[ecrea] new book: Marketing, Rhetoric and Control: The Magical Foundations of Marketing Theory

New book:

Marketing, Rhetoric and Control: The Magical Foundations of Marketing Theory
by Chris Miles

Published by Routledge in the new Routledge Studies in Marketing series.
ISBN: 9781138667273

Marketing, Rhetoric and Control investigates the tensions that surround 
the place of persuasion (and, more broadly, control) in marketing. 
Persuasion has variously been seen as an embarrassment to the 
discipline, a target for anti-marketing sentiment, the source of 
marketing’s value in the modern organisation, a mysterious black box 
inside the otherwise rational and logical endeavour of enterprise, and a 
rather insignificant part of the marketing programme. This book argues 
that this multifarious reputation for persuasion within marketing stems 
from the influence of two quite oppositional paradigms – the scientific 
and the magico-rhetorical – that ebb and flow across the discourses of 
its discipline and practice.

Constructing an interface between original, challenging close readings 
of texts from the beginnings of the Western rhetorical tradition and an 
examination of the ways in which marketing has set about describing 
itself, this text argues for a Sophistic interpretation of marketing. 
From this perspective, marketing is understood as providing 
intermediary services to facilitate the continuing exchange of attention 
and regard between firm/client and stakeholders. It seeks to manage and 
direct this exchange through an appreciation of the changing rational 
and irrational motivations of the firm and stakeholders, using these as 
resources for the construction of both planned and improvised persuasive 
interactions in agonistic (or competitive) environments.

This book is aimed primarily at researchers and academics working in the 
fields of marketing, marketing communications, and the related 
disciplines of marketing theory, critical marketing, and digital 
marketing. It will also be of value to marketing academics in business 
schools, including those working in the areas of media and communication 
studies who have an interest in commercial and corporate communication, 
brand use of interactive media, and communication theory.

*An early review*:
"There is nothing "mere" about rhetoric. Long demonised and often 
misrepresented, rhetoric is an ancient artform whose time has come. As 
Miles shows in this exemplary text, rhetoric is central to the modern 
marketing condition. Marketers' seemingly magical ability to cast spells 
of delight, desire, distinction over delirious consumers is rooted in 
their rhetorical acumen. A sagacious review of the principal rhetorical 
traditions and a brilliantly-written reading of marketing principles and 
practices, Miles' book is a rhetorical triumph. In a word, it's magic!" 
-Stephen Brown, Ulster University, United Kingdom

Link to book's page publisher's website:

https://www.routledge.com/Marketing-Rhetoric-and-Control-The-Magical-Foundations-of-Marketing-Theory/Miles/p/book/9781138667273

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 A History of Rhetoric for Marketers

Chapter 2 Marketing Scholarship and Rhetoric

Chapter 3 Control and the Discourse of Marketing Science

Chapter 4 A Rhetorical Approach to Marketing as Exchange

Chapter 5 Marketing and Sophism – a comparison

Chapter 6 Magic, Sympathy, and Language

Chapter 7 The Magical Roots of Rhetoric

Chapter 8 Magical Persuasion and Marketing

Chapter 9 A Sophistic Marketing


Chris Miles is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing & Communication at 
Bournemouth University, UK.


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