‘Come and get a taste of normal’: Advertising, consumerism and the Coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic continues to present unique challenges to governments and organisations around the world, but one sector has incorporated COVID-19 into its core mission with relative ease: advertisers have acknowledged the pandemic while continuing to draw on notions of ‘normality’ to activate our desire to consume. As the UK’s series of lockdowns have come to an end, we look back over more than a year of unusual advertising and consider how the pandemic has changed approaches to marketing and the shape of consumer culture in ways connected to ideas about what constitutes ‘normal’ life. Discussions of the relationship between the pandemic and consumerism have included critiques of the prioritising of profit over people, and conceptualisations of Coronavirus as a brand itself, but the politics of notions of ‘normality’ promoted by consumer culture demand closer consideration. This article complements existing studies and debates by examining the tensions, contradictions and morally neutral positions revealed by the advertising response to the coronavirus disease pandemic. Through an analysis of UK advertising campaigns launched during and with reference to the pandemic, this work explores key themes and strategies, including their connection to power dynamics concerning race, gender, class and capitalism. We suggest advertising during crises may offer the opportunity to critique larger dynamics and trends of consumerism, including narrow notions of the defining features of ‘everyday’ life.

White and gendered aesthetics and attitudes of #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking

“…In dialogue with such work, I contend that contemporary popular representations of baking include the content clustered around #pandemicbaking and #quarantinebaking, which connect to gendered, classed and racialised notions and experiences of work, leisure, and homemaking. The fraught relationship between food, consumption and power relations (Reese, 2019) is visible in the societal valorisation of depictions and discourses of middle-class domesticity during the COVID-19 crisis (Sobande and Klein, 2022), which contrasts with moralising and shaming responses to the domestic lives of working-class people, including individuals whose paid work could not be done from home during the pandemic. Namely, media and marketing representations of experiences and environments associated with the lives and values of white middle-class families are crucial to numerous advertising and branding campaigns across sectors which range from fashion retail to the food industry.…”

The hypervisibility and discourses of ‘wokeness’ in digital culture

“…Indeed, the visibility of ‘wokeness’ as a cultural shift has exploded precisely as advertising and branding professionals have become increasingly keen to assuage consumer concerns about the values of corporations (Kanai and Gill, 2021; Rosa-Salas and Sobande, 2022; Sobande and Klein, 2022). For Mogaji and Nguyen (2021: 4), ‘[p]eople are more aware, brands are “woke” to the prospects of commercialization and consumers are more demanding’.…”