Keeping Advertising from Going Down in History - Unfairly

History is inevitably only what historians write. Whether complete and valid or not, tomorrow's history of today will express the perceptions of the sequence of historians who reflect on today's events from ever increasing distance.

Keeping Advertising from Going Down in History – Unfairly

Richard W. PollayUniversity of British Columbia

Advertising is judged by some to have helped turn nations of religious villagers of modest means and ambitions into envious materialists, eroding social cohesion in the process [1,2]. While materialistic motivations may have spurred their economic productivity, it may also induce greater self-indulgence, distrust of authority, crime, or even greater civil unrest and revolutionary fervor [3]. While this may seem far-fetched to marketing and advertising practitioners worrying about the prosaic pragmatics of brand share, this type of concern is the...

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