ORCID Profile
0000-0003-2404-641X
Current Organisation
RMIT University
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Historical Studies | Australian History (excl. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander History) | Consumption and Everyday Life | Communication and Media Studies not elsewhere classified | Globalisation and Culture |
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Expanding Knowledge in History and Archaeology | Consumption | Wholesale and Retail Trade | Expanding Knowledge in Language, Communication and Culture
Related Links
Publications
The construction of Australia Day: a study of public relations as ‘new cultural intermediaries’
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-03-2013
Blueprints for the Future: Advertising and the Home
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2014
Off the Books: Oral History and Transnational Advertising Agencies in Southeast Asia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 30-01-2019
DOI: 10.1017/ESO.2018.107
Abstract: This article reflects on the contribution that oral history can make to business historians by examining the Australian advertising professionals’ experiences of working in Southeast Asia from the 1960s to the 1980s. Interviews with these advertising professionals examined the processes by which they entered the region as well as their experiences of working there. In addition to documenting information and insights that are altogether absent from official records, the interviews offer an opportunity to reflect on broader social, cultural, and economic contexts and the degree to which they impacted on interviewees’ actions. By illustrating the transmission of business cultures through advertising agency networks as well as their impact on global business, this article also demonstrates oral history’s capacity to connect personal experience with business history.
Truth in Advertising: The Impossible Dream?
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-2006
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X0611900112
Abstract: For an industry that deals with the public perception of images, it perhaps ironic that advertising itself has long suffered from a severe image problem. The industry has long been equated with exaggerations, distortions and falsities. Critics and the industry alike have looked to the possibility of truth in advertising to redeem its reputation. The discourse of truth in advertising that occurred in the advertising industry ranks during the early twentieth century provides a revealing insight into the way that the ‘magic system’ of advertising has been constructed. Reaching a high point in the 1920s, concerns about truth would recede over the course of the 1930s and 1940s as the industry moved to embrace new forms of technology. By examining the rise and fall of this discourse, this paper reveals the advertising industry's fervent desire to improve advertising's status whilst illustrating the way in which technological developments not only affected the industry, but also its ability to ever be completely truthful.
Advertising Lives: Memoir and Career
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2014
Coke and The Coca-Cola Company
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 07-12-2020
Chunder goes forth: Humor, advertising, and the Australian nation in the bulletin during World War I
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Date: 2015
Opening for business: A comparison of J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erickson’s entries into the Australian market
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 15-08-2016
DOI: 10.1108/JHRM-12-2014-0035
Abstract: This paper aims to provide an insight into the emergence of the global advertising industry by undertaking a comparison of the respective entries of the advertising agencies J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erickson into the Australian market in the 1930s and 1960s. This study undertakes a comparison of the strategies and initiatives implemented by J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erickson as documented in the agencies’ respective archival collections as well as industry press reports. The similarities between J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erickson reveal that globalisation of the advertising industry was both driven and restricted in even parts by profitability and pragmatism. The experiences of the J. Walter Thompson and McCann Erickson agencies in establishing their Australian operations offer a unique, long-term view of the emergence and development of a global advertising industry.
Office space: Australian advertising agencies in the twentieth century
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 20-08-2018
Abstract: This paper aims to examine the evolution of the advertising agency and its offices in Australia over the course of the twentieth century. Historical accounts of advertising have paid scant attention to agencies’ attempts to organise and manage their offices, as well as the impact that these efforts has had on the work undertaken by agency staff. This study draws on reports in the advertising industry press, as well as oral history testimony to examine the agencies’ changing layout and interior design. It identifies three distinct periods, which reveal the impact of modernist and post-industrialist ideas on the organisation and functions of the advertising agency’s offices and, indeed, their impact on the agency’s outputs. This examination of the office space within the agency setting not only offers a new perspective of the advertising agency business as a whole but also demonstrates the importance of material culture for historians working across management, business and marketing fields. The originality of this study lies in its use of material culture and space as a tool for examining management history and understanding its impact on everyday work practices. By charting the changes reflected in advertising agency office spaces, this study also offers a unique overview of the ways that management practices have historically interacted with business work spaces.
An ‘outside-in’ PR history: Identifying the role of PR in history, culture and sociology
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 28-03-2012
Abstract: Historical, social and cultural understanding of public relations in Australia is limited because most histories of PR examine practices specifically labelled ‘public relations’ and almost all study PR from ‘inside out’ – that is, from the subjective perspective of PR practitioners. This article reports an alternative approach to PR history which applies historical analysis of major events, icons, and institutions in society to identify the methods of their construction politically, culturally and discursively. This article specifically reports historical and critical analysis of the creation and celebration of Australia’s national day, Australia Day from soon after the British flag was hoisted in Sydney on 26 January 1788 to the sophisticated pageantry of the nation’s bicentenary in 1988 and its entry to the new millennium in 2000. This research challenges a ‘blind spot’ in social science and humanities disciplines in relation to public relations by showing that the practices of PR are deeply embedded in the social and cultural construction of societies. This study confirms Taylor and Kent’s claim that “all nation building c aigns include large communication components that are essentially public relations c aigns”.
The global campaign against tobacco
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 25-08-2022
Changing the Face of Advertising: Australia’s Advertising Industry in the Early Days of Television
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 11-2006
DOI: 10.1177/1329878X0612100114
Abstract: Long before Australia's first commercial television broadcasts in 1956, advertising agencies and advertisers had been preparing themselves for what they believed would be the greatest ever selling medium. The creation of a new outlet for advertisements was not the industry's sole cause of excitement. Having dominated commercial radio, the advertising industry looked forward to extending its influence. These dreams, however, were only partially fulfilled. While television enabled the industry to broadcast its commercial messages in a more effective way, legislation prevented it from controlling television in the way that it had with radio. This would have a significant impact on the relationship between the two industries. By examining television's impact on the advertising industry, this paper demonstrates that the medium of TV not only altered the face of advertising it also caused a fundamental change in the structure and operation of Australia's advertising industry.
The Routledge Companion to Marketing History
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 29-01-2016
The quest for legitimacy: The growth and development of the Australian advertising industry, 1900-1969
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-2004
Selling or Buying American Dreams? Americanization and Australia’s Interwar Advertising Industry
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-2005
Creating a creative industry: Australian advertising agencies in the 1960s–1970s
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 02-07-2016
Celebration of Another Nation?: Australia’s Bicentenary in Britain
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 07-2008
Seeing the Bigger Picture: Why Market Research History Matters?
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-01-2022
DOI: 10.1177/14707853211067701
Abstract: Market researchers and the market research industry more generally have paid little attention to the history of market research. This inattention to the past has not only resulted in a significant gap in our knowledge of market research and history more generally, it has also obscured the benefits that can be derived from an understanding of history. Using letters, reports and survey contained in the Ashby Research Service archive at the State Library of New South Wales in Australia, this article seeks to illustrate the benefits to be derived from undertaking historical research on market research and those involved in the market research business. By examining some of the cultural factors informing market research business practices and the ways that the marketing and the media industries have interacted with market researchers, this article not only takes step in addressing the gap in our knowledge of market research history, it also demonstrates the relevance and importance of market research history for business and marketing historians and, indeed, market research scholars and practitioners.
Supporting Banks, Liberals and the Australian Way’: The Freelands and the 1949 Election
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2005
DOI: 10.2104/HA050084
Testing the Market: The Ashby Research Service and Australian Consolidated Press
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 17-03-2019
Cousins once removed?
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 30-01-2019
DOI: 10.1017/ESO.2018.111
Abstract: This article analyses the evolving relationship between mainstream oral history and business oral history, and explores the ways in which the latter has been deployed and discussed in business history journals. Business historians have, until relatively recently, tended to utilize oral history as a means to fill gaps in the archive. Interviews thus made important contributions to business history studies, but much of their potential remained untapped. Recent critical engagement with issues of methodology and interpretation has seen a discernible shift in the ways that oral history is being understood by business historians. This article outlines this evolution and the possibilities that it raises for both business and oral history.
Ignoble but lucrative: Quacks, ads, & regulation
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-2012
Dealing with Depression: Australia’s Advertising Industry in the 1930s
Publisher: Project MUSE
Date: 2007
Relocating Centers and Peripheries: Transnational Advertising Agencies and Singapore in the 1950s and 1960s
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 25-02-2015
DOI: 10.1017/ESO.2014.4
A Matter of Trust: The Ashby Research Service and the Business of Market Research
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 13-10-2020
DOI: 10.1111/AEHR.12183
Upholding whose values? Australia’s advertising standards bodies, 1974-2009
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 27-04-2012
DOI: 10.1108/17557501211224458
Abstract: This paper seeks to develop a clearer understanding of the operations and decisions made by Australian advertising standards bodies, the Advertising Standards Council and its successor, the Advertising Standards Board. It also seeks to identify whose interests have been served by these advertising standards organisations – those of the public or those of the advertising industry. Using annual reports and reports in mainstream press outlets, this paper compares the two advertising standards bodies, their respective organisational structures, and their decisions, in order to identify the key issues that have confronted Australia's advertising regulation bodies. In addition to demonstrating the fundamental similarities between the Advertising Standards Council and the Advertising Standards Board, this paper raises serious questions about self‐regulation and the way that it serves the advertising industry's interests ahead of the public interest. This is the first long‐term comparative survey of the operations, activities and decisions of the Advertising Standards Council and the Advertising Standards Board that also reveals the fundamental shortcomings of the current advertising standards codes.
The Latvians in Sydney
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 05-03-2008
DOI: 10.5130/SJ.V1I1.628
Abstract: People of various ethnic backgrounds who left the regions that comprise modern-day Latvia have long been in Sydney. The two major inflows of ethnic Latvians into Sydney occurred in the aftermath of the 1905 revolution in Tsarist Russia and then in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The organisation and activities of Latvians in Sydney reflect the changing nature of the local community as well as Latvia’s changing political situation.
A Slow Coming of Age: Advertising and the Little Boy from Manly
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2001
Learning to say g'day to the world: The development of Australia's marketable image in the 1980s
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 06-01-2010
“Anyhow … Where d’yer get it?”: Ockerdom in Adland Australia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2007
Old debts: The unsung relationship between Australia’s film and advertising industries
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2008
DOI: 10.1386/SAC.2.1.33_1
Chunder Goes Forth: Humor, Advertising, and the Australian Nation in the Bulletin during World War I
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US
Date: 2015
Advertising
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 23-05-2008
DOI: 10.5130/SJ.V1I2.629
Abstract: Sydney is Australia’s advertising capital and the relationship between the city and the advertising industry stretches back to the earliest years of European settlement. Advertising helped propel commercial activity in Sydney and the advertising industry has been no less active in shaping Sydney, illuminating the city’s skyline and streetscape, and influencing the lives of all Sydneysiders – from suburban consumers to esteemed artists. Moreover, advertising has promoted the city itself as a must-see destination for tourists or a backdrop for the latest blockbuster film.
'Differences ... in dealing with the Australian public': Australia as a foreign market in the 1920s
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2010
From global to social: Digital communication and the future of globalisation and advertising
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 14-07-2017
An ‘outside-in’ PR history: Identifying the role of PR in history, culture and sociology
Publisher: University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)
Date: 28-03-2012
Abstract: Historical, social and cultural understanding of public relations in Australia is limited because most histories of PR examine practices specifically labelled ‘public relations’ and almost all study PR from ‘inside out’ – that is, from the subjective perspective of PR practitioners. This article reports an alternative approach to PR history which applies historical analysis of major events, icons, and institutions in society to identify the methods of their construction politically, culturally and discursively. This article specifically reports historical and critical analysis of the creation and celebration of Australia’s national day, Australia Day from soon after the British flag was hoisted in Sydney on 26 January 1788 to the sophisticated pageantry of the nation’s bicentenary in 1988 and its entry to the new millennium in 2000. This research challenges a ‘blind spot’ in social science and humanities disciplines in relation to public relations by showing that the practices of PR are deeply embedded in the social and cultural construction of societies. This study confirms Taylor and Kent’s claim that “all nation building c aigns include large communication components that are essentially public relations c aigns”.
Torch songs to modernity: ghost signs as emblems of the urban soul
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 05-08-2016
Culture and the multinational advertising agency: the rise and fall of Mojo-MDA, 1964-1991
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 27-06-2019
DOI: 10.1108/JHRM-10-2018-0048
Abstract: This paper aims to trace the emergence, rise and eventual fall of Mojo-MDA. Established as a creative consultancy in 1975, Mojo embarked on an ambitious growth strategy that would see it emerge as Australia’s first multinational agency. By examining the agency’s trajectory over the 1970s and 1980s, this paper revisits the story of an Australian agency with boundless confidence to develop a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic role played by corporate culture in the agency's fortunes. This study uses reports and features published in the Australian advertising trade press, along with other first-hand accounts, including oral history interviews and personal correspondence with former agency staff. By identifying the forces and influences affecting Mojo-MDA’s outlook and operations, this paper demonstrates the important yet paradoxical role that corporate culture plays in both building and undermining an agency’s ambitions and the need for marketing historians to pay closer attention to it. This examination of an agency’s inner machinations over an extended period presents a unique perspective of the ways that advertising agencies operate, as well as the forces that drive and impede them, at both national and global levels. The Mojo-MDA story also illustrates the need for marketing and business historians to pay close attention to corporate culture and the different ways that it affects marketing business and practices.
Nothing to Sell: Australia’s Advertising Industry at War, 1939-1945
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 05-2002
Fighting a Lost Campaign: Austac and Australia’s Advertising Industry
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-2006
Activist Nation: Australia and the 1916 Conscription Referendum
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 09-10-2019
‘But nobody talks to accountants’: the growing influence of the finance department in the advertising agency
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 12-12-2020
Speaking of research
Publisher: Emerald
Date: 07-02-2018
DOI: 10.1108/JHRM-02-2017-0007
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore the value of oral history for marketing historians and provide case studies from projects in the Australian context to demonstrate its utility. These case studies are framed within a theme of market research and its historical development in two industries: advertising and retail property. This study examines oral histories from two marketing history projects. The first, a study of the advertising industry, examines the globalisation of the advertising agency in Australia over the period spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, through 120 interviews. The second, a history of the retail property industry in Australia, included 25 interviews with executives from Australia’s largest retail property firms whose careers spanned from the mid-1960s through to the present day. The research demonstrates that oral histories provide a valuable entry port through which histories of marketing, shifts in approaches to market research and changing attitudes within industries can be examined. Interviews provided insights into firm culture and practices demonstrated the variability of in idual approaches within firms and across industries created a record of the ways that market research has been conducted over time and revealed the ways that some experienced operators continued to rely on traditional practices despite technological advances in research methods. Despite their ubiquity, both the advertising and retail property industries in Australia have received limited scholarly attention. Recent scholarship is redressing this gap, but more needs to be understood about the inner workings of firms in an historical context. Oral histories provide an avenue for developing such understandings. The paper also contributes to broader debates about the role of oral history in business and marketing history.
Manufacturing Identities: Industrial Representations of Nationhood in Press Advertisements, 1900 – 1969
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Date: 2003
DOI: 10.2307/27515899
A tale of two advertising cities: Sydney suits v. Melbourne creatives
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-04-2015
Emptor Australis: Constructing the Australian Consumer in Early Twentieth Century Advertising Literature
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 11-2005
Related Organisations
Related Funding Activities
Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP120100777
Start Date: 03-2012
End Date: 12-2016
Amount: $444,000.00
Summary: Globalising the magic system: a history of advertising industry practices in Australia 1959-1989. Some 40,000 Australians are employed in advertising or related industries. But who are they and how do they come up with the campaigns we see on television? Given the impact of globalisation on the industry, exactly how Australian is the Australian advertising industry.
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityDiscovery Projects - Grant ID: DP220100943
Start Date: 03-2022
End Date: 03-2025
Amount: $146,381.00
Summary: Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affectin .... Shop Talk: Department Stores, Shoppers and Consumer Capitalism, 1945-2025. This project aims to provide a deeper understanding of shopping and its significance in everyday Australian life by using oral history interviews with shoppers, workers and managers who have engaged with department stores since 1945. This project expects to produce the first history of the country’s post-war department stores. Expected outcomes include new, more nuanced perspectives of shopping and the challenges affecting the retail sector via a range of publications, international collaborations, and an archive of oral history recordings. This should provide significant benefits to researchers examining the retail sector, to Australians working in retail, and to ordinary Australians, whose stories will be placed on the historical record. Read more Read less
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity