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Academy of Marketing conference 2015 – the magic of marketing

In marketing, as on Yeats’ leafy island, magic abounds. The magic of marketing has been attended to directly in terms of a proposed magical worldview (Brown, 2009) to all manner of other remarkable phenomena. From the fantastical storytelling of advertising that routinely plunders our repository of folk tales (Dégh & Vazsonyi, 1979), to the extraordinary experiences of consumers seeking an escape from their mundane lives (Arnould & Price, 1993). From the contagious incantations of marketing musicscapes (Roberts, 2014), to that special ‘soft’ quality of the brand that is brand identity (Biel, 1997). Indeed, truly inspirational marketing brings brands to life through the magic of imagination and mythmaking. The Academy of Marketing Conference 2015: The Magic in Marketing, hosted by the University of Limerick, sought to explore those dimensions of our craft that are magical; from the cabbalistic to the fantastical, and from the astonishing to the preternatural. We encouraged contributions that addressed the mystical, marvellous and miraculous in marketing theory and practice. The final papers selected for this special issue represent an integration of these core themes across a range of different contexts. AM2015 received over 480 submissions across 12 different tracks. Reflecting the increasing international nature of this conference, papers were received from authors located in more than 40 different countries. Our thanks go to all the reviewers and track chairs without whose help the conference would not have been the success that it was. With so many papers submitted, competition for inclusion in this special issue was high. A total of 27 papers were long listed, and after a rigorous review process, we are pleased to present the final 11 papers for this special conference issue of the Journal of Marketing Management. In the first paper, Heath and Heath adopt a critical marketing perspective to assess the roles of fantastical themes in the stories of marketing practitioners, scholars and consumers. They argue that the promotion of the ideology of consumption that characterises contemporary society relies heavily on the use of stories of enchantment. For their part scholars also use magical themes in their critiques or defences of the practice of marketing. Even consumers mobilise fantasy and myth in pursuing consumptionoriented identity projects and in making sense of and managing their everyday consumption experiences. JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT, 2016 VOL. 32, NOS. 9–10, 807–810 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2016.1193974