Sensory Regimes in TV Marketing: Boardwalk Empire’s Chromatic Enhancement and Digital Aesthetics

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Providing a contribution to the growing research on the aesthetics of televisual promotion, this paper offers an empirical investigation of the multisensory appeal of HBO’s marketing of Boardwalk Empire, taking it as an example of a hyperaesthetics strategy of audience capture. To this end, the paper looks at the trailers for the show’s first season, as well as to its titles sequence and character posters, arguing that their chromatic enhancement, obtained in colour grading, invites a sensorial response, also contributing to confer a distinctive identity to its channel. In this light, hyperaesthetics is taken to stand for both an innovative approach to digital design, as maintained by Peter Lunenfeld, and as a marketing strategy of sensorial mobilisation, as theorised by David Howes. A look at HBO’s partnership with Canadian Club Whisky demonstrates the multisensory appeal of Boardwalk Empire’s campaign and its goal to brand the show as a lifestyle event. Even before we consume the actual show, this promotional strategy aims at embedding us within a semiotic and affective chain that prompts a variety of effects. The sensation of unqualified expectation and even excitement that is thus generated points toward marketing’s anticipative logic whereby hyperaesthetics generates affective attachment to as-yet unaired productions.
Original languageEnglish
JournalTransformations - Journal of Media & Culture
Issue number22
Number of pages16
ISSN1444-3775
Publication statusPublished - 2012

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Effect of rotational speed and double-sided welding in friction stir–welded dissimilar joints of aluminum alloy and steel
  2. Sapere aude: Bildung und Wissen im Widerstreit?
  3. A game theoretic model of the Northwestern European electricity market-market power and the environment
  4. Harnessing the biodiversity value of Central and Eastern European farmland
  5. Comment on "Emergence and fate of cyclic volatile polydimethylsiloxanes (D4, D5) in municipal waste streams
  6. Art effectuating social change
  7. Earth education
  8. Kamerun: Das greise Regime Biya vor dem Ende
  9. Home ranges of Sand Lizards, Lacerta agilis (Squamata: Sauria: Lacertidae), along railway tracks
  10. Die Entwicklung des Emotionswissens und der behavioralen Selbstregulation bei Vorschulkindern mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund
  11. Lesen durch Hören
  12. Ecosystem decay exacerbates biodiversity loss with habitat loss
  13. Der Nutzen von Scoring-Modellen bei der Bilanzauswertung kleiner mittelständischer Unternehmen
  14. Cultural Heritage and the Rejuvenation of Spa Towns
  15. Entrepreneurship
  16. The artistic spirit of cities
  17. Continuous vs Thrice-Daily Ceftazidime for Elective Intravenous Antipseudomonal Therapy in Cystic Fibrosis
  18. Diversity matters: the influence of gender diversity on the environmental orientation of entrepreneurial ventures
  19. Der/Die schlaflose Cyborg
  20. Wie Merkels „asymmetrische Demobilisierung“ zu knacken ist
  21. Kulturwissenschaften Digital
  22. Healthy Principals - Healthy Schools?
  23. Es wird teuer
  24. Die Tischgesellschaft
  25. Was ist Stakeholder Value?
  26. Klassengrößen wirken
  27. Democracy and the global spread of progressive taxes
  28. Human–nature connectedness as a ‘treatment’ for pro-environmental behavior