Looking Outside The Castle: The Corporate Image in Visual Media

While stock photographs have come to saturate media and have been mocked for their clichéd nature, for example where women are pictured laughing alone with salad, a powerful corporation like Getty Images that disseminates commercial imagery globally has sought to challenge these stereotypes by making more politicized images. This article examines one such case, that is, Getty’s Genderblend visual trend, which claims to portray gender identities and relations in ways that are both more inclusive and diverse, harnessing feminist theory as part of its promotion. Taking a multimodal discourse and visual design approach, the article looks at how corporate imagery can be styled as political and, in turn, how a politics of difference itself is shaped in the interests of the ideologies of consumer capitalism.

This paper was a first account of the methodological framework I am trying to develop for the analysis of corporate films. Assuming that corporate films are films “without authors”, different criteria for the definition of units of analysis can be stipulated from the usual criteria of auteur theory. Instead of analysing films in their integrity, or the specific contexts in which they appear, one can assume the broader perspective of “corporate culture” (Hediger, Hoof, Zimmermann), and define a research corpus by the identification of the visual regularities circulating in the corporate communication networks. These visual regularities (or patterns of montage, of space and time editing, of stagings of the body, etc.) work as the aesthetic conditions of possibility for the managing procedures in which films are integrated. By considering these regularities as independent units of analysis, crossing films and companies, and coming from different backgrounds (different areas of knowledge, but also different media) it is possible to write their history, a history completely independent from sponsors’ and institutions’ singular intentions – a history of the visual conditions of possibility for the uses of media by corporations.

Visual sociologists and anthropologists attempting to create representations of social communities and cultural groups inevitably do so within a context of competing cultural images manufactured by the popular mass media. Therefore, in order for social scientists to use visual media effectively they must operate with the fullest possible awareness of popular culture and media practice. This paper argues that it has become the task of visual social scientists and historians to acquire an intimate knowledge, not only of the social subject matter they hope to illustrate, but of the existing media patterns of representation by which that subject has been characterized in news, fiction, advertising and entertainment. For more than ever, the visual media is not just a technical tool for the study and representation of culture but an integral part of the context in which such study takes place.

Journal of Language and Politics, 2016

While stock photographs have come to saturate media and have been mocked for their clichéd nature, for example where women are pictured laughing alone with salad, a powerful corporation like Getty Images that disseminates commercial imagery globally has sought to challenge these stereotypes by making more politicized images. This article examines one such case, that is, Getty’s Genderblend visual trend, which claims to portray gender identities and relations in ways that are both more inclusive and diverse, harnessing feminist theory as part of its promotion. Taking a multimodal discourse and visual design approach, the article looks at how corporate imagery can be styled as political and, in turn, how a politics of difference itself is shaped in the interests of the ideologies of consumer capitalism.

Corporate Reputation Review, 1999

Modern communications are based on a growing density of messages and a growing accessibility of media. Corporate image wars are being fought with increasingly dense and creative symbols and metaphors. The more standardized and`macdonaldized' corporate identities become, the more the PR and marketing specialists are seeking to invent, surprise and shock. In the light of unpredictable twists and transformations in the cultural landscape the author makes three predictions.

In a recent book, The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence, Henry Giroux (1999) analyzes the intentionality of corporate culture-making. That is, the “organization and regulation” (p. 2) of a political economy of signs as driven by a multinational media conglomerate that touches and teaches the everyday lives of children and adults alike. The Mouse that Roared presents a critical yet balanced view of the educational force of “[m]ass-produced images” (p. 2) that inform the “most intimate perceptions and desires” (p. 2) of our daily existence. As Giroux (1999) quite correctly explains, it would be too easy—unfair and unethical—to concoct conspiracy theories portraying Disney as “part of an evil empire incapable of providing joy and pleasure to the millions of kids and adults who visit its theme parks, watch its videos and movies, and buy products from its toy stores” (p. 4). There is an inconsolable temptation to overdetermine and therefore to overstate and simplify the effi- cacy of its role as an active agent of truth construction and a purveyor of a pedagogy of diversion. But there is also another side to gauging the influence of such an enormous media and entertainment company and investigating the way the signs it produces have functioned to educate the cognitive and affective dimensions of subjective agency in the shaping of popular culture. By using a critically balanced approach, Giroux (1999) provides the theoretical and methodological grounding and analytical framework for examining the ethical and moral force of Disney and its rendering of culture as a byproduct of “media culture” without dismissing the complicated value of its “public pedagogy” (p. 4) as a means of constructing a pleasurable escape “from the drudgery of work” (p. 5). The veneer of images Disney spins out simulates reality and stimulates the imagination. It garners responses. Here we must probe beyond the surfaces of corporate signs to show how the logic of representation is thoroughly and deeply infused with traces of ideological force and political power. Disney’s illusion is neither naïve nor innocent. As in all means of media production and representation, there is an element of intentionality involved. However, the creative impetus of the means of representation is neither technical nor technological as much as it is an instance of artifice that is poietic in nature. This extensional production is a neglected or understated aspect of media. It produces something other than the technology of itself, that is not remote controlled by the technology itself. We could not even call it technological because it is an independent production of meaning spawned from its interpretable nature. The medium is the message. Yes. Marshal McLuhan was correct in this observation. But the medium therefore becomes transparent, that is put in the background, forgotten, in its purely instrumental role as the visible reflection of content. A message has to be produced on a fundamental level to justify the conceptual and material resources expended to facilitate the attempt made at communication (Trifonas, 1998). What is the point of representation if not to engage the other in a reciprocal act of meaning making? This obvious fact of communication theory allows us, like Giroux (1999), to turn our attention to how the ideological impetus of this political economy of signification that Disney engages in facilitates the subjective interpretation of its signs. That is, how it is possible for a corporation to use the media as a pedagogical tool or device in order to convince the public of the redeeming cultural value of its idiosyncratic point of view. The effects of this form of expression constitute the real moments of teaching and learning: In short, they are (mis)educative in nature.

The issues related to the specificity of the creation of media images (of organisations and people) are ever more willingly discussed in various contexts, both in the public discourse and in academic papers. The evident diversity of the approaches towards the notion and the features attributed to it triggers public reflection and dialogue among media studies scholars. This includes criteria defining image, the fields in which it appears and the dynamic changes that it undergoes. The book Identity and Image in Media Communication, now being put by us into the hands of readers, is of interdisciplinary nature and presents five various research approaches to the creation of image as a phenomenon closely related to the identity of an organisation. The book reflects various views on image, as encountered in the academic and professional literature on public relations, advertising, business, social and political marketing. Given the broad scope of the phenomenon and its evolutionary character, as well as the need to do further research, the publication does not assume a complementary approach to the discussed matters. Rather, it is designed to be an invitation to a discussion on the changing ways of perceiving the image of people and organisations in the media. Hence, instead of a traditional table of contents, the work is divided into “scenes”, presenting different aspects of the same phenomenon. Such an approach is well justified by the meaning and etymology of the word “scene”, which in theatrical terminology (and in the current language as well) refers to incidents happening at the same place yet requiring a change of setting. The notion of a scene, better than that of an act (as part of the performance), reflects the specificity of the texts contained in the publication. While not making up an integral whole, the texts, nevertheless, reveal the existing potential for changing the perspective when it comes to studying the image and identity of organisations in media messages. The publication adopted the assumption that when analysing image, the specific features of the portrayed object (be it an organisation or a group of persons) have to be taken into account, equally with the intentions and objectives of the communication, the shape of the message itself (including its characteristic features regarding visual identification, the mode of content creation and the way in which persons are presented), as well as the traits of the audience1. For that very reason the book includes the perspective of the organisation, the public tasks met by it and the pursued business objectives (The role of spokesperson as a professional communicator), the firm and product (Can trademark genericisation prove advantageous to the brand? A few remarks on the strategies pursued by Google), specific features of communication-related activities concerning the medium itself (Theatre image on the Internet and new forms of communication with the audience), or the characteristics of the messages and the contemplated audience group (Citizen journalists. A self-portrait from a diachronic perspective and The importance of the media in shaping the image of the elderly as consumers). The multifaceted research approaches presented in the book are intended to fuel a discussion on the changing forms and conditions of image creation and its various faces. They are also supposed to serve as an invitation to develop new scenes of the phenomenon by academic circles.

During the twentieth century, Cable & Wireless was the world’s biggest and most important telegraphy company, employing large numbers of people in stations across the world. Its network of submarine cables and wireless routes circumnavigated the globe, connecting Britain with the Empire. This thesis examines the ways in which the British Empire and modernity shaped Cable & Wireless’ corporate identity in order to understand the historical geography of the relationships between Empire, state, and modernity. Additionally, it investigates the role of design in the Company’s engagement with the discourses of modernity and imperialism. Historical Geography has not paid sufficient attention to the role of companies, in particular technology companies, as institutions of imperialism and instruments of modernity. The study of businesses within Historical Geography is in its infancy, and this thesis will provide a major contribution to this developing field. This thesis takes an interdisciplinary approach that sits at the intersection of three main disciplines: Historical Geography, Design History and Business History. This thesis examines how Cable & Wireless’ identity was produced, transmitted and consumed. This thesis is based on detailed research in Cable &Wireless’ corporate archive at Porthcurno, examining a wide range of visual and textual sources. This pays particular attention to how the Company designed its corporate identity through maps, posters, ephemera, corporate magazines and exhibitions. Drawing upon the conceptualizations of the Empire as a network, it argues that Cable & Wireless’ identity was networked like its submarine cables with decision-making power, money and identity traversing this network. This thesis seeks to place both the company and the concept of corporate identity within a broader historical and artistic context, tracing the development of both the company’s institutional narrative and the corporate uses of visual technologies. No study has been conducted into the corporate identity and visual culture of Cable & Wireless. This thesis not only provides a new dimension to knowledge and understanding of the historical operations of Cable & Wireless, but also makes a substantive contribution to the wider fields of Historical Geography, Business History, Design History and the study of visual culture.