BUILT VISIBILITY: ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE STRATEGIC CYCLE OF COMMUNICATION

Abstract

This chapter examines advertising photography as a strategic, semiotic, and discursive practice situated within a communicational cycle that runs from the creative brief through post-campaign analysis. Drawing on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates contributions from Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Lucia Santaella, Georges Péninou, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, Jean Baudrillard, Marshall McLuhan, David Aaker, Les Binet, Peter Field, Stuart Hall, Vilém Flusser, Walter Benjamin, Laura Mulvey, Norman Fairclough, André Bazin, Roger Silverstone, Byron Sharp, Bernd Schmitt, Rosser Reeves, and Marc Gobé, the chapter maps the constitutive stages of the advertising process—briefing, pre-production, the photographic session, text-image articulation, post-production, media distribution, and impact measurement- to show how each phase contributes to the production of meaning and to the persuasive force of the visual message. The analysis argues that the advertising image is not a mere decorative supplement, but an enunciative form that organizes perception, directs interpretation, and helps construct the symbolic value of the brand. It further considers the ethical implications of digital post-production, the challenges of transmedia circulation, and the transformations introduced by artificial intelligence in contemporary image production, concluding that advertising photography depends on the coherent integration of all dimensions of the strategic cycle.