Institutional Logics in Advertising – Social Economy vs. Cultural Hubs
Advertising is a common practice within any social hub, and its messages might as a result often be overlooked or not properly received by the people that come in contact with the respective hubs. In this post, we present the results of an analysis based on advertising material collected from Reciproc and Aethernative, two well-known hubs from Timișoara, by which we have aimed to discover how their individual profiles are reflected through advertising.
Reciproc defines itself as a coffee shop, bar and grocery store, but also as a place where the passion for taste and quality meets solidarity and the local impact, with the global stake of a fair economy. On the other hand, Aethernative defines itself mainly as a pub or coffee shop, but also as a performance art theatre. Both are located on Mărășești Street, Timișoara, a few feet away from each other.
The most important reason why we have chosen these two particular hubs for our analysis is that Reciproc belongs to the field of social economy from Timișoara, while Aethernative is not part of this field, but rather perceived as a cultural hub. Moreover, from our previous interactions with Reciproc an Aethernative, we noticed that both have considerable amounts of advertising material displayed within their premises. The purpose of our analysis was to examine the way in which the belief systems that guide the activity of the two actors, here also termed as institutional logics, are reflected in the advertising material displayed within Reciproc and Aethernative (as social economy vs. cultural hubs), and to observe the similarities and differences between them. This post presents our most important findings.
We visited Reciproc and Aethernative on two occasions, once in late December and once in early January, in order to see if any of the displayed pieces of advertising material had been changed in the meantime. No change has been noted, although we might also attribute this to the lack of activity during holiday season. The categories of advertising and visual material that we decided to focus on were posters, stickers, menu boards and artwork.
In order to be able to associate them with the belief systems of the two actors, we established five categories of logics: “fair trade”, “culture”, “environmental solidarity”, “human solidarity” and “anti-corruption”. We have done so using an inductive approach, after coming into contact with the collected pieces of advertising material. The units that we chose to analyze were words, phrases and images contained in the pieces of advertising material. Under the form of counted occurrences of each logic, our results looked as follows:
Our results have shown that the main logic guiding the activity of Reciproc is the logic of “fair trade”, which did not come as a surprise given our past interaction with the actor, and as one might have also deduced from its own description. In the case of Aethernative, the main logic identified was the logic of “culture”, followed shortly by “human solidarity”. We have thus confirmed the fact that the profiles of the two hubs (social economy/cultural) are, indeed, quite different from each other.
However, it is important to note that the results also highlighted a similarity between the two actors with regards to one logic, namely “environmental solidarity”, which appeared to hold a significant position within the belief systems of both Reciproc and Aethernative. Another common result was that no unit that could be linked with the institutional logic of “insertion” was identified in either of the two cases – a particularly relevant result as this type of logic is a key attribute of top-down social economy in Romania.
