Key Concepts in Advertising: Social Tableaux

Key Concepts in Advertising articles provide a short lecture on an important concept to help understand advertising's place in society, culture, history, and the economy. This article focuses on the concept of social tableaux, which is defined and applied extensively in historian Roland Marchand's book Advertising the American Dream. A series of short videos provide background information about Marchand's book, define social tableaux, and encourage viewers to apply the concept in their own creation and analysis of advertisements. In the end, viewers learn that social tableaux allow the unpacking of the idealized social and material relations captured through advertisements' representations of people, places, products, and services at a given moment in time. A recommended reading list provides other sources to learn more about the concept and its associated topics.