Synopsis

The first part of the book establishes the extent to which rhetoric has already figured as an object of marketing scholarship. In order to do this, and to prepare the reader of the development of my argument in later chapters, I start with an overview of the history of Western rhetoric. What writing there has been to date on the place of rhetoric within marketing practice and theory has tended to have to skimp heavily when supplying the historical and developmental context to rhetoric. This acts as a disadvantage for the further acceptance of rhetorical perspectives in the discipline because it leaves most readers with only a cursory understanding of what rhetoric really is and how much depth there exists in the scholarship that has grown up around it for more than two thousand years. If all we know of rhetoric is that Aristotle said that there were three different types of persuasive argument (ethos, logos, and pathos) and that it also has something (though we might not be sure what) to do with metaphors and figures of speech, then it is not surprising that we might not appreciate how much insight rhetoric can give us into the whole gamut of marketing thought. While there are many worthy primers of rhetoric available to the interested reader (Conley, 1990; Murphy et al., 2014; Kennedy, 1994; Smith, 2003; to name but a few), there are none that seek to summarise the story of the discipline for a marketing audience. Consequently, I will endeavour to lay out the important aspects of the study and practice of rhetoric as they will relate to my later, more involved, arguments regarding control, scientism, and magical thinking. Those readers who are already familiar with the rhetorical tradition are urged to jump straight to Chapter 2. It is here that I review the different ways in which marketing scholars have already engaged with aspects of rhetoric. For in linking rhetoric and marketing I am thankfully not starting ab initio. Even before Tonks’ (2002) clarion call for rhetoric to have a “central location in making sense of marketing management” (p. 806) there had been a growing weight of research investigating the part that traditional rhetorical approaches to persuasion could have in explaining the power of textual and visual tactics in advertising and public relations (Bush and Boller, 1991; McQuarrie and Mick, 1992, 1996, 1999; Scott, 1994; Stern, 1988, 1990; Tom and Eves, 1999). This tradition has continued and broadened in recent years, with scholars such as Brown (2002, 2004, 2005, 2010), Hack-ley (2001, 2003) and myself (Miles, 2013, 2014a, 2014b) using rhetorical framings to discuss the ways in which marketing speaks about itself and how academics and practitioners use discourse to construct various aspects of what it means to be doing marketing. Chapter 2, therefore, brings us ‘up to date’ with the small but significant ‘rhetorical turn’ in marketing.

If, so far, marketing scholarship has not been overly receptive to arguments that it should be interpreted as an instantiation of rhetoric it is worth investigating just how it is that marketing does actually see itself. Chapter 3, therefore, begins by examining the foundation myths of marketing, looking at where scholars think the discipline comes from and how it has been thought to have developed in its formative years. Central to this examination is a consideration of the way that marketing has sought to define itself as a science and the sometimes quite vociferous debates that have flared up around this issue, particularly between those promoting a ‘relativistic’ interpretation of marketing truth and those supporting a far more empirical, ‘realist’ one. These debates are important for the stage that they set for my later analysis of the Sophistic character of the marketing enterprise, but they can also be analysed as attempts to run away from considering marketing’s true nature as a discipline of rhetorical control. This leads me directly to a discussion of the centrality of control in any consideration of marketing practice and theory. I start this discussion by tracing an alternative history of marketing in what Beniger (1986) has called the “crisis of control” (p. 219) accompanying the Industrial Revolution. I will argue that modern marketing developed as a technology of control designed to stimulate and direct consumer demand and that these origins have continued to direct its evolution, despite the manifold extensions and re-focussings that the practice and discipline have undergone in the following decades. Marketing’s ability to control consumption is dependent also upon the intermediary position of the marketing practitioner. The description of marketers as ‘middlemen’, though common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century has largely fallen by the wayside. However, I will argue that the phrase holds an important key to the way in which the modern profession can be seen as reflecting a truly ancient dynamic. This is a cue for our first return to Plato and his dealings with early marketers (or retailers and traders) in order to worry away at the origins of this middle position of the marketer. Marketing historians have often reached for Plato when they have wished to underscore the esteemed history of the discipline, and I will consider the rhetorical ramifications for such an appeal. This will also serve as context for my oppositional reading of Plato’s description of marketing middle men which occurs in Chapter 4. Chapter 3 finishes with a consideration of marketing scholarship’s unquenchable desire to increase its scope as far as possible and relates this to the issue of exchange, a concept which has been repeatedly put forward as the one motif which can unify all marketing thought.

Chapter 4 builds upon the discussion of exchange that finishes the previous chapter and uses it to present an initial conception of how marketing can be considered an instantiation of the rhetorical discipline. I begin by exploring the ramifications of understanding marketing as an attempt to control the flow of value. I adopt the idea of the marketer as an intermediary but also return to Plato’s discussion of the origins of the marketer in order to provide a detailed, Sophistic, oppositional reading of how the urmarketer functions in society. This allows me to offer an initial definition of marketing as rhetoric, a definition which is then qualified, expanded upon, and altered over the course of the chapter and its examination of the ways in which Plato deals with the infecting, liminal, dangerous presence of marketing in his ideal city-states. The chapter culminates with an argument, following Lanham (2006), for basing an understanding of marketing as rhetoric upon the provision of services to facilitate the exchange of attention.

Having argued for the broadly rhetorical nature of marketing, in Chapter 5 I make the case for considering marketing as particularly Sophistic. Once again, I return to Plato and the issue of the middle position of the marketer and demonstrate how that philosopher treated the Sophists in a very similar way—as infecting, dangerous outsiders who threatened the balance of society and the morals of those who composed it. On this basis I examine the legacy of Sophism, asking what made it unique as a rhetorical approach and what made it so threatening to Plato and Aristotle. This leads to a discussion of the way in which marketers are seen in modern society, and how the sorts of accusations and negative sentiment that are routinely thrown at marketing are similar to the ways in which Plato and his philosophical descendants saw both the marketers of their time and the Sophists. I argue that the reason for this similarity comes down to the fact that marketers (both ancient and modern) and Sophists were both performing very similar roles in society based upon controlling attention and the appreciation of value. Finally, I consider the question of why, if the links between rhetoric and marketing are so clear, has there been so little effort made by scholars of rhetoric to engage with marketing?

Much of Chapters 4 and 5 is concerned with the consequences of millennia of public and scholarly unease with marketing and rhetoric, with attempts to control others for commercial, political, or personal gain. A lot of this unease comes from the ways in which rhetoric and marketing remind people of magic. Magic is also about controlling people and things, destiny and luck. And it has a significant part to play in the practice of early rhetoric, particularly Sophistic rhetoric. There are, also, very close connections between marketing and magic, both in terms of the ways that consumers think of products and consumption and the ways that scholars outside marketing have occasionally attempted to explain its power and purpose. The next three chapters of the book deal with how magic, rhetoric, and marketing come together. Firstly, Chapter 6 reviews the Western scholarly engagement with magic, the way that it has been defined around attempts at control, and the importance of language in our understandings of what it is. This then allows us to move on in Chapter 7 to a detailed consideration of how the Sophistic approach to language was one based upon a consideration of the magical power of speech. This chapter argues that the deep roots of early rhetoric in ritual and magical performative language constituted a significant part of the threat seen by Plato and Aristotle in the Sophists’ teachings and public demonstrations. Consequently, much of the systematisation of rhetoric, its bureaucratisation, can be seen as a series of attempts to expunge magic (as conveyed in ritual patternings, highly figurative language, vivid imagery) from public disputation. Although the ‘magical’ aspect of rhetoric never truly disappeared, authorities concerned with managing political, legal, and ceremonial disputation and declamation have often tended to take serious measures to keep it on the outside of the establishment. I argue that the practice of marketing can be seen as the last refuge of the magical roots of magic, and it marks, ironically, a (qualified) triumph after many millennia of marginalisation of this tradition. Chapter 8 then considers a number of instances in non-marketing and marketing scholarship where marketing or consumption have been identified with magic or sorcery. Examining the work of Williams (1980), Williamson (2002) and Jhally (1989), amongst a number of others, I argue that scholars working outside the marketing academy have often used the accusation of magical practice against marketing as a way of damning it, or publicly shaming it and the capitalist system that they argue utilises it to spread a glamour in front of the reality of the production and consumption process. As a counter to this, I also examine the consumer culture theory literature that seeks to uncover the magical thinking behind consumption experiences. I argue that as insightful as it is, this strand of marketing scholarship turns away from any real engagement with the magical nature of marketing itself, rhetorically positioning the consumer as the only agent in the creation of consumption magic. While it, therefore, recognises the continuing importance of magic in the modern market, it tells only half of the story. Instead, if we examine the relationship between magic, rhetoric, and marketing, we can fully appreciate the position of the marketer as both magician and rhetor.

The final chapter of the book, Chapter 9, returns to the establishment of a Sophistic understanding of marketing, and works towards presenting an improved version of the definition of marketing originally presented in Chapter 4. The chapter revisits and deepens major themes from the previous chapters in order to arrive at a more rounded conception of marketing as rhetoric. It considers the value of relativism, improvisation, magical thinking, and an agonistic perspective in understanding what makes marketing powerful, desirable, and unique. It also argues that, without a recognition of the centrality of control to what marketing does, a full understanding of marketing’s place in society will be always out of reach.