Total Market American: Race, Data, and Advertising [Hardcover]

InTotal Market American, Marcel Rosa-Salas explores how US advertising reinforces racial categories for profit. Through ethnographic research at advertising agencies and key industry events, Rosa-Salas highlights advertising strategy as an influential commercial arena for racial theorizing closely linked to the forms of racial knowledge prevalent in government, academia, and business. Central to her analysis is what she calls the industry’s “racial information system”—a network of practices, personnel, and technologies that institutionalize racial classification as both a predictive and persuasive tool with the aim of influencing consumer behaviors among Hispanic, Asian, and Black Americans. Within this information system, the “general market" is implicitly defined as both white and the average American while other racialized groups are classified as a “multicultural market" that sustains white normativity and monetizes racial difference. Amid demographic shifts, some brands claim to champion racial inclusivity through the rise of “total market” strategies, but Rosa-Salas shows that these techniques actually perpetuate a legacy of racial distinctions in US advertising, including within the classification algorithms that drive digital advertising and surveillance.USMarcel Rosa-Salas examines the US advertising industry to uncover how marketing strategies reinforce racial categorizations to serve profit motives.Marcel Rosa-Salas is an anthropologist and coauthor ofThe Nameplate: Jewelry, Culture, and Identity.“Finally, the book we all need to read to understand racial categories in the twenty-first century. Amid the rise of artificial intelligence and new technologies we barely understand, Marcel Rosa-Salas offers a lucid analysis of the structures behind racial thinking—examining the power of marketing and racial capitalism in shaping how we conceive of ourselves and other Americans.&lCº