Pop Brands

Students are going to love this book. Employing ethnographic approaches and critical questioning, Pop Brands considers how corporations like Coca-Cola, Jack Daniels, Adidas and Virgin partner with young people, helping music fans to feel empowered even as those fans actively engage in producing the culture of branding that threatens the very authenticity and freedom young people would most like to seek out and celebrate. (Lynn Schofield Clark, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director, Estlow International Center for Journalism & New Media, Department of Media, Film, & Journalism Studies, University of Denver) Nicholas Carahs Pop Brands is an exemplar of recent work bringing cultural studies sensibilities and methods to our understanding of cultural industries and commercialism. By combining a variety of methods including ethnographies of branded music events and interviews with fans and music professionals, Carah very smartly engages the complexities of popular music production, promotion and fandom in an age of integrated marketing and global-scale corporate branding. (Matt McAllister, Penn State University) Students are going to love this book. Employing ethnographic approaches and critical questioning, Pop Brands considers how corporations like Coca-Cola, Jack Daniels, Adidas and Virgin partner with young people, helping music fans to feel empowered even as those fans actively engage in producing the culture of branding that threatens the very authenticity and freedom young people would most like to seek out and celebrate. (Lynn Schofield Clark, Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, and Director, Estlow International Center for Journalism & New Media, Department of Media, Film, & Journalism Studies, University of Denver) Nicholas Carahs Pop Brands is an exemplar of recent work bringing cultural studies sensibilities and methods to our understanding of cultural industries and commercialism. By combining a variety of methods including ethnographies of branded music events and interviews with fans and music professionals, Carah very smartly engages the complexities of popular music production, promotion and fandom in an age of integrated marketing and global-scale corporate branding. (Matt McAllister, Penn State University)

The Author: Nicholas Carah is a Lecturer in Communication at the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland, Australia. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Queensland in 2008. His research examines the interrelationship between corporate brands, popular culture, and interactive media.