The organizational benefits of digital technologies are increasingly contrasted with negative societal consequences. Such tensions are contradictory, persistent and interrelated, suggesting paradoxes. Yet, we lack insight into how such apparent paradoxes are constructed and to what effect. This empirical paper draws upon interviews with thirty-nine responsibility managers to unpack how paradoxes are discursively (re)constructed and resolved as a rhetoric of ‘balance’ that ensures identification with organizational, familial and societal interests. We also reveal how such ‘false balance’ sustains and legitimizes organizational activity by displacing responsibilities onto distant ‘others’ through temporal (futurizing), spatial (externalizing) and level (magnifying / individualizing) rhetorical devices. In revealing the process of paradox construction and resolution as ‘balance’ in the context of digitalization and its unanticipated outcomes, we join conversations into new organizational responsibilities in the digital economy, with implications for theory and practice.

In this paper we attempt to create an understanding of fabular anthropomorphism of particular relevance to marketing communication.Through an examination of the religious, anthropological, rhetorical and marketing literature on personification and anthropomorphism we arrive at six principles that characterise the use of animals as symbols in instructional storytelling. We then examine the applicability of these principles by investigating the way in which meerkats have recently been used in popular culture and marketing communication. We find that our proposed definition of a marketing-orientated fabular anthropomorphism is broadly applicable and is helpful in understanding why certain anthropomorphic depictions will resonate with audiences and others will not. Summary statement of contributionThis research proposes a set of principles that help us to understand the way in which fabular instantiations of anthropomorphism can be successfully used in marketing communication. It presents a case study that demonstrates the applicability of the findings.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of rhetorical and narrative strategies in the foundational text of Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic. The author argues that the success of Vargo and Lusch's (2004a) paper in establishing the foundational premises of the new S-D Logic is greatly aided by their persuasive use of classical rhetorical techniques of word choice, metaphor, and framing as well as the careful construction of a narrative that is guaranteed to be attractive to their audience. Design/methodology/approach – The author uses techniques of rhetorical and narrative analysis to closely examine some of the principle argument in the foundational text of S-D Logic. Findings – The author finds that Vargo and Lusch (2004a) make use of a powerful narrative of redemption in which marketing is seen to be saved from a potentially destructive internal struggle by a revelatory shift in perspective. The choice of key framing terms such as “logic”, “evolution”, and “paradigm” is found to have an important rhetorical effect in supporting this persuasive narrative and helping to cast it in a scientifically “inevitable” light. Originality/value – The findings speak to the vital role played in academic marketing, and in the successful promulgation of a new movement within the academic marketing community, of persuasive language and narrative.

Calls for the abandonment of manipulative and controlling marketing communication practices have become increasingly common in relationship-and service-orientated marketing theories. Scholars supporting such calls agree that the pursuit of communicative control should be replaced by a dialogical, negotiative orientation. However, there has been little thought given to how exactly dialogical marketing communication can practically reconcile itself with the issue of persuasion. In this article, I argue that a critical appraisal of the techniques of the clinical hypnotist and therapist Milton Erickson can provide marketers with a constructive framework with which to refashion their communicative roles and practices around the notion of a therapeutic, rhetorically grounded, marketing dialogue in which marketing stakeholders interweave dynamic narratives of value, which have the power to change other stakeholders and themselves. I also use the comparison with service-orientated marketing literature to point out certain weaknesses in the Ericksonian conception of the therapist/client dyad.

Purpose -This paper aims to investigate the significance of academic accusations of magical practice towards marketing communication, asking what might motivate such accusations and what meaning they have for marketing's relationship with persuasion. Design/methodology/approach -The paper examines the ways in which four distinguished scholars (Raymond Williams, Judith Williamson, Sut Jhally, and Stephen Brown) have accused marketing of either sharing its transformative power with the social effect of magic or in some way offering a metaphorical parallel with the manner in which magic works to cast a glamour over the "reality" of the world. The paper outlines a rhetorical understanding of magic and uses it to construct a reading of these accusations which focuses around a discomfort with the pursuit of persuasion. The analysis is then extended to contemporary marketing theory, particularly the communicative aspects of service-dominant logic and the broader service perspective. Findings -The argument is advanced that understandings of marketing as "magical" are largely dependent upon a prejudicial view of the role of persuasion and rhetorical technique in mass media marketing communication. The paper demonstrates that this view of persuasion has also become manifest in the contemporary service perspective and limits the "dialogue" approach to marketing communication.Originality/value -The paper warns against the counter-productive demonisation of persuasion in contemporary marketing theory and seeks to highlight the manner in which accusations of magic have been used to deflect clear debate around the place of persuasion in marketing communication.

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