Mobility and Market Research: Outdoor Advertising and the Commercial Ontology of the City

Abstract

This article explores the centrality of mobility in the practices of the outdoor advertising industry, analysing how commercial conceptualisations of mobility orient the production and sale of advertising space on roadside billboards, panels in pedestrian zones, on buses and taxis, and in train stations. I explore how the industry's market research practices conceive of urban space as mobility, and how understandings of mobility impact upon the design of advertising structures and their textual content. I conceptualise as a retroduction the relationship between market research practices, the aesthetics of advertising design and the visual engagement of people with advertisements. This is a performative relationship that produces a commercial ontology of the city. These retroductive relationships do not merely reproduce the hegemony of an urban commodity culture; they open up alternative ways of knowing the city.

Keywords:

• city
• market research
• commercial ontology
• commercial aesthetics of mobility

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following for their helpful comments on drafts of this paper: Anne‐Marie Fortier, Ruth McElroy and anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. The research was supported by ESRC grant number RES 000221744. The project involved 28 in‐depth interviews of 45–90 minutes with practitioners in a range of London‐based media‐owning companies, media agencies, specialist poster agencies, trade associations, research companies and one client company. In addition, data such as briefs, research questionnaires, research project results and PowerPoint presentations was collected from these companies. The project also involved a two‐week ethnography in 2006 with one media owner including observation of directors' meetings, brainstorming and creative sessions, construction and presentations of pitches, visits to clients and media agencies, staff training, and a range of in‐depth interviews with staff. Other parts of the project involved a case study of the visual impact of outdoor advertising in Manchester.

2. Gudis' (2004) historical analysis of American roadside advertising is an exception.

3. A slide taken from an industry PowerPoint presentation directed at clients.

4. A slide taken from an industry PowerPoint presentation directed at clients.

5. On experiential marketing, see Moor (2003).

6. There has been almost no social science work on the reception of advertisements, so accounts (including this one) remain speculative.