Transformative Advertising Research: Reimagining the Future of Advertising

The 50th anniversary of the Journal of Advertising launch is an opportune moment to dialogue among the past, present, and future and offer a fruitful vision for the possibilities of advertising. In this paper, we advance a new subfield that we call transformative advertising research (TAR). TAR examines problems and opportunities across the advertising system with the goal of transforming it toward better outcomes, namely cultivating individual, institutional, and societal well-being. We present a conceptual framework on TAR, informed by institutional theory, that highlights the transformational insights revealed in the intersections and interactions between institutional actors at the micro level, advertising institutions at the meso level, and sociocultural forces at the macro level and the resulting well-being outcomes. To illustrate our framework, we focus on a long-standing topical issue within advertising—gender inequality—that holds significant implications for well-being. In conceptualizing advertising as an institution, (1) we propose a new subfield of advertising we name TAR and (2) we present a framework that reveals the system complexities within the advertising ecosystem and allows for a clear vision of potential transformative outcomes, which (3) can guide and inspire scholars and practitioners with directions to engage in social change.