Advertising, once seen as 'the official art of capitalist society' is an increasingly commonplace component of a characteristically promotional culture. Iain MacRury's Advertising offers the means to explore and evaluate this transition with an introduction to advertising for the contemporary reader.

Advertising provides a clear and easy guide to a changing cultural and commercial genre. It explores how advertising can be studied as a cultural industry, and as a sign system, and how adverts and the reception of adverts can be considered drawing on approaches from literary criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis and ethnography.

Written in an accessible and interesting style, Advertising is the ideal introductory book for students of media, communication and journalism.

Iain MacRury is Principal Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. His previous publications include The Dynamics of Advertising (co-authored with Barry Richards and Jackie Botterill, 2000) and Buy This Book: Studies in Advertising and Consumption (co-edited with Mica Nava, Andrew Blake and Barry Richards, 1996).