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This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.

Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.

In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.

Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.

The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.

While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.

This paper seeks to report from a qualitative study of the global television concept Pop Idol with the aim of evaluating children's and teenagers' involvement as consumers, both in their roles in purchasing goods and services, and being targets for well‐designed promotional activities.

Based on content analysis and interviews with children, the paper analyses the dynamics between marketing strategies, program content and child audiences.

The paper discusses how young consumers distinguish between two “regimes of truth” in the television concept: first the creation of a superstar, and second the broader phenomenon that Pop Idol represents, which is mainly about creating consumers through participation.

The paper contributes to acknowledging children's perspectives and childhood as not only valuable but necessary to inform consumer research, since children are deeply and unavoidably enmeshed in consumption in fundamental ways.

American Horror Story, with its strong narrative arcs, interesting characters and high production values, is one of the most important horror TV series in the post-millennial years. This chapter will focus on the four roles played by Oscar-winning actress, Jessica Lange in the first four series.

While in common English-language parlance speaking of “online celebrities” encourages the conflation of new forms of famousness with existing discourses on mass media stardom and fandom, the Mandarin Chinese term wanghong, a shorthand term for wangluo hongren (literally “person popular on the internet”), frames the enticing shores of online celebrity through the peculiar lexical domain of a grassroots popularity. The figure of the wanghong has in recent years accompanied the development of social media platforms in China, becoming a profitable profession, an inspirational role model, a morally condemnable by-product of internet economies, and in general a widely debated social phenomenon among local users. Drawing on interviews with more and less successful local online celebrities and discussions with their audiences, this chapter offers an up-to-date portrayal of the various forms of wanghong currently vying for attention on Chinese social media platforms, illustrating how popularity is crafted along with narratives of professionalism and economic aspirations intimately connected to the sociotechnical contexts of contemporary China.

Purpose – This chapter observes the dynamics between various aspects of current pop music production, particularly in respect to digital culture, and the preservation and access challenges faced by a wealth of analogue sound artefacts. I argue for the need to consider the activity of ‘fringe piracy’ – that is online music distribution that specialises in out-of-print analogue editions and bootleg trading – as worthy of civic merit: as participatory heritage recovery, preservation and dissemination.

Methodology – I narrate and interpret a series of contexts pertaining to deep changes in popular music production and consumption in the last decade. I will do so primarily by focusing on online activity, while unravelling its relationships with traditional modes of music production, dissemination and consumption (i.e. the music industry as defined by vinyl records, cassettes and CDs throughout the second half of the Twentieth Century). I further contrast the mechanics of ‘grey areas’ of online music access against mainstream web platforms such as iTunes. The author has performed extensive participant observation throughout various online platforms in the last decade, particularly the ones mentioned along the chapter. Additional content has been developed as a consequence of both online and offline discussions, as well as conference panels and symposia (Codebits, 2010; South By South West, 2011; Syracuse University London, 2011).

Findings – I argue that the current, wide field of possibilities for music production and dissemination stands in radical contrast with an ongoing and strengthened orthodoxy on the part of media labels and distributors. I further argue that, in contrast with this orthodoxy that stems from consumer culture, an exponential availability of recording and editing tools is encouraging a discreet civic mission of digital transcription, and subsequent historical preservation, of analogue artefacts that would otherwise face the prospect of fading into obscurity and possible definitive loss. This, however, seems to be occurring in gradual oblivion of contextual placement, but rather in line with a culture of interchangeable sampling of a purely sensorial and/or affective nature.

Originality – Most debates on the subject of music piracy tend to focus on a polarisation of the underlying issues, while mainly addressing its legal and political aspects. There is a need to unravel the cultural, aesthetic and civic parameters that emerge from a phenomenon that is, ultimately, anything but polarised: instead, one finds it is paved with complexity and ambivalence.

This paper examines the concept of incremental improved performance and applies it to the field of executive coaching. The effectiveness of coaching as a management development tool is assessed by means of a survey involving 25 senior executives of blue‐chip organisations. The paper emphasises that the higher up the skill hierarchy one goes, the more important marginal improvements in performance become.

ONE OF THE endearing myths of librarianship is that there are posts in certain systems which guarantee their holders future greatness. In earlier days the myth said that one had only to serve in certain libraries to be able to jump into a desired post without trouble. There has been some truth in it; many years ago it appeared that all large‐city librarians had served in Croydon, or Bolton; later it was certainly true that the top jobs were held by people who had been trained in Sheffield, Leeds or Westminster. Until quite recently the number of chiefs who were ex‐Sheffield was very high indeed, and of particular posts, deputy librarian at Westminster or Chief Assistant at Hull seemed to be a way of being groomed for stardom. Not only public libraries produce this phenomenon; those who have been deputy librarian at Leeds University have also very often made their mark.

This paper aims to deconstruct the validation process for contemporary art with a fresh take on the components and terminology of this process, here referred to as the art machine.

Existing literature is analysed and key theoretical aspects combined to support the theory that an art machine exists that may process contemporary art for legitimation, sustainability and market success.

Roles played by art professionals and institutions within what is pioneered in this paper as the art machine frequently overlap. Opportunities for success are maximised when and if artists, art schools, galleries, critics, auction houses, museums and collectors manage to work in unison towards the common goal of optimal symbolic and financial value for the contemporary art market.

A clear and intelligible deconstruction of the art machine's interacting components should enable interested agents in both established and emerging art markets to better operate mechanisms towards short‐term marketing objectives and long‐term sustainability within the highly competitive and fluid art environment.

Existing literature recognises layered spheres of activity that may combine for success in an art market seeking increasing symbolic and financial value and sustainability. This article innovatively pictures the dynamic, interlocking mechanisms in this on‐going, one‐way process of turning inconspicuous raw materials into a valued end‐product: this is the art machine.