“Selling something social: The relationship between touch, advertising, and society”
Given my demonstrated interest in Marketing, for my 2019 Communications honors thesis at UC San Diego, I wanted to use the opportunity to research and understand the world of Marketing as it applies to the average consumer.
Having studied American Sign Language (ASL) throughout college, and having been a consumer of media all my life as any person with internet or a cable connection is likely to be, I sought to understand the dynamics between those who create content and those who consume it. Honing in on print advertisements for soap, in this paper I dissect the historical implications of the use of touch in marketing, the biological need humans experience in regards to physical touch, and how advertising both shapes and is shaped by society’s understanding of touch as a form of communication.
An excerpt from the paper is as follows:
“What is the relationship between touch, advertising, and society? I first started thinking about touch not in relationship to gender or to advertising, but rather in relationship to Deaf and Hearing culture – i.e. through the absence of a sense. The use of hands as a form of communication is naturally tactile in a way that verbal communication is not, and Deaf culture is then primed to consider interpersonal touch as being less intimate and more acceptable in any form. In comparison, especially in this contemporary moment, touch in hearing societies is an issue and topic of discussion. Given my experience in Marketing and Advertising, I instinctively began to think about the connection between touch and advertising, and sought to apply the thinking of theorists such as Stuart Hall in tracing which party of the two holds the true power–the content creators, or the consumers?”
Read it here: “Selling Something Social: The Relationship Between Touch, Advertising, and Society” (PDF)