Brand Hollywood: Selling Entertainment in a Global Media Age

Abstract

While branding can be traced back to the ancient Greeks and has been widely used as a marketing strategy across the twentieth century, it appears to have taken a particularly central and significant role within western societies in the past twenty-five years. It has become a key cultural force for contemporary society, whether in the branding of political parties, the ubiquity of consumer brands such as Nike and Coca-Cola, the increasing protection given to brands through changes to trademark law, or the monetary value attributed to brands within the financial markets. It is hardly surprising, then, that we have seen the publication of a number of cultural and sociological studies of branding. Routledge is at the forefront of this scholarship with an impressive list of books examining the emergence and sociocultural function of branding.1 Paul Grainge's Brand Hollywood is the most recent addition to the list, and is the first major study to examine branding in relation to the specific characteristics of the US film (and television) industry.