Legal Marketing & PR

Marshall McLuhan, What Are You Doin??

By Mark Merenda

    Marketing lives somewhere at the intersection of commerce and art, science and inspiration. The first person who made me understand that, some 40 years ago, was Andy Warhol. The second was Marshall McLuhan and
his wonderful book "The Mechanical Bride." It was published in 1951, and came out in paperback in 1967, which is shortly before I read it. it now sells for $35. The price on the cover of my thoroughly underlined edition is $2.95, which gives you some idea of just how long it has been since I bought my copy. I recently pulled it off my bookshelf and was amazed again about how insightful McLuhan had been in this collection of ruminations on advertisements, book covers, news stories, movie posters, and cartoons. Even a table of contents from a 1947 Reader’s Digest (or as McLuhan calls it Pollyanna Digest). In aiming at our subconscious, the advertising of any given era reveals much about the society that spawned it. Looking at the images and reading the copy, is a bit like looking through an old photo album and thinking, my God, what was I thinking with that hairstyle?

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Full post as published by Mark Merenda’s SmartBlog on August 13, 2007 (boomark / email).