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Simon Cowell, the impresario behind The X Factor, a popular television talent show, has often been compared to P.T. Barnum, the legendary nineteenth century showman. This paper aims to examine the alleged parallels in detail and attempts to assess this “Barnum reborn” argument.

Putative parallels between the impresarios are considered under the aegis of two long‐standing, if contentious, historical “theories”: time's cycle and the great man thesis.

Seven broad similarities between the showmen are identified: vulgarity, hyperbole, rivalry, publicity, duplicity, liminality and history. In each case, the arguments pro and con are explored, as is humanity's propensity to personify.

In accordance with the iconic literary critic Harold Bloom, who “strikes texts together to seek if they spark”, this paper strikes two celebrated showmen together to generate historical sparks.

This paper aims to explore some of the strategies and issues associated with writing historical research to meet the demand for social “relevance” and to appeal, and be accessible to, a broader audience of readers.

The paper uses Brown and Hackley as a foil for identifying the key differences between traditional academic writing and writing to get noticed. These differences are then analyzed to identify the issues for academic historians.

The paper highlights distinct uses of rhetoric, metaphor and theory in Brown and Hackley that make their paper stand out from typical academic history papers and raises concerns about this style of research and writing.

The paper identifies and opens the debate on some key issues in historical writing and explanation that arise when academic historians take seriously the demand to seek greater contemporary relevance and public support for their research.

In “There's a scholar born every minute”, the author aims to explain the background to Brown and Hackley's co‐authored paper, “The greatest showman on earth”, and respond to the comments of Richardson and Tadajewski.

The major concerns of the authors' critics are addressed, after a fashion. The author also attempts to account for their unorthodox approach to historical writing.

The authors are innocent of every charge levelled by Richardson and Tadajewski. Except one, which the author hides in a footnote hoping no one will read it.

The rejoinder is all style, no substance. So there!

This paper aims to use Brown and Hackley's contribution to the Journal of Historical Research in Marketing as a springboard for further discussion. It seeks to argue that we can put aside their suggestion that they intend to “stress test the contention that Cowell is Barnum reborn”. This is not what they are trying to do at all. Their point is more elemental. They aim to provoke readers to think critically about the production of marketing histories and histories of marketing thought.

This paper adopts a viewpoint approach.

Given that Brown and Hackley arguably intend to encourage a response to their work and this is a response to their paper means they have been successful in their efforts. They have secured readers for their scholarship in an academic marketplace where many papers go unread, are never cited and whose only worldly “impact” is in terms of the carbon footprint they leave. This said, this paper takes Brown and Hackley seriously, engages with their ideas and offers a variety of ways we can think beyond their “thematic analysis”.

The paper situates Brown and Hackley's account within the wider sphere of marketing thought.

Dark marketing is the “the application or adaptation of marketing principles and practices to domains of death, destruction and the ostensibly reprehensible”. This paper examines the nature, character and extent of dark marketing, noting that it is made manifest in manifold shapes and forms.

Primarily a conceptual paper, this article includes several mini case studies – exemplars, rather – of dark marketing's many and varied expressions.

The paper considers the scale and scope of dark marketing, and endeavours to classify both. Dark marketing is discernible at micro, meso and macro scales. Its scope consists of four shades or degrees of darkness, entitled light dark marketing, slight dark marketing, quite dark marketing and night dark marketing. An evolutionary trend in the direction of darkness is also noted.

The paper is a think piece, not an empirical analysis. It is, therefore, a first step rather than a definitive statement.

Practitioners and academics are inclined to regard marketing in a positive light, as a force for the good. Crusading journalists and certain social scientists see it as the spawn of the devil. This article argues that the dark and light aspects of marketing are inextricably intertwined.

The paper provides food for thought, a markedly different way of thinking about marketing and its place in the world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the widely‐held belief that marketing holds customers in thrall and persuades them to buy things they otherwise would not.

Rather than adopt a scientific approach to the mesmeric marketing phenomenon, it embraces an artistic perspective, focusing on three crucial cultural “moments” in the emergence of the great manipulator mindset.

Whereas innumerable scientific experiments show that subliminal advertising does not work, except in certain circumstances, the cultural approach demonstrates that subliminals are, in fact, enormously successful. Regardless of scientific evidence to the contrary, most consumers believe that subliminal advertising not only works but is an established marketing practice.

The paper suggests that marketers should place less reliance on the scientific paradigm. Marketing science has its place – a very important place – but not everything can be captured in a simultaneous equation or linear regression model. Cultural components analysis is just as significant as principal components analysis.

Received wisdom concerning subliminal advertising is challenged and creatively reinterpreted from a supra‐science standpoint.