* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Download cultural age and seniorism in an advertising context abstract
Consumer behaviour wikipedia , lookup
Digital marketing wikipedia , lookup
Global marketing wikipedia , lookup
Green marketing wikipedia , lookup
Marketing communications wikipedia , lookup
Business model wikipedia , lookup
Social media and television wikipedia , lookup
Viral marketing wikipedia , lookup
Social commerce wikipedia , lookup
Social media marketing wikipedia , lookup
Ambush marketing wikipedia , lookup
Direct marketing wikipedia , lookup
Integrated marketing communications wikipedia , lookup
Youth marketing wikipedia , lookup
Marketing mix modeling wikipedia , lookup
Neuromarketing wikipedia , lookup
Online advertising wikipedia , lookup
Advertising wikipedia , lookup
Advertising management wikipedia , lookup
Television advertisement wikipedia , lookup
CULTURAL AGE AND SENIORISM IN AN ADVERTISING CONTEXT Maria Suokannas, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, ABSTRACT Age and ageing are topics with immediate interest. The reason why, is that many western countries are facing a situation where people live longer and have more elderly in society than ever before. In a marketing context (journals, seminars, advertising agencies) the birth of a lucrative market is announced and e.g. different ways of segmenting the so called 50+ -market has been developed. In a market communication context the lack of representation of older models in advertisements has been discussed mainly in academic journals (e.g. Szmigin&Carrigan) but also in popular magazines. How people talk about older models in advertisements and how old age is constructed through this talk is the main aim of this article. The talk, comments or accounts about an older model in an advertisement represents a new situation in the marketer-consumer dialectic and will probably have an impact on consumer culture and how age will be constructed in the advertising context. 143 accounts about older models in advertisements were gathered during autumn 2003 and the accounts triggered by one advertisement for bras is analysed using a discourse analytic approach. The contribution is mainly in consumer gerontology and consumer culture. INTRODUCTION My heart has remained so young that I have the continual feeling of playing a part, the part of the seventy-year-old that I certainly am; and the infirmities and weaknesses that remind me of my age act like a prompter, reminding me of my lines when I tend to stray. Then, like the good actor I should like to be, I go back into my role, and I pride myself on playing it well (André Gide on 6 March 1941 quoted in Beauvoir de Simone 1972, p.296) One of the bigger issues in the near future is that the shape of the population pyramids changes in an unforeseen manner. In the future the concept “pyramid” could even be replaced by the word “light bulb” because of the bigger age-groups’ (baby-boomers) moving into an older age category and simultaneously changing the form of the pyramid as the subsequent age-groups are proportionately much smaller. It is mainly the post-war age-groups that are in focus when discussing the societal ageing phenomenon. Some discrepancies can be found when discussing which group to focus. In the U.S.A. the baby-boomer concept has been launched to describe or group individuals born during the years 1946-1964 with higher birthrates. In Finland, where the data for this article was gathered, the years with the highest birthrates are 1946-1950 (Karisto & Konttinen, 2004) . The Finnish ageing phenomenon is slightly different from e.g. the Kuluttajatutkimus. Nyt. 1/2005, 79-89. 79 Suokannas American as the birthrate was extremely high in Finland during the abovementioned period. The baby-boom generation, and its impact on the ageing phenomenon, is especially interesting to research because of its role as a change agent of society. According to Dychtwald (2000) “baby boomers have radically transformed every stage of life through which they have traveled” (Dychtwald 2000, p. xvi) and has even been “likened by demographers to a ‘ pig moving through a python’ “ (Dychtwald 2000, p.xvi) . Babyboomers can be seen as children of their time i.e. children of the cultural revolution in the 1960s (1958-1974 according to the historian Arthur Marvich) entailing new ways of looking at young age, beauty and authorities (Marvich 1998). The ageing of the babyboomers will have an impact on the national economy but it will be of special interest to see what impact the ageing will have on consumer culture and how this will influence the dialogue between marketers and consumers will change the marketplace. It can be imagined that for example consumer culture will change focus from youth to old age, which will challenge the marketers wellknown for emphasizing the young image in their communication. What the advertiser-marketer-consumer dialectic will bring into the construction of the senior consumer concept and what kind of impact it will have on the age-concept is of special interest in this article. ARISING CONFLICT BETWEEN ADVERTISERS AND TARGETED GROUP We can already experience a rising wave of criticism towards the lack of older models in advertisements and the picturing of old age (see e.g. Carrigan & Szmigin, 2003; Carrigan & Szmigin, 2000; Carrigan & Szmigin, 1998). For example Carrigan & Szmigin (2003) argue that “not using older people in advertising is potentially discriminatory and socially exclusive” (Szmigin & Carrigan 2003, p.198-199). Karisto (in Karisto & Konttinen, 2004) criticizes the way marketers ignore the paying capacity of the big age-groups especially when advertising is scrutinized. Looking at advertisements it seems that all the customers are young (ibid.). What we really do not know at this point is what older models in advertisements are revealing about what is going on in the age discussion. Identifying the baby-boomers´ interpretations about an older model in an advertisement has not been researched for, to my knowing, i.e. how this special age group in focus is talking about advertisement endorsers of their own age. There seems to be a slight controversy between what picture the consumer wants and what will be served in advertising. The advertisers have been criticized for not using older models as endorsers or for picturing old age in a negative manner. In an exploratory interview in november 2001 an art director at one of Finland’s major advertising agencies mentioned that taking senior models into advertising was frown on because the advertising agency did not want to have a senior image. Another advertising agency was beating around the bush when asked about what an older model brings into the advertisement. During a recent seminar arranged around the subject 45+-consumers, there were voices raised about the fact that elderly people are not represented in advertisements. This implies that there is a strong feeling of neglection among this particular age-group. It could be a result of the stereotype that seniors do not have financial resources, needs or wants to consume (Alalääkkölä, 1994) and thus are of no interest to 80 Suokannas marketers. Or it could be that marketers usually want to target younger age-groups because of the idea that this group is having more innovative consumption patterns (Ekonomi-magazine 4 /2003). Whatever the reason may be for under-representing older consumers in advertisements, it surely has an impact on the image we create of this particular group. THE ROLE OF ADVERTISING In contemporary society advertising is part of our everyday life and has developed a different role than in earlier years. Advertising has usually been seen as a tool for product promotion or corporate persuasion (Schudson, 1989). Today advertising definitely plays an important role in shaping consumer culture and is a part of the cultural discourse or in other words represents “expressions of contemporary consumer culture” (Stern 1997, p.61). Advertising, as a means of communicating, has always an ideological background according to Hackley (1999) which gives even more importance to the market-dialectic perspective. Elaborating a little bit on the dialectic and discussion about the power of advertising we should take into account that it is an everyday process: Blaikie (1999) includes, among other phenomena, media (including advertising) in culture, here within the ageing context: “my interpretation focuses on the dialogue and dialectic between everyday perceptions, policy, media and academic attitudes, and the lived realities of ageing” (Blaikie 1999, p.3). Kilbourne (2004) is going even a little bit further in the narrative power of advertising as she compares it to myths in ancient society: Advertising performs much the same function in industrial society as myth performed in ancient and primitive societies: It is both the creator and perpetuator of the dominant attitudes, values, and ideology of culture, as well as the social norms and myths by which most people live” (Kilbourne J in Kasser & Kanner eds 2004, p.252) Putting advertising even on a higher power level in society it can be seen as an important player in cultural production as it mediates fundamental problems with dichotomies as good-bad, happy- sad (see Tinic, 1997). The dichotomy old-young is certainly an interesting issue in the context of this article and especially how it is mediated by the advertisement that has been in focus here. These “ kind of binary constructs” (Horton-Salway in Wetherell & al 2001, p.168) are “general-purpose discursive device for constructing the world as such” (Edwards 1997, p. 237). Age could be seen as a tool for this binary construction especially as it is one of the three most important dimensions we categorize people along, the two others beeing race and sex (Kunda Z in Nelson T, 2002) and can thus be seen as a very powerful agent in consumer culture. It is not enough to use traditional age concepts, such as chronological age, when we study how age is culturally constructed. This is because becoming old is a result of an interactive aging process in a social context, and especially in a marketplace context where advertising plays an important role. Both old age and being old are an entirety that is continuously produced, renewed and changed (Jyrkämä J. 2001, p.276-77). In this process both social interaction and interaction with different change agents in society, e.g. advertising, will influence people’s age perceptions. Norms 81 Suokannas and other social barriers will decide how old you feel or look or what your interests or actions are, in other words your cognitive age (feel-age, lookage, do-age or interest-age according to Kastenbaum& al, 1972) is defined in social interaction. Combining advertising with stereotypes brings up interesting issues about the force of media or advertising on stereotyping and categorizing processes. One might ask what representation would be preferable in order to avoid negative stereotypes or one might ask what impact nonrepresentation will have. The representation of older consumers in the advertising or media context has been dealt with in many studies (Carrigan&Szmigin, 1998, 2000, 2003;Nelson, 2002; Roy & Harwood, 1997) bringing up both ageist matters and representation as a whole. According to Laws (1995) mass media has even an impact on people´s identities, selfidentifications and body perceptions: “we respond to the representation of an older person as much as, if not more than we respond to old people” (Laws 1995, p. 116). Frankly speaking mass media “defines and redefines the meaning of aging” (Wilkinson & Ferraro in Nelson 2002, p.345) and shows an ongoing semiosis, i.e. interpretation process RESEARCH QUESTION There has been more talk in media lately about using older models in advertisements and it is interesting indeed, to see how this will influence the advertisers and advertising industry. It is known that older models are not widely used in advertisements so researching cultural talk (meaning) of the older model is especially interesting at this phase of history. This study is exploratory and one step on the way to find out have age discourses are constructed in the dialectic between marketer and consumer. In the short accounts, gathered during autumn 2003, I tried to find different traces of so called interpretive repertoires, which is one of the key concepts in discursive psychology (Edley N in Wetherell et al., 2001). By revealing the interpretive repertoires I try to show how people construct age when confronted with an advertisement that shows older age ( at the same time I define this advertisement as a representative for older age because of the models age ). These interpretive repertoires can be used by people to construct versions about reality (Jorgensen et Phillips 1999 ) and are seen as different ways of talking about a phenomenon: By interpretive repertoire we mean broadly discernible cluster of terms, descriptions and figures of speech often assembled around metaphors or vivid images. ( Wetherell et Potter 1992, p.90 ) The advertisement that will be analyzed in this article, represented the advertiser’s contemporary interpretation of old age. This interpretation can be seen as the advertisers’ account, which is the concept for the description that is inspected within discourse analysis. Through accounts people make themselves and the world understandable to other people (Jokinen et al. 2002, p. 20) and this is a part of the communication process. 82 Suokannas METHODOLOGY The aim of this article is not to find direct effects of different variables on a phenomenon. The research finds its place on the poststructuralist and postmodern arena as language is not seen as a neutral medium of description (Elliott R, 1996) and it is known that there are only interpretations and no real truth. In this research I am not looking for the truth of reality but emphasize that the social world is complex and never fully predictable (Wetherell et al. 2002). It is emphasized that there are many interpretations (see e.g.Ozanne &Hudson, 1989). Compatible with the interpretive perspective is social constructionism, that sees the world to be constructed in social processes e.g. interactions. Without digging any deeper into the conceptualization of social constructionism there are some typical features that are important to put forward. The researcher is closely related to the research because when observing social reality he or she creates it (see e.g. Jokinen et al., 2002). According to Hackley (1998) the task of social constructionism is not to quantify data, categorize or find causal relationships. It emphasizes “the structure of meanings as constructed by individuals engaged in a social process”. In a marketing context this perspective is even more important as marketing definitely is part of the social world and theory building in marketing should be founded on a reflexive understanding (Hackley, 1998) It is emphasized that age is constructed in social processes and with the help of e.g. advertising. As mentioned above advertising can be seen as an important part of consumer culture and it both reflects and affects consumer culture and thus has an important role in creating the age concept. Advertising has mainly been researched with effects or attitudes in mind, emphasizing scripts or schemas in consumer cognition. In a social constructionist perspective the spoken or written word is the focus of the research and it is believed that everything that is said or written, constructs what we will be (identity) or what we will do. The accounts are analyzed in a discourse analytic way where “…they do not just describe things, they do things. And being active they have social and political implications” (Potter & Wetherell 1987, 6). Analyzing for example speech or text, these are in focus of the research and it is not interesting to know what lies behind the utterances or if there is a factual reality behind the words (Jokinen in Jokinen et al., 2002). As such the speech or texts does something. The accounts should be analysed remembering that they are“the building blocks that people use constructing versions of actions, cognitive processes and other phenomena in their discourse” (McKinley& Potter & Wetherell, 1993, p. 147). With a material as I had it is possible to find interpretive repertoires that “are part and parcel of any community’s common sense, providing a basis for shared social understanding” (Wetherell et al. 2001, p.198). There are often difficulties in knowing how to find interpretive repertoires. It is often some kind of craft skill (ibid.). Through reading and rereading your data and knowing your data almost by heart you get more skillful and you discover that some things are repeated. The interpretive repertoires I have found here are representing how age is constructed in talk in an advertising context. The talk shows also how this particular 83 Suokannas advertisement is consumed ( see e.g. Fairclough 1995 ) about consumption of texts in Discourse analysis can be criticized for being too relative or not giving enough validation but its role is more to show things that are taken for granted. Through the analysis of discursive practices ( or interpretive repertoires ) in the accounts about an older model we can trace what is typical of today´s talk about age and draw some conclusions about cultural constructs. METHOD The short accounts (143) were collected in October 2003 by students at a consumer behaviour course. The students were thoroughly instructed during a two-hour session about the aim of the research i.e. to get comments on eight different advertisement, where half of these pictured an older model. The interviewers were requested to be as passive as possible when interviewing, in order to have descriptions, accounts as spontaneous as possible. It was recommended that the interviews should be recorded and if this was not possible everything should be written down straight after the interview. In order to get the big age-groups represented, people born between 1942- 1956 were interviewed. These accounts represent contemporary culture. And according to Alasuutari: “The sample can be a bad representative for the entirety but it cannot offer wrong knowledge” (Alasuutari 2001, p. 114) Finding older models in advertisements was not an easy task. I tried to find models that could be described as older with typical signs of older age (wrinkles, gray hair) and I wanted both male and female representatives. The chosen ad was part of Lindex’, a clothing company´s newest ad campaign for bras and was used because of its visbility (outdoor advertising also) and because of Lindex advertising policy. In a short interview with Lindex (June 2004) I was told that Lindex wants to appeal to all ages and to be a store for everyone. They have also aimed at using ordinary people instead of models to strengthen their image of being a store for everyone. ACCOUNTS Having read and reread the accounts I found the following interpretive repertoires. At this time of history an older model seems to awake astonishment in many of the accounts in this study ( the astonishment interpretive repertoire). It could show that it is appropriate to talk in this way, now. …Astonishingly old model, which is positive… ..Not a typical advertisement and therefore good. It is not typical because of her age. Nice that they have chosen an older woman to their advertisement, charming advertisement.. 84 Suokannas With as many accounts as we have in this study it is natural that the opinions were not undividedly positive. In some cases some hesitation ensued as (the hesitation interpretive repertoire): …here they have seized the opportunity to use an older woman. Maybe it is good… Confusing, unusual… This hesitation shows that the combination of old, woman and advertisement is a known possibility but perhaps too uncommon to awake positive reactions. It is confusing as aging easily is seen as something negative. It could even awake some disgust. Some accounts showed even a very negative attitude towards the use of an older model (the eliminating interpretive repertoire): Oh no, an older aunt in an advertisement for bras. She looks alright. But I don´t think that it is suitable to have older women in advertisements for bras. Artificial and unconvincing as the earlier one. Besides, I don´t understand why older people has to be forced into advertisements …Is it so wise to make advertisements for bras with old aunties, isn´t it better to use Janina Frostell or any other beautiful model? In some of the positive utterances the older model as a spokesperson meant inclusion and show some of the age stereotypes that are mastering our talk today. The stereotype referred to here is that old age means hiding yourself and especially hiding your sexuality (e.g you can´t use beautiful clothes when you are older.) ( the inclusive interpretive repertoire ): In fact this is also pretty good. That you can use beautiful clothes even when you are older. It doesn´t have to relate to youth as advertising has made us believe, that only youth is something. As a matter of fact this is really good! A good picture and the lived life is seen. Surely it will touch people of our age This advertisement shows that even an older woman can be sexy! More advertisements of this kind and a lot! When you look at this you get the feeling that it is worthwhile to invest in yourself although you have passed menopause. I recognize the advertisement. Mmm…you get a positive picture; also older women should and could dress sexy. It is not dangerous to get older. In the accounts different nouns have been used to describe the older woman or lady in the advertisement. Looking at the nouns takes makes the discourse analysis lexical as it studies local meanings of words ( van Dijk in Wodak & Meyer 2001). According to Lerner (1999) there is a certain difference between the use of woman (kvinna), lady (dam) and girl (tjej) and it shows a different attitude towards females. At first sight you can perceive the three nouns to be equal but at a connotative level the word woman has more sexual or aggressive implications (Lerner 1999, p.104) and refers to reproduction. The word lady, on the other hand, is calming, pure and asexual. It should of course be remembered that the use of the 85 Suokannas word is highly contextual but in this case the respondents were referring to the same picture. ”pretty and young-looking older lady” “good that they have included an older woman” "well-preserved older lady" In the interviews some of the respondents did not even use the word woman, lady or girl but used the word people, model or she, which made the woman in the advertisement more distanced. ” nice to see older people in ads” "though it is good that they also use older models” "She is stylish and okay, however” In Finland we have a noun that is difficult to translate, which was mentioned in some of the accounts. This noun is “tant” in Swedish and “täti” in Finnish and translating it straight to English it would be aunt or maiden or even lady. In Finland the word has a different connotation meaning e.g. that a person is old-fashioned and a little bit funny, perhaps not having any power at all. There is even a Swedish book (Khaldi & Welander 1999) that is called “Tantvarning” (Beware of the auntie) which gives some advice on how to avoid being “auntish”. The advice were gathered by a magazine and people had a possibility to send in their own warnings. This book is a representative of contemporary discussions about ageing women. The warnings show that the connotation of “tant”, “auntie”, is unmodern, unsexy, slow motion and past their prime. In the following accounts the word “tant” was used "Ooh..an old auntie in a laced bra” ”It is good with older aunties every now an then” ”Old aunties are seldom seen in advertisements” Some utterances refer to stereotyping (the stereotyping interpretive repertoire). For example, the combination of old age and beauty being astonishing shows attitudes that are deeply rooted in society. Beauty is usually combined with young age and a lot of effort, especially by women, is made to remain young e.g. by using cosmetics and having cosmetic surgery. According to Wilkinson & Ferraro (in Nelson 2002, p.343) “most of these procedures to ‘look young’ reinforce the notion that beauty is in the domain of the youth” and “ the dual forces of ageism and sexism still emphasize youthful appearances for women”. ”mmm, she is even well-preserved although she is pretty old” “ She is beautiful although she is a little older and has grey hair” 86 Suokannas With these interpretative repertoires I want to bring forward what is allowed or possible to talk about when confronted with an older model in an advertisement. We can find how age is constructed and how some norms are alive in the talk. Some similarities can be drawn from a study described by Nigel Edley, where he looked for ways how people talked about masculinity and men.: By looking for the different ways that people can talk about men and masculinity, we begin to understand the kinds of limitations that exist for the construction of self and other” (Edley N in Wetherell& al 2001, p.201) Advertising should be seen as the act of ”telling a story” that makes an interaction and management of ´reality’ possible (Slater in Meijer 1998, p.236). These accounts have interacted with the advertisement’s story and is part of the market-consumer dialectic. DISCUSSION The accounts of this study are a snapshot of how people construct the social reality of ageing through the semiosis of one particular advertisement. According to Gergen (1994) any utterance is a signifier until some fellow actor signifies it to become a socially shared sign (using the concepts of semiotics). Which of these utterances will become a sign depends on interpersonal relations, power and human agency. There will always be an ongoing dialogue between the society and the individual. Social structures of society will form the individual but the individual will on the other hand influence society or exert human agency. (Wilkinson & Ferraro in Nelson, 2002). How future advertising will consider the senior consumers and in which way senior models will be used depend on which of these accounts will be powerful enough. We will have to find out the following in a Foucaultian way: How will some power relations be supported by the use of different discourses? How will some terms be strengthened and other weakened? (Foucault 1976, p.97). Will an overall stronger age discourse see the daylight? Are we going towards an ageless society where no models will be used at all? One important issue is that the baby boomers are known for changing society because of being numerous. How the baby boomers' aging will change the construction of age and especially in a marketing communication context could be found in the analysis of cultural practices. The age concept’s changing from a chronological discourse to a more socially constructed discourse will be a process that every marketer should follow in order to know how to communicate with the lucrative, babyboomer’s market. REFERENCES Alalääkkölä L (1996) Aged Consumers as a Research Subject. Publication TuKKK Series A-10 Alasuutari P (2001) Laadullinen tutkimus, 3. uudistettu painos, Vastapaino, Tampere. 87 Suokannas Beauvoir de Simone G.P.Putnam´s Sons (1972) The Coming of Age. First American Edition. Blaikie Andrew, (1999) Ageing and Popular Culture, Cambridge University Press Carrigan Marylyn (1998): Segmenting the grey market: the case for fifty-plus "lifegroups". Journal of Marketing Practice. Bradford: 1998.Vol.4, Iss. 2; pg. 43 Carrigan, Marylyn & Szmigin, Isabelle (1998): The usage and portrayal of older models in contemporary consumer advertising Journal of Marketing practice Applied Marketing Science, Vol.4 No.8 1998 pp.231-248 Carrigan, Marylyn & Szmigin, Isabelle : (2000)Does advertising in the uk need older models? Journal of Product & Brand Management Vol. 9 No 2 2000, 128-143 Carrigan, Marylyn & Szmigin, Isabelle (2003): Regulating ageism in UK advertising:an industry perspective Marketing Intelligence & Planning 21/4 (2003) 198-204 Dychtwald, Ken (1999): Age Power: How the 21st Century will be Ruled by the New Old Tarcher/Putnam Edwards, Derek (1997) Discourse and Cognition. London:Sage Elliot Richard (1996): Discourse analysis: exploring action, function and conflict in social texts Marketing Intelligence & Planning 14/6 (1996) 65-68 Fairclough, Norman (1995 ) Critical discourse analysis . Longman Foucault Michel (1976):The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An introduction Penguin Group Gergen, Kenneth (1994): Realities and Relationships-Soundings construction.Cambridge Harvard University Press in Social Hackley, Christopher E.(1999) An epistemological odyssey: towards social construction of the advertising process. Journal of Marketing Communications, Sep99, Vol. 5 Issue 3, p157-168 Hackley Christopher E. (1998) :Social constructionism and research in marketing and advertising Qualitative Market Research. Bradford: 1998. Vol.1, Iss.3; pg. 125 Hinton Perry R. (2000), Stereotypes, Cognition and Culture. Psychology Press Jokinen Arja&Juhila Kirsi& Suoninen Eero(2002): Diskurssianalyysi liikkeessä (Discourse analysis on the move) Vastapaino 2002 Jyrkämä Jyrki (2001) : Vanheneminen ja vanhuus (Ageing and Old Age) in Lapsuudesta vanhuuteen, iän sosiologiaa (From childhood to old age, the sociology of age) ed. Anne Sankari & Jyrki Jyrkämä Karisto Antti & Konttinen Riikka (2004): Kotiruokaa (Home-made food), Kotikatua (a tv-programme for families), Kaukomatkailua (Travelling to far-off countries) Palmenia-kustannus, Yliopistopaino, Helsinki 2004 Kasser, Tim & Kanner, Allen D. (eds.) (2003): Psychology and Consumer Culture : The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World Publisher:Amer Psychological Assn Kastenbaum Robert, Valerie Derbin, Paul Sabatini and Steven Artt, (1972), "'The Ages of Me' Toward Personal and Interpersonal Definitions of Functional Aging," Aging and Human Development, 3, 197-211 Khaldi Warda&Welander Anna-Clara& Hagen Cecilia (1999): Tantvarning (beware of the auntie) 88 Suokannas Laws, G (1995): Understanding ageism:Lessons postmodernism. Gerontologist, 35, 112-118 from Lerner, Harriet Goldhor (1999): Kvinnor och psykoterapi psychotherapy) Bokförlaget Natur och Kultur, Stockholm feminism (Women and and Meijer, Irene Costera (1998): Advertising citizenship:an essay on the performative power of consumer culture, Media, Culture & Society, 20 235-249 1998 Nelson, Todd (2002). Ageism: Stereotyping Persons.Cambridge, MA: MIT Press and Prejudice Against Older Potter Jonathan & Wetherell Margaret (1987): Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond attitudes and Behaviour 1987 Sage Publications Ltd Roy, A., & Harwood, J. (1997). Underrepresented, positively portrayed: Older adults in television commercials. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 25, 39-56. Schudson Michael (1989) :How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols." Theory and Society 18: 153-80 Tinic Serra A. (1997), United Colors and United Meanings: Benetton and the Commodification of Social Issues, Journal of Communication, 47 (3), 3-25. Wetherell Margaret, Taylor Stephanie, Yates Simeon J. (2001): Discourse as Data, A guide for analysis Sage Publications Ltd 2001 Wetherell Margaret, Potter Jonathan (1992). Mapping the language of Racism. Discourse and the Legitimization of Exploitation, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Wodak Ruth & Michael Meyer (2001): Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis: Introducing Qualitative Methods SAGE Publications AUTHOR Maria Suokannas, , M.Sc. (econ), is a doctoral student at the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Marketing, Arkadiagatan 22, 00100 Helsingfors. 89