Celebrity endorsement research in the marketing literature has been over-reliant on an exogenous notion of celebrity as something produced outside of the marketing system, from which meanings can be transferred to brands within the marketing system. In fact, marketing has been deeply implicated in the constitution of celebrity since the dawn of Western consumer culture in the early part of the twentieth century. In the era of media convergence there is a pressing need for researchers in marketing to re-evaluate the meta-assumptions around celebrity and its relation to marketing in the light of marketing's culturally constitutive role.

This research makes a new contribution to alcohol policy practice and theory by demonstrating that transgression of officially sanctioned norms and values is a key component of the sub-and counter cultural drinking practices of some groups of young consumers. Therefore, policy messages that proscribe these drinking practices with moral force are likely to be subverted and rendered counter-productive. The qualitative analysis draws on critical geography and literary theories of the carnivalesque to delineate three categories of transgression: transgressions of space and place, transgressions of the body, and transgressions of the social order. Implications for alcohol policy are discussed.

Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractIn this paper we attempt to understand the dynamic underlying the success of SimonCowell's X Factor TV talent show which, along with its many brand extensions, epitomises the new marketing priorities in the media convergence era. We seek insights not from formal theories of marketing management but in the myth and magic of Cowell's enchanted TV presence as the mystical authority, the trickster figure, conducting a mass--mediated experience of Turner's (1969) 'existential liminality'. Detached from formal rites of passage, this simulation of liminal ritual temporarily, and symbolically, subverts formal social barriers and opens up the possibility of transformed identity for the contestants. We suggest that TV viewers partake both vicariously and actually in this marketized experience of existential liminality. We review literary as well as anthropological antecedents to the media role Cowell personifies and we critique and extend previous applications of Turner's work in marketing and consumption to illustrate its continued resonance in ordinary, as well as extraordinary, consumption phenomena.