic analysis of advertising. In tone as much as in substance there are some considerable differences between the accounts provided by such sources. Thus the analysis of advertising that circulates in academic writing can differ widely in approach and language when compared with professional industry commentary or newspaper reports. Similarly more popular reflections on advertising, for instance in comedic satire, provide information and analysis in a variety of ways, which we readily consume, and which thus feed our thinking. However none of these modes necessarily deliver coherent or uncomplicated accounts or representations of the advertising genre.
