Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World [Hardcover]

Joseph Turow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226817490 | ISBN-13: 978-0226817491 | Publication Date: May 15, 1997 | Edition: 1

Combining shrewd analysis of contemporary practices with a historical perspective, Breaking Up America traces the momentous shift that began in the mid-1970s when advertisers rejected mass marketing in favor of more aggressive target marketing. Turow shows how advertisers exploit differences between consumers based on income, age, gender, race, marital status, ethnicity, and lifesyles.

"An important book for anyone wanting insight into the advertising and media worlds of today. In plain English, Joe Turow explains not only why our television set is on, but what we are watching. The frightening part is that we are being watched as we do it."—Larry King

"Provocative, sweeping and well made . . . Turow draws an efficient portrait of a marketing complex determined to replace the 'society-making media' that had dominated for most of this century with 'segment-making media' that could zero in on the demographic and psychodemographic corners of our 260-million-person consumer marketplace."—Randall Rothenberg, Atlantic Monthly

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Now that Americans are dividing up into militias and staking out a few acres of inviolable homeland, perhaps it's time to ask how the country came to be so deeply fragmented. Joseph Turow points to the ways that the techniques of "target marketing" by advertising agencies exploited and exacerbated existing fissures in U.S. society. Turow is too subtle a thinker to believe that advertising is responsible for the differences between people, but he makes a strong case that the way those differences have been used to distinguish different markets for different products has, simply by defining and presenting various subcultures, furthered those differences. This vicious cycle of targeting and producing target markets is analyzed both historically and politically to show the difficult effects of assuming that Americans are not united, except against each other.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226817490
• ISBN-13: 978-0226817491
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,261,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book rocks., January 28, 1999

By 

D. Tassone "thedom" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Paperback)

Great book. Actually, it was recommended by Amazon as I was unfamiliar with the author, but very interested in the topic. If you are in media, communications or marketing this book analyzes the industry in a very granular way - like looking under the hood. However, Turow does not get so lost in detail, he brings the big picture into focus suggesting the cultural implications of market segmentation, database marketing, media audience packaging and the rise of niche content media like cable TV, magazines and of course the Internet. Transient echoes of Marshall MacLuhan and Tony Shwartz's concept of narcissism. There's passive reference to Peppers & Rodgers concept of image tribes - what happens when everyone's information and entertainment is personalized or filtered by agents, i.e. media effectively throwing up a mirror? Great for marketers, but it does have major socio-political implications. Turow has done a great deal of primary research interviewing people from all aspects of the business. 100% all beef.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Book, December 1, 2005

By 

Michael Thomas "mthomas1776" (Logan, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breaking Up America: Advertisers and the New Media World (Paperback)

I recently read this book. It has a great history of the advertising agency. Many of the ways in which the author thinks shed light on the recent history of advertising. A few of the chapters in the second half of the book are outdated now, since it was predicting the future. For instance, the predictions of the internet "newsgroups" will be big for establishing communities of users, could be converted into blogs. The last chapter is good on the tribalism of advertising. I would suggest the first few chapters and the last chapter to anyone who wants to understand what is going on and will continue for the next decade or so as advertising changes to favor the consumer.