‘When you tire of marketing you tire of life’ or why you should attend the Academy of Marketing conference

Hosted in the beautiful Regent’s Park by Regent’s University London, and chaired by Professor John Egan, the UK Academy of Marketing conference that took place in 2019 seems like a lifetime ago. The theme of the event was: ‘when you tire of marketing you tire of life’. Given the nature of our subject, its interconnection with the society we inhabit, and role in helping structure, expand and contract the economic system (Hill & McDonagh, 2020), it is hard to envisage the day when we will run out of interesting topics to explore.

Certainly, when turning to the material that appears in the pages of this Journal – and in this section specifically – the papers index wider societal trends abundantly clearly. We have reflections on caring for those who need our support; material that examines the cultural formatting and valorisation of alcohol consumption, combined with strategies to craft alternative modes of life outside the circuits of intoxication; ruminations that engage with prefiguration and envision more sustainable, intergenerationally oriented ethical praxis; through to projects that provide important insights into donor behaviour, charitable decision-making, and the power of advertising in the digital realm – a realm in which low attention and multi-tasking, across many different screens and technologies – makes the influencing task of marketing professionals much more difficult.

Put otherwise, the content submitted to the Journal of Marketing Management and represented at the Academy of Marketing annual conference continues to refract the spectrum of our subject. This extends from managerial publications through to interpretive content all the way to accounts exhibiting and analytically unravelling alternative life-worlds which have sustainability at their core – something that must secure greater attention in our research and curricula (e.g., Ertekin et al., 2020; Kemper & Ballantine, 2019).

Reading the material submitted to this special section of the Journal of Marketing Management, we are confronted with contributions that have resonance in our uncertain times. Our first paper keys into an issue of major societal concern given ageing populations, namely, caring for close family, relatives and friends. As Dean, Trees and Shabbir point out, age brings its own challenges. For some, our autumnal years will be gratifying, enabled by good health, financial security and social stability. For others, health and economic impacts will be more severe, requiring us to rely on people with whom our relationships will undergo strain and change.

Looking at the lives of informal carers, that is, that large and growing network of people who undertake caring activities for various reasons ranging from family loyalty, to personal friendship or dutiful obligation, Dean et al. (2020) highlight the ways in which carer self-concepts change over the course of their provisioning activities. Being a carer can be a source of tension and disenchantment, even leading some to contemplate suicide, wondering how they can continue to maintain their activities in the face of extremely trying circumstances. Obviously, the narrative presented in this paper can appear bleak, yet there are also rays of sunshine and optimism. When placed in stressful circumstances, people can and do create systems of support and environments that mitigate potentially negative life changes. Even so, it is hard not to agree with the conclusion Dean and colleagues offer when they aver that this system of informal and poorly supported caring duties requires considerable buttressing by government. Otherwise, it will negatively affect many people. These challenges appear daunting and remain worrying.

The impact of context on our lived experience – something that Dean et al touch upon – is continued in the second paper by Gallage, Heath and Tynan. This fascinating manuscript deals with a topic that merits attention from mainstream, interpretive and critical perspectives alike, that is, the impact of marketing communications and our peer communities on alcohol drinking habits. In exploring this topic, Gallage et al. (2020) adopt an unusual perspective, they interview and use diary methods to navigate the lived experiences of former heavy drinkers. All of the people involved in the study have sought to reduce and, in some cases, eliminate the consumption of alcohol from their lives. What this article unpacks is that the narrative of individual responsibilization that accompanies attempts to encourage ‘responsible drinking’ seriously underplays the contextual and peer influences that shape consumption patterns, especially when we are referring to addictive substances.

Gallage et al document how their respondents have sought to change their lives for the better. This sometimes involves consuming less alcohol with friends, but often necessitates more dramatic changes including modifying friendship groups, socialising practices and self-care regimes. For example, by adopting new leisure activities such as increasing daily exercise (i.e. morning gym routines that are not exactly commensurate with late night heavy-drinking sessions) and healthier eating strategies (which don’t necessarily furnish us with the pictorial evidence of exciting lives to post to the ‘gram’). Changing socialising and behaviour patterns in this way is not, however, easy. We might lose friends, feel excluded, suffer negative impacts on self-esteem and undergo radical identity changes. Gallage et al underline that the complexity of maintaining more responsible drinking behaviours is rarely given sufficient attention and needs to be considered far more effectively when social marketing interventions are being devised and promoted.

The third paper from our Academy of Marketing collection is by Casey, Lichrou and O’Malley. As we hopefully move away from contexts that encourage the denial of science towards those which seek to intervene in the social world in order to foster sustainability, raise questions about economic growth, equity and access to consumption, it is to be anticipated that greater attention will be given to the topic of prefiguration and marketing’s role in fostering alternative ways of life beyond the confines of an echo chamber reverberating with ‘consume, consume, consume’ (see: https://www.jmmnews.com/prefiguring-consumption/). Prefiguring entails, broadly speaking, taking critical and constructive looks at the status of the world. This means developing alternative institutional structures and living arrangements that transform unsustainable practices so that we live in ways that avoid ecocide and firmly register that ecology must take priority over the economy. Having the latter without the former is not a practical long-term strategy.

In their article, Casey et al. (2020) provide us with an insight into an alternative way of life, one grounded in sustainable living, alternative methods of provisioning, and – to some extent – an activist politics that wants to communicate to those locationally connected with the ecovillage (or ‘eco-neighbourhood’) how they can live differently on a day-to-day basis (see also Chatzidakis & Maclaran, 2018; Chatzidakis et al., 2012). In performing their more ecologically oriented approach to existence, the residents of this community are offering up a template for grassroots initiatives that could be rolled out across the world (e.g., spotlighting Community Supported Agriculture, Green Enterprise and educational facilities combined with a hostel run on ecological principles). It is a narrative of exemplification and transformation that has received some degree of wider political support. For those of us watching the horrors of the COVID-19 crisis unfold whilst also witnessing how our ‘reduced economic activity … resulted in dramatic improvements in the quality of our air and water’ (Casey et al., 2020), this paper in conjunction with observable and discernible changes to our environment are a reason for eco-optimism in the face of an otherwise disconcerting year. Let us hope that we learn from our enforced redirection in axiological gaze and foster the kinds of changes needed to ensure the health of the planet for current and future generations.

Marketing as a practice, unfortunately, is all too often depicted in quite negative ways, usually by commentators with little appreciation for the paradigmatically varied nature of our subject. Proffering a completely different light on the contributions of our discipline and practice, Robson and Hart (2020) provide detailed insights into charity donation behaviours. Unusually, they devote attention to the extent to which our political belief systems shape donation behaviours, offering analytic purchase on the topics of immigration and military activity. While the research focus and careful reviews of pertinent literature make this an enthralling study for academics interested in the area (including, of course, those concerned with politically oriented decision-making, cause related marketing and social marketing), it is the practical recommendations directed to those seeking to maximise donations that will attract those involved in the non-profit sector (i.e. the novel segmentation approach presented by Robson and Hart).

Our final paper deals with digital marketing. Santoso et al. (2020) explore the extent to which digital advertising is likely to be effective given the context in which we consume it. After all, it is probably fair to say that a limited number of people are truly attentive to digital advertising that pops up, for instance, on our desktops. Even creative executions can get in the way of what we’re doing; assuming, naturally, that we are being task focused when online, for example.

For those new to this research area or required to teach marketing communications, Santoso et al’s manuscript provides a wonderfully clear overview of digital advertising, differentiating this from social media advertising in an accessible way. They review pertinent debates about strong, weak and ostensibly intermediary positions on the effectiveness of advertising. As they explain, digital advertising faces various potential difficulties. There is a tremendous amount of clutter online; commercially produced content is usually fairly easy to distinguish from the material we are trying to watch and people sometimes perceive digital advertising as intrusive. What this means in epistemological terms is that Santoso et al assume that most people will pay relatively little attention to digital advertising and given that this has received relatively little scholarly attention to date, indicates a fruitful direction for their research.

In effect, they ask: To what extent do we pay attention to digital advertising and does our limited engagement signal a major future problem for those seeking to communicate in this realm? The answer, with a surprising twist that we will not reveal here, is that limited attention does not mean this form of advertising is ineffective. For this reader, it will be intriguing to watch how debates around low attention and the subconscious processing of advertising and marketing communications develop in future. Watch this space.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Mark Tadajewski

Mark Tadajewski is the Editor of the Journal of Marketing Management.