From Intuition to Judgment: The Performative Role of Objects in Advertising Design

Special Report: A Performative Turn? Revisiting What Words and Things "Do"
By Laure Gaertner
English

To further our understanding of the process of ideation in advertising - that is, the modalities of the emergence of campaign ideas - this article uses an ethnographic study of an advertising agency to examine the affordances of this activity. Considering that both individuals and things have potential agency in action, the author analyses the performative role of things in advertising creation. She shows that objects can convey intuitions which are tested in conversations and internal dialogues where, in turn, other types of objects perform the activity. The ideation process is made up of representations, conventions, interactions between individuals, and different types of objects, and takes place in a circular temporal dynamic.

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