‘Is there a gap in the market, and is there a market in the gap?’ How advertising planning performs markets

Abstract

This paper explores the performative role of marketing knowledge in advertising planning. It is based on an ethnography within the account planning department of a London advertising agency as it worked closely with a client and a market research agency to develop a new energy/health drink for launch in the United Kingdom. The case provides detailed support for the idea that marketing (and other) theories help perform or bring into existence that which they purport to describe. It also shows how such theories are hybridised and streamlined in the iterative battleground of a creative process, framed by the need to create plausible consumption and competitive relations. The main contribution of this article is to show how the performative power of marketing knowledge is ultimately determined not by its ‘truth value’, but by its ability to produce compelling stories that stabilise the reflexive relationships between product attributes, consumer profiles and competitive relations.

Keywords:

• performativity
• market creation
• advertising planning
• positioning
• ethnography

Notes

¹ Our translation from the French original.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Erik S. Jacobi

Erik Jacobi is a PhD student in Marketing at Lancaster University Management School where he is supervised by Dr James Freund and Prof Luis Araujo. His research interests are in the area of market studies and focus on mediation work and the role of representational practices in advertising planning and branding. He holds a BA in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Nottingham and an MSc in Management and Marketing from Lancaster University.

James Freund

James Freund is a lecturer at Lancaster University Management School. His research is focussed on Brand Psychoanalysis, that is exploring conscious and repressed aspects of organisations, including what images created by external critical stakeholders reveal about the organisational unconscious. He is also researching the role organisational personae play in helping and hindering appropriate responses to climate change. James has a BSc in psychology and an MA and PhD in creative writing. He previously worked for metals firms Titanium International and Edward, Day & Baker, environmental charities Earth 2000 and Greenpeace, advertising agency FCB, and communications company BT.

Luis Araujo

Luis Araujo is a Professor of Industrial Marketing at Lancaster University Management School. His research interests and publications are in the area of business markets, namely the boundaries of the firm and product–service systems. His recent work focuses on a practice-based approach to the study of markets. He is co-editor with John Finch and Hans Kjellberg of Reconnecting Marketing to Markets (Oxford University Press, 2010).