Editorial Introduction

Advertising & Society Quarterly is focused on making connections. The journal continues to assess today’s advertising environment through historical insights and an eye toward future possibilities. Our editorial board and contributors come from many disciplines and backgrounds applying different theoretical and methodological lenses to advertising. By serving as an intellectual hub in the study of advertising’s relationship to society, culture, history, and the economy, ASQ provides a space where advertising is examined from many angles.

The original articles in this issue remind us of advertising’s wide range of influence. Nick Couldry (London School of Economics) and Joseph Turow (University of Pennsylvania) examine how new voice technologies are being used by marketers and advertisers to connect with people. Significant ethical questions arise about the power of such voice-based technologies in everyday life. Matthew McAllister and Greg Eghigian (Penn State University) provide a cultural history of the appearance of UFOs in American advertising during the Cold War era. By taking a close look at advertising’s various representations of an iconic image in American popular culture after WWII, we see cultural connections across time and space. Teresa Tackett (University of Alabama) assesses women’s experiences in advertising agencies and makes a call for critical reflection on ways to better support and respect women’s vital roles in the advertising workplace, which hopefully will help retain more women in the long run. Tackett’s article reminds us that the fight for women’s rights is not over, and that it is an urgently relevant topic for practitioners and scholars to address.

Sharon Griffin (Belhaven University) shares an essay reflecting on her career transition from corporate America to academia. She discusses how and why she wanted to give back her skills and knowledge through university teaching. She shares the challenges and rewards of working within academia after years of corporate work, and offers advice to others on how they might forge their own paths. The journal will feature others’ experiences making the transition from industry to academia in order to emphasize the importance of understanding how bridges between practitioners and professors have been and can be made.

Adding to the journal’s central focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Yvette Bonaparte (North Carolina Central University) interviews Teneshia Jackson Warner, founder and CEO of EGAMI Group, about how to achieve DEI in advertising workplaces and creative work. Bonaparte and Warner also discuss the summer of 2020 as a painful and pivotal moment for EGAMI Group and other agencies and practitioners deeply concerned about multicultural issues in American society. Both reflect on the importance of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to provide Black students opportunities to build community, advance their careers, and make important contributions to fields like advertising and marketing, which have had historical underrepresentation of people of color.

This issue’s Advertising in Popular Culture discussion centers on the 2022 Netflix documentary White Hot: The Rise and Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch and what it reveals about Abercrombie & Fitch’s use of discrimination and exclusion to sell its products and vision of lifestyle branding. A panel of DEI experts dig into the brand’s use of racist, overly sexualized, and often homoerotic imagery in its advertising messages and casting of store employees.¹ All reflect on how far advertising and brands have come as well as how far they still need to go to be truly inclusive.

Two of the most significant topics involving connection are the environment and sustainability. For the latest installment of ASQ’s Author Meets Critics, author Melissa Aronczyk (Rutgers University) talks with fellow scholars about her co-authored book (with Maria Espinoza, Rutgers University) A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism (Oxford University Press, 2021).² Aronczyk shares more about the important role of public relations practitioners to influence Americans’ attention toward environmental issues for over 100 years. The story involves a wide range of individuals, organizations, and industries, but a central lesson is that scholars need to assess public relations professionals for their role as an epistemic community that understood environmental problems and facilitated governmental and industry actions, even if they are not involved in direct...