Speaking in NYC at May 8/9 “Blowing Up The Brand” event

[NOTE: I had the dates off by one day on this earlier; it is now correct.]

I guess that headline sort of says this already but, uh, I’m going to be in New York on May 7 as part of an event at New York University called Blowing Up The Brand: Critical Perspectives  on Promotional Paradigms. You should come! Your friends should come! Especially if you and your friends are among the millions who haven’t yet found the right opportunity to purchase a copy of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are. It’ll be for sale and if you buy one I’ll even sign it, if you go in for that sort of thing.

More on the conference momentarily, but I want to point out up front: It is free and open to the public — but apparently because it’s at NYU you must register/RSVP, details here. Space is limited and a chunk is reserved for NYU students and faculty, so if you’re interested, don’t sleep.

Okay so more about the conference:

Creative cities, PR nations, celebrity diplomacy, Hype Machine, branded philanthropy, YouTube identities….
These are both symptoms and effects of what Andrew Wernick termed “promotional culture”: the extension of promotional discourses, practices and performances into virtually all areas of public life.

What is at stake in these contemporary promotional paradigms?…

The goal of this two-day conference is to develop a set of productive critical perspectives on promotion in relation to contemporary culture. We seek to assemble creative and interdisciplinary frameworks to identify common themes and disjunctures inherent to these forms of communication. At issue is the changing role of the consumer-citizen-user in contemporary life.

Sounds interesting, eh?

So I’m doing a public talk/Q&A Friday night May 8. Then May 9 a variety of actual academics will present on a variety of topics around this theme. Check out all the details here.

Tell your friends, post it, Twitter about it, mention it to your Facebook contacts, and everything else. Thanks so much.

(By the way, I’ve added a new box to the column at left about “Places I Will Be.”)