Religious marketing has risen substantially over the past two decades due to a confluence of societal changes, notably the freedom to determine one’s faith and the ubiquity of mass media with its concomitant advertising. Specifically, branding—a marketing tool whereby a product is given an identity beyond its physical attributes or services—is now being employed by an increasing number of Churches. Two recent branding campaigns—one by the Church of Scientology, the other by the United Methodist Church—provide case studies of how Churches are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their use of marketing. Beyond simply promoting their products, these campaigns use branding to solve multiple marketing issues, from improving a sagging public reputation to re-positioning traditional denominations.

This Author Meets Critics conversation focuses on Joseph Turow's book The Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet (Yale University Press, 2021). Turow met with marketing and advertising specialists to discuss the following topics: the voice intelligence industry; the concepts of seductive surveillance, spiral of personalization, habituation, and resignation; surveillance capitalism; what voice data reveal and don't reveal about people; the institutionalization of voice enabled technologies; inaccurate predictions based on biometric data; investigating patent filings to understand how marketers imagine their work and the future; how voice technologies empower and disempower; opt-in personalization; building awareness of voice technologies; obscurity around the voice intelligence industry's business model; data sharing; why female voices are used frequently in voice-enabled technologies; challenges of doing industry-based research; companies' hesitancy to share data and collaborate on voice-related projects; the responsibility of voice scientists to intervene in the use of their research by marketers; and advice for readers of the book.

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American universities have significantly increased their marketing expenditures over the last decade. The high cost of education, reductions in government funding, and precipitous declines in the traditional college-aged population (18-21 year olds) are some of the key factors forcing universities to be more aggressive with the promotional techniques they use to attract prospective students. In this competitive marketplace, schools promote the attributes they believe will be most compelling to high schoolers and their parents, including academics, sports, campus life, and careers. Tied into this last factor is the promotion of internship opportunities. While some of these hands-on experiences lead to jobs, there are no guarantees that attending college and engaging in an internship will translate into fulltime employment. Using content analysis and auto-ethnography, I examine how universities use internships to market higher education, and argue that this is a particularly pernicious practice within the area of media studies.