Abstract

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING, 2010, 29(2) his effortless archaeology of the idea Netnography: Doing Ethnographic of ‘cool’, from its romantic origins, Research Online through bohemia to the cultural main- Robert V. Kozinets (2010) stream, is worth the cover price alone. Sage, £22.99 The book teems with such intellec- DOI: 10.2501/S026504871020118X tual verve and revelatory insights, but saddles them rather clumsily to the In his classic Admap article on consum- idea of a Chief Cultural Officer as the ers’ advertising literacy, Rod Meadows specialist, high-ranking ‘listener’ for (1983, p. 413) argued that, in order the big corporation. The top-down to contribute to advertising develop- organisational politics of this idea, the ment, research could no longer simply notion that cultural insight belongs ‘drill on the same old spot … it has to to a corporate office, seems strangely be permitted to drill where the adver- out of kilter with the intelligence and tising literate consumer has moved to’. empathy evidenced everywhere else More than a quarter of a century later, in McCracken’s work. consumers’ literacy has moved beyond Nevertheless, McCracken’s bigger interpreting advertisers’ texts to creat- agenda could not be more relevant. ing and sharing their own, often mul- Brands, companies