The Globalization of Advertising

Book excerpt: The role of advertising in everyday life and as a major employer in post-industrial economies is intimately bound up with processes of contemporary globalization. At centre of the advertising industry are the global advertising agencies which have an important role in developing global brands both nationally and internationally. This book indentifies and addresses questions on the globalization of advertising through detailed study of the contemporary advertising industry in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York City and the way advertising work has changed in the three cities over recent years. The Globalization of Advertising draws upon previously unpublished research to unpack the contemporary structure, spatial organization and city geographies of global advertising agencies. The book demonstrates how teamwork in contemporary advertising agencies, intra-organizational power relations and the distribution of organizational capabilities all define how global agencies operate as transnationally integrated organizations. This in turn allows understanding to be developed of the role of the offices of global agencies located in the three case study cities, Detroit, Los Angeles and New York. The role of these three cities as preeminent markets for advertising in the USA is shown to have changed radically over recent years, experiencing both growth and decline in employment as a result of their position in global networks of advertising work; networks that operate in the context of a changing US economy and the rise of new and emerging centres of advertising in Asia and South America. This book offers a cutting edge overview of recent and current trends in the globalization of advertising and new insights into the way global advertising agencies operate in and through world cities. It will be a valuable resource for researchers and students studying Geography, Management and Sociology.