Higher Seminar in Statecraft and Strategic Communication | Michael Funke

Abstract: The paper analyzes the Swedish Advertisers’ Association role in the institutional development of Swedish international advertising 1955-1972. The study finds that a new post-war paradigm of marketing that focused on a consumer-oriented brand ideology enabled marketing executives in the Swedish Advertisers’ Association to develop a novel discourse on international advertising in Sweden. This was in turn institutionalized within a national network on export promotion, which included business and various state actors. The process entailed using a revamped form of national branding, in which older concepts of “Swedish quality” were replaced with more “emotional” and normative ideas of modern Sweden. This was the start of a longer process of national brand development in a commercial setting that would advance further in tandem with the internationalization and corporatization of major Swedish companies in the late post-war era. The institutionalization process was supported by a corporatist system typical of smaller export dependent post-war European economies. The study points to the importance of understanding how advertising concepts are embedded within other economic, political, and cultural systems than in those they originated in, and how this contributes to a heterogenous implementation of similar ideas and practices. It also illustrates how members can utilize their association to institutionalize a new discourse on marketing and network with other actors to enhance the use and reputation of its ideas and practices. The study contributes to the literature by making salient how the interaction between discourse, marketing associations and other collective actors propelled the institutionalization of international advertising within a specific national context.

Bio: Michael Funke is researcher at the Institute of Economic and Business History at Stockholm School of Economics and associated to the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University. His subject of research includes institutional and regulatory development in the market, as well as business history. At the moment, his studies are focused on the regulatory development of market self-regulation in the advertising sector, and the business history of creative industries. He has previously had a career as a writer and editor in journalism, and as collaboration manager at Uppsala University Innovation Office, facilitating projects between the humanities and social sciences and non-academic partners.