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Relationships are the most crucial aspect of my work. And relationships with editors can be difficult because they are very, very special people. We are managers. They are artists.

This organizational preference is reinforced by the fact that demand is uncertain. But, in addition to the market uncertainty epitomised by the nobody knows property of creative industries in general, there is aesthetic uncertainty arising from the fact that copywriters, creative directors, fashion designers, photographers, makeup artists, and so on care about their work. As a result, they can rarely—if ever—be pinned down beforehand about the aesthetic choices that go into the design of a dress or the composition of a fashion photograph.²⁶ As fashion designer, Angela Missoni, once put it: “I start with the palette―but I have no recipe, it just comes.”²⁷ This aesthetic uncertainty (what Caves calls the art for art’s sake property) stems in large part from the often unanticipated transformations of a concept as it takes on two- or three-dimensional form and is then re-used with its own internal transformations (Summer’s peacock feather skirt had morphed into a coq feather cape).Just how an inner vision will materialise in a product partly explains the nobody knows property, but it also adds to its perceived magical quality.

Third, putting together an advertising campaign, film, music concert, or fashion collection requires diverse skills on the part of account executives, market researchers, directors, actors, designers, musicians, sound recorders, producers, layout artists, hairdressers, and so on. This is known as the motley crew property, and who is recruited for what purpose often depends on personnel availability within a desirable pecking order because of time constraints (the time flies property). From freelance professional to complex organisation, the advertising, fashion, film, music and other creative industries require all kinds of different expertise. Yet, because their products must all attain a certain level of proficiency and conformance, creative activity has what Caves calls a “multiplicative production” function: with every step along the way to completion, all the necessary personnel must come together and do their necessary work. This involves considerable negotiation among the different creative magicians about how best to persuade their audience to believe in the efficacy of their magical practices.

Fourth, since it is known that success is not guaranteed, and since fashion and beauty tend to have several dimensions along which people make their comparisons, their technologies of enchantment have infinite variety. This refers both to “the universe of possibilities from which the artist chooses,” as well as to “the array of actual creative products” available to consumers. It guarantees the success of at least some magical practices, even if all others fail, and so sustains belief in the system of magic as a whole.

Fifth, because of the uncertainty of both demand and supply (in terms of the aesthetic choices made, combinations of personnel, and so on), and because cultural products differ in the quality of skills they display, “creative worlds” in the advertising, fashion, film, and other industries negotiate a ranking of its personnel: designers, photographers, models, hair stylists, makeup artists, associated celebrities, brands, and so on, for fashion. Known as A List/B List, this ranking of talent highlights one style of magical practice over another (as well as accompanying economic rewards for services rendered), on the one hand, and, on the other, is used to overcome uncertainty of demand. This uncertainty ensures the rapid turnover of peripheral magical personnel, such as celebrities and models.

In sum, although the argument presented here is based primarily on content analysis of advertisements, rather than on ethnography, the idea of a “magical system” can and should be used in the field, to find out how informants themselves regard their practices. In other words, this theoretical paper opens up possibilities for new directions in empirical business situations. After all, if many forms of business are little more than “fields of magical systems,” are we as anthropologists then able to bring a sense of reality to business people and organizations who are mesmerised by the search for “profit” and “growth” at the expense of the environment and the future of mankind?

Brian Moeran is Professor of Business Anthropology at the Copenhagen Business School and the University of Hong Kong. He is also founding Editor of the Open Access Journal of Business Anthropology (www.cbs.dk/jba), and has written extensively on advertising, art marketing, ceramics, fashion magazines, the publishing industry, and smell marketing, primarily in Japan.

2014 Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference Proceedings, ISSN 1559-8918. © American Anthropological Association and Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference, some rights reserved.

NOTES

¹ Dion and Arnould (2011: 509), however, make a case for the transmission of charisma in retail luxury brands by means of kinship and fictive kinship.

² In this respect, a strong argument can be made for a parallel between shaman and fashion designer who creates a “muse” (generally in the form of a model, actress, or other celebrity), a kind of “guardian angel” (the shaman’s emekhet)who then provides the designer with peculiar qualities and powers. See, for example, Harlech (2009).

³ Witness fashion photographer Erica Lennard’s description (2007: 528) of her work and its transformative ability: “maybe the magic of photography for me is how light can, at moments, transform reality. I don’t want to lose that magic and be in a studio.”

⁴ Celebrity memorabilia epitomise contagious magic at work: witness the price of $350,000 paid at auction in 2009 for the white glove worn by Michael Jackson the first time he performed his “moon dance” in 1983. http://www.today.com/id/34084928/ns/today-today_entertainment/t/michael-jackson-glove-sells/#.Uy_mBaOwrcs

⁵ Baudrillard (1996-7) points out that every advertising image is a legend, whose meaning is further narrowed by the addition of discourse, in the form of a subtitle which constitutes a second legend.

⁶ Revlon Overtime Shadow.

⁷ Both Cover Girl skincare products.

⁸ For Malinowski, too, spells―with their “magical order of expressing” (1922: 432)―were by far the most important constituents of magic (1922: 403).

⁹ Revlon Beyond Natural.

¹⁰ Wolf (1981: 108) also points out that advertisements “have used a mysterious language, the way Catholicism uses Latin, Judaism Hebrew, and Masons secret passwords: as a prestigious Logos that confers magic power on the originators of it.”

¹¹ Lancôme, First Blush.

¹² Glamour derives from the old Scottish word, gramarye, once meaning magic, enchantment or spell, and now transformed into (bombshell, drop-dead, film star, or just added) glamour.

¹³ Gell, 1992, p. 57.

¹⁴ Marie Claire USA, April 2001.

¹⁵ Vogue UK, October 2000.

¹⁶ “The cheat’s guide to good skin.” Marie Claire UK, April 1997.

¹⁷ Vogue UK, April 1993.

¹⁸ Vogue UK, September 2001.

¹⁹ Advertisement for SK-II by Selfridges. In Vogue UK, May 2001.

²⁰ Elle UK, January 2001.

²¹ Marie Claire USA, January 1997.

²² Marie Claire USA, January 2001.

²³ Elle USA, April 1998.

²⁴ Advertisement for Transform Medical Group, Marie Claire UK, June 2000.

²⁵ Vogue UK, October 2001.

²⁶ This is a major difficulty facing every ad agency involved in a client presentation. As a result, participants study every facial, gestural, non-verbal and verbal reaction exhibited by members of the client company in an attempt to “read” which of their creative ideas they like, and which not.

²⁷ Suzy Menkes, “Face-off: womanly allure vs. sexy styles.” International Herald Tribune, Friday, February 25, 2005, p. 12.

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