Journal of Marketing Management

Vol. 28, Nos. 7–8, July 2012, 784–808

The Don Draper complex: Consuming work,

productive leisure and marketer boundary work
Lauren Gurrieri, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

Abstract Although the identities of brands and consumers have been extensively
explored, less is understood about the subjectivity of marketers themselves.
In the ambiguous and dynamic exchange process of marketing, the articulation
of identities is fundamental to demarcate the activities and actions that take
place between market actors. In recent times, growing importance has been
placed on a different breed of marketer in these exchanges – the cultural
intermediary. For these marketing practitioners, knowledge about the interplay
between culture and economy generates the cultural capital that legitimises their
expertise and value. Yet, this simultaneously gives rise to the difficult navigation
and accomplishment of boundaries between their work and pleasure. Through
a case study of two coolhunting agencies, this paper examines how marketers
discursively perform boundary work in the construction of their identities. The
findings show that, for coolhunters, a tension exists in drawing on discourses of
renegadism and professionalism to construct their identities, resulting in their
engagement in chameleon-like identity work. The research proposes that the
tensions pervading the construction of boundaries and identities for marketers
can be usefully understood through a paradox lens, and offers the metaphor
of the nomad as a theoretical representation of interwoven identity conflicts for
marketers.

Keywords marketing practitioners; identity; boundary work; cultural

intermediaries; coolhunting; discourse analysis

Draper? Who knows anything about that guy? No one’s ever lifted that rock. He
could be Batman for all we know. (Harry Crane, Mad Men, Season 1, Episode 3:
‘Marriage of Figaro’)1
Despite decades of research into their activities, outputs, and relationships, the
subjectivity of marketing practitioners remains little understood. This stands in
contrast to the extensive investigations of brand and consumer identities in extant
marketing research. In recent times, an emerging body of research has turned
to the question of ‘who is the marketer?’, taking an ‘inside view’ of marketing

1 For all quotes from Mad Men, see Weiner (2007).

ISSN 0267-257X print/ISSN 1472-1376 online

© 2012 Westburn Publishers Ltd.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2012.701659
http://www.tandfonline.com
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 785

practitioners (Cook, 2006). For example, Bennett (2010) argues that what ‘makes
a marketer’ is strongly determined by the ways an individual is systematically
managed and controlled by an organisation, pointing to the case of UK marketing
graduates whose identities were shaped through training and development, job and
task design, duties completed, and mentoring. The complex interplay between the
identities of marketers and their practices has been considered by Sender (2004),
who explored how gay marketing professionals reproduce dominant, narrow, and
stereotypical representations of ‘recognisable gayness’ to generate market visibility.
And the ways marketing practitioners use ‘knowledge’ to frame power dynamics
and bolster identities was investigated by Cronin (2004), who found that utility not
validity directed the use of market research by brand managers to manage clients and
garner peer recognition.
Alongside these academic considerations, growing cultural ruminations on the
identity work of marketers have surfaced, as evidenced in television dramas such
as Mad Men, films like Fast Food Nation, and documentaries such as The Merchants
of Cool. In these popular-culture vehicles, the marketer is generally represented in
two ways – a charismatic, charming, yet enigmatic (male) professional or a Kleinian
gold-toothed, greedy, and exploitative force bent on manipulating consumers to
maximise profits. Such representations point to the complexities involved with
interrogating and problematising the marketer. So, why is identity an important issue
for marketers? In the ambiguous and dynamic exchange process of marketing, the
articulation of identities is fundamental to demarcate the activities and actions that
take place between market actors. As the marketing profession has come to involve
both culture and economy, with a growing pool of cultural intermediaries mediating
its fringes, the margins between marketers and consumers have become increasingly
blurred. Consequently, unravelling the identity work of marketers is imperative if we
are to understand better the relationship between production and consumption as it
plays out within the marketplace.
This paper continues the emergent tradition of investigating marketer subjectivity,
exploring how cultural intermediaries discursively construct their identities through
a case study of two coolhunting agencies. Given their liminal status in producer–
consumer relations (Smith Maguire, 2010), the cultural intermediary provides a rich
site to understand how boundary work is performed and inhibited in the construction
of identities for marketers. The paper is structured as follows: first, extant literature
on cultural intermediaries, identity construction, and boundary work is reviewed to
situate the research theoretically. Second, a background of the coolhunting industry is
provided, before the study and chosen methods are outlined. Third, the findings are
presented, illustrating that, for coolhunters, a tension exists in drawing on discourses
of renegadism and professionalism, rendering their identity work chameleon-like.
Fourth, paradox theory is proposed as a lens for understanding the tensions that
pervade the construction of boundaries and identities for marketers. Finally, the
research concludes by offering the metaphor of marketer as nomad to advance future
investigations of marketer subjectivity conceived as complex, multiple, contradictory,
liminal, and shifting. To bring this metaphor to life further, the research proposes
that marketer subjectivity can be considered a ‘Don Draper complex’, inspired
by the fictional protagonist of Mad Men whose work and personal selves become
increasingly inseparable as the series evolves, leading to moments of intense identity
crisis.
786 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

Cultural intermediaries
You are the product. You feeling something. That’s what sells . . . they can’t do
what we do. (Don Draper, Mad Men, Season 2, Episode 1: ‘For Those Who Think
Young’)
Cultural intermediaries have come to play an increasingly important role in
marketing, as the divisions between culture and economy become progressively
nebulous. Comprising a diverse mix of individuals and institutions, cultural
intermediaries represent the ‘new petite bourgeoisie’, a new social class with
distinctive tastes and cultural practices that comprise ‘all the occupations
involving presentation and representation . . . and all the institutions providing
symbolic goods and services’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 359). Cultural intermediaries
mediate the production and consumption of cultural goods and experiences
in the marketplace, promulgate the legitimisation of cultural identities and
lifestyles through consumption practices, circulate meanings throughout the cultural
production system, and mobilise actors to participate in the reproduction of
consumer culture (Featherstone, 1991; Negus, 1992; Venkatesh & Meamber, 2006).
Through these processes, cultural intermediaries’ concern with self-presentation and
the stylisation of life becomes enacted (Nancarrow, Nancarrow, & Page, 2002).
As reflexive producers/consumers, the commercial value of cultural intermediaries
resides in their specialised cultural capital, which is drawn on to proselytise
consumers to take up lifestyles of consumption commensurate with their own
(Soar, 2000). By embodying what they endorse, cultural intermediaries play an
instrumental and highly persuasive role as ‘need merchants’ in the marketplace
(Bourdieu, 1984). This further legitimises the value and status associated with the
goods and experiences with which they are involved, leading some critics to connect
cultural intermediaries with a ‘morality of pleasure as a duty’ (Bourdieu, 1984,
p. 367). Cultural intermediaries in numerous fields have been studied in recent
years, including advertising (Nixon, 2003), brand consulting (Moor, 2008), magazine
publishing ( Crewe, 2003), music (Negus, 1999), retailing (Pettinger, 2004; Wright,
2005), personal training (Smith Maguire, 2008), and fashion (Skov, 2002). Although
extant research of the ‘cultural economy’ (du Gay & Pryke, 2002) has attended to
the practices and mediating roles played by cultural intermediaries, less forthcoming
are examinations of the identity work of cultural intermediaries themselves (Smith
Maguire, 2008). Yet, before turning to this empirical question, what exactly do we
mean by identity?

Identity work and identity construction

I don’t think anyone wants to be one of a hundred colours in a box. (Peggy Olsen,
Mad Men, Season 1, Episode 6: ‘Babylon’)
Identity relates to individuals’ attempts to answer the question ‘who am I?’ through
linguistic and social means (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003). This paper adopts a
discursive approach to identity, whereby identity is conceived as socially constructed
through discourse, as ‘reified views of identity do not help researchers capture
the fluidity of social life’ (Phillips & Hardy, 2002, p. 52). By studying the ways
language is used to shape actors’ understandings of activities and actions, which
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 787

in turn serve to pattern selves, researchers are better able to generate insights
about the dynamic and contested context of marketing exchanges, how relations
construct the marketplace, and the positions of actors within or outside it (Ellis, Jack,
Hopkinson, & O’Reilly, 2010). A discursive view of identity began to be shaped
towards the end of the twentieth century, when identity was conceived in an anti-
essentialist sense as sociocultural and sociohistorical (Benwell & Stockoe, 2006).
During this ‘linguistic turn’, language was conceived as having no essence, serving a
multiplicity of social functions and constructing rather than reflecting or reporting on
social reality (Wittgenstein, 1967). This instability of language rendered the subject
multidimensional and decentred, with discursive identity construction conceived as
a process of ‘becoming’ that is processual, unstable, open, and without beginning or
end (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2004).
In grappling with issues of identity, individuals are conceived as engaged in
‘identity work’, namely the ‘forming, repairing, maintaining, strengthening or
revising constructions that are productive of a precarious sense of coherence and
distinctiveness’ (Alvesson & Willmott, 2002, p. 626). This is achieved through
individuals drawing on memories, desires, and cultural resources they are exposed
to in their everyday lives, namely texts (Alvesson, Ashcraft, & Thomas, 2008).
A discursive perspective frames identity as constituted through the situated practices
of talking and writing (Grant, Hardy, Oswick, & Putnam, 2004). However, embodied
and symbolic expressions also play an important role (Ybema et al., 2009). Through
the production, distribution, and consumption of texts, individuals are able to draw
on different available discourses, with the meanings people produce in interaction
with texts becoming part of their identity projects (Maguire & Hardy, 2006).
By constructing social meanings, discourses create the means through which actors
understand the world and relate to each other (Grant & Hardy, 2004). However,
meanings are not ‘out there’ waiting to be accessed and neutral; rather, the signifying
practice of language structures what meanings can and cannot be articulated by
subjects, thus structuring the social space of actors in particular ways that may
privilege some at the expense of others. Discourse thus provides a constrained set
of identities for actors, who may engage with or resist those identities by drawing on
available discourses in particular ways. The appropriation of certain discourses and
the rejection of others is central to identity construction (Musson & Duberley, 2007).
However, as this may be undertaken in convergent or contradictory ways, it may lead
to a sense of ‘identity struggle’. This is because the vast number of available discourses
may be difficult to ‘choose’ between, rendering identity construction precarious and
ongoing. Such moments of instability are critical in studies of identity as they may
indicate more challenging instances of identity work where one’s sense of self is
threatened (Sveningsson & Alvesson, 2003).
Questions about sameness and difference are integral to studies of identity
(Jenkins, 2004). This ‘discursive positioning’ (Garcia & Hardy, 2007), in which
a separation of self from other in everyday discourse is undertaken, illustrates
how ‘the process by which we come to understand who we are is intimately
connected to notions of who we are not and, by implication, who others are (and
are not)’ (Ybema et al., 2009, p. 306). The construction of arbitrary boundaries
and oppositions in identity construction is often used to cast others as not simply
different but less acceptable (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2004). By locating boundaries
through constructions of sameness and difference, identity construction is framed by
judgements, interests, and emotions and marked by efforts to legitimise selves and
788 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

marginalise others (Ybema et al., 2009). Market actors positioned across discourses,
audiences, and notional boundaries of organisations and marketplaces are more
likely to undergo intense boundary/identity work (Ellis et al., 2010). As boundary
spanners (Wharton, 1999) who mediate firms and consumers and negotiate roles
as both symbolic producers and taste-leading consumers, cultural intermediaries
provide a rich site for examining the complex interplay of boundary work and
identity construction (Smith Maguire 2010). Contributing to the emerging interest in
discourse in marketing (e.g. Ellis & Ybema, 2010), this paper explores the subjectivity
of cultural intermediaries to generate insights about the discursive construction of
boundaries and identities in the marketplace.

Studying coolhunters
To facilitate this investigation, a comparative case study of two Australian coolhunting
agencies was designed. Coolhunters are specialist marketing practitioners that act as
go-betweens in the worlds of culture and business by discovering and interpreting
emerging trends and connecting organisations with consumers who have social
influence or cool knowledge. Coolhunters argue that a brand can only be cool if
individuals considered cool adopt and display it (Gladwell, 1997). Dee Dee Gordon,
regarded as a pioneering coolhunter, claims that coolhunting gives:
. . . information to companies on how they can speak to consumers and make
them interested enough to try a product . . . I work with marketers and people
who can’t leave their offices, and I bring a little of the outside world in to them.
(Rasmusson, 1998, p. 23)
Coolhunting initially did not rely on traditional business techniques, such as market
research, but the prized gut instincts and cultural knowledge of its coolhunters
(Southgate, 2003). A coolhunter needed to be fully abreast of nascent trends within
society, with a typical cultural diet being 10 to 20 CDs per week, dozens of magazines
per month, and going out every evening (Gladwell, 1997). However, this interpretive
approach came to be criticised by business practitioners for its perceived lack of
reliability, investment in gambles that did not always pay off, and inherent subjectivity
(Nancarrow, 2001).
In response, the industry began to focus less on micro-level trend insights and more
on connecting businesses with cool people – conceiving cool to be a ‘trickle down’
phenomenon that segments a market of consumers into innovators, early adopters,
early and late masses, and laggards (Rogers, 1995). Coolhunters claim that once
laggards – or the least cool consumers – finally adopt a trend, they will render it
uncool, whereby the ‘act of discovering what’s cool is what causes cool to move on’
(Gladwell, 1997, p. 79). In bringing cool from the cutting edge to the mainstream,
coolhunting speeds up the cycle of cool, necessitating coolhunters to track down
the next big thing quickly. To facilitate this, coolhunting agencies began to assemble
wide networks of trend-spotters – generally young hipsters who frequent cutting-edge
cultural haunts of major cities, have social influence, and possess desirable levels of
cultural capital. It is their knowledge about cool trends and commodities and ability
to influence less cool consumers that makes these individuals desirable to coolhunters
(Thornton, 1995). In addition to representing a database of cool people that could be
pitched to clients for research purposes and events, trend-spotters are sent out ‘into
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 789

the field’ to the coolest places to scout cool people aged 14–30 and collect lifestyle
information which is compiled into volumes of reports sold to corporate clients for
approximately US$20,000 per year (Grossman, 2003). Coolhunters also use these
networks to generate instant feedback about the ‘cool potential’ of products, gain
insights into the cultural appetites of cool consumers, and use consumers as ‘cultural
sneezers’ who can spread the germs of cool by word of mouth to others. To be
credible, coolhunters must be young and stylish, and to engage the participation of
cool consumers, all marketing techniques must incorporate aesthetics and emphasise
the use of events and promotions over advertising (Nancarrow et al., 2002).
However, cool youths began to regard coolhunters as the ‘enemies of cool’ because
of their intervention in and commodification of the cycle of cool. In response,
coolhunters began to market cool in a less obvious fashion by trying to make
brands appear cool themselves through the use of ‘under the radar’ or stealth
marketing techniques (Goodman, Dretzin, & Goodman, 2001). These techniques
sought to involve a brand fully in the culture of its consumers, for example
hiring cool youths to host/attend parties for a brand or making them brand
ambassadors. This resulted in the coolhunting industry changing in composition.
Whilst previously market research agencies dominated the industry, from the turn
of the century onwards, three additional practices emerged. First, top-of-town
management consulting firms undertook a slightly modified version of coolhunting
that involved rigorous trend analysis for the purpose of forecasting and creating
futurist reports. Second, creative communication consultancies that utilised stealth
marketing and ethnographic techniques arose and began to dominate the industry.
These agencies tended to focus on connecting businesses with cool consumers as
opposed to the identification of trends. Finally, more recently, there has been an
explosion of coolhunting or trend-spotting websites. These websites are not affiliated
with agencies but instead are sustained by networks of webloggers who research
trends and submit them online. Most online trend-spotters contribute purely for the
credibility that comes from spotting a trend first and are not remunerated.
This study focuses on the second type of coolhunter in the guise of two specialist
youth communication agencies located in Melbourne and Sydney. As discourses
cannot be studied directly – only through the texts that constitute them (Phillips
& Hardy, 2002) – a combination of data-collection methods were employed to
generate the texts needed for the discourse analysis. This multifaceted approach
was also informed by Sveningsson and Alvesson’s (2003) claim that identity cannot
be effectively captured in questionnaires or single interviews nor be measured and
counted due to its substantiveness, imprecision, and ambiguity. Multiple in-depth
interviews with coolhunters Dimitri and Adrian,2 both respective heads of their
agencies, and visual data related to the coolhunters’ working lives generated during
observations made over the course of six months are presented to convey a rich,
thick, nuanced, and intensive appreciation of identity work and its complexities.
These understandings are also informed by interviews, informal discussions, and
interactions with junior coolhunters, four collaborative partners, and two clients
of the agencies. Such an approach to data collection facilitates the empirical depth
needed when investigating more developmental concepts (Costas & Fleming, 2009;
Watson, 2008), as is the case with the subjectivity of marketing practitioners. The

2 Pseudonyms.
790 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

corollary of this is that the study does not attempt to generalise more broadly about
the phenomena under investigation.
Having outlined the empirical context, the paper now turns to the research
findings, exploring the discourses drawn on by coolhunters to construct and
legitimise their identities through a combination of symbolic resources and language.
First, coolhunters drew on discourses of renegadism to construct themselves as
corporate rebels, untraditional in conducting both business and their career. They
conveyed themselves as unconventional, individual, entrepreneurial, and ‘having
gone native’ or cool themselves. Second, despite their emphasis on non-conformity,
the coolhunters sought to construct themselves as credible business experts through
discourses of professionalism. They drew heavily on the language and techniques
of management consultancy, associated themselves with traditional professional
symbols, and differentiated themselves from the ‘other’ identity of a trend-spotter.

Discourses of renegadism
Sterling Cooper has more failed artists and intellectuals than the Third Reich.
(Don Draper, Mad Men, Season 1, Episode 4: ‘New Amsterdam’)
In the narratives of their backgrounds, the coolhunters spoke of their disinterest in
pursuing a conventional path. An air of rebellion fuelled their identity work and set
the stage for the pursuit of a career highly juxtaposed to the rational, bureaucratic,
and conformist image of Organisation Man (Whyte, 1956):
Dimitri: Working through university I wasn’t the greatest academic. It all seemed
a little bit unreal to me . . . Couldn’t deal with company x, y, z dealing in widgets.
It made no sense to me.
The coolhunters emphasised the importance of preserving their individuality. This
was achieved through affirming their entrepreneurial spirit and seeking to pave their
own way in the corporate world. In the case of Dimitri, he likened himself to Jerry
Maguire, a film character who claimed autonomy by subverting the dehumanising
effects of institutional power and domination and refusing to construct his identity in
market terms. This involved Dimitri rebelliously exploiting opportunities unrealised
by big business in the nexus of culture and commerce:
Dimitri: One of our friends was skating the world and being paid to do it at the age
of 18/19 but felt that the terms of his agreement weren’t in line with what he was
actually doing for them . . . so we started up a business of sports management,
a marketing business for extreme sports and we did that for a few years and got
some terrific sponsors and travelled the world with the guys and really sort of
lived and breathed the culture and saw there to be more opportunities just than
athlete management . . . so I started to build another sort of business on the side
which was a media vehicle to help promote the industry and the culture – the
fashion, the music, the videos games and movies . . . there was a multi-billion
dollar industry and an opportunity.
The appeal of coolhunting lay in the untraditional approaches to conducting
business that characterised the enterprise. The coolhunters spoke about the specialist,
ambiguous, and intangible nature of their work that was conducted ‘backstage’
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 791

(Goffman, 1959) – it was hard to specify exactly what its ‘macro base’ involved and
how it could be evaluated (Alvesson, 1994). Rather than this uncertainty leading to
identity confusion, the precarious nature of coolhunting was considered a source of
freedom, with its emphasis on nonconformity fostering opportunities for innovative
constructions of identity:
Adrian: We’re a new wave communications agency that doesn’t make anything
so we can just focus on solving the client’s problem, whatever problem that is,
and then once we know what the solution to the problem is, then we’ll work out
how to make it rather than having a pre-determined thing to sell . . . not having
anything – not making anything – liberates us.
The need to possess particular personal characteristics analogous to the perceived
nature of coolhunting work was also emphasised. Coolhunters constructed
themselves as analytical, creative, individual, and self-aware with a relentless hunger
for the new and different that required an almost hedonistic pursuit of life unshackled
by societal constraints. This construction of the coolhunter, reminiscent of Mailer’s
(1957) White Negro or Hipster, was again a stark juxtaposition to the conformist
Organisation Man:
Dimitri: You’ve got to be the sort of person that isn’t taking on too many
responsibilities so you’re quite free in the mind to observe . . . It’s a unique person
that can almost see things that others can’t, so your ability is very analytical, it’s
very creative . . . You can’t just live in Melbourne, Australia and call yourself a
trendhunter or a coolhunter. You need to get out there, you need to experience
everything . . . that’s why I look to commercialise my lifestyle through a business
that plays on sport, music, travel, fashion and entertainment – all fun things.
The perceived necessity of possessing these qualities was reflected in talk about the
recruitment of coolhunters within the agencies. A strong emphasis was placed on the
cultural capital, leisure interests, and lifestyle of a potential employee, namely their
socially defined ‘taste’ (Bourdieu, 1984), as indicative of their potential ‘coolness’.
The coolhunters spoke about the unusual, creative employment they engaged in
throughout the early stages of their careers. These jobs had a bohemian and
unconventional flair and involved immersion in varying cultural realms. For instance,
a newly recruited coolhunter to Dimitri’s agency formerly worked in advertising,
managed bands, and ran the largest free music festival in Melbourne and the largest
short film festival in Australia. This reflected the talk of more senior coolhunters who
emphasised their ‘school of life’ backgrounds as opposed to formal qualifications as
being of primary importance:
Dimitri: It’s very much a lifestyle recruitment process and one that we look to
cultural references . . . it’s important that they’re skilled, absolutely. You know
you’re not going to hire someone just because they look good or they hang out in
the right places, but at the same time that’s not completely unimportant . . . Your
people are number one, so not only do they need to be good at what they do, they
also need to be good at representing your business outside of hours.
In this way, knowledge claims – informed by practices traditionally ascribed as
leisure – played an integral role in the identity work of the coolhunters, providing
a shared language through which they were able to relate to one another and
persuade others of their expertise and legitimacy (Alvesson, 2001; Sender, 2004).
792 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

Reinforcing this, employees of both agencies engaged in ongoing efforts to be

different and stand out amongst the sea of faceless Organisation Men through
acts of resistance that dis-identified them from traditional corporate identities. The
coolhunters peppered their speech with youth vernacular and colloquialisms such as
‘you know’, ‘totally’, ‘freaky’, ‘dial up’, and ‘full on’ and heavily used profanity in
professional contexts. In addition, the coolhunters sought to differentiate themselves
from their ‘mainstream’ corporate clients who they constructed as constitutive
‘others’ (e.g. Meyer, 1996). Dimitri uses the metaphor of a ‘battle’ to characterise his
agency’s relationship with clients, recounting struggles with having to ‘bring people
up to speed with why and how’ because they ‘often did not get it’. By othering
their clients in these ways, the coolhunters sought to reinforce how they were
different from everyday Organisation Men. By communicating their clients’ lack of
understanding about the coolhunting process, the coolhunters moreover sought to
construct themselves as possessing unique competences (Smith Maguire, 2010).
Although coolhunters constructed themselves as corporate rebels endowed with
unique knowledge and skills, the ambiguity of their labour meant their identity work
needed to be carefully managed (Alvesson, 2001). This was undertaken through the
linguistic means discussed, as well as carefully crafted performances accomplished
through the selective consumption and display of symbolic resources (Deighton,
1992). The sign value of the visible world – such as dress and spatial arrangements
– is an important signal of social and cultural standing in contemporary consumer
society (Baudrillard, 1988). For Adrian, being a coolhunter means you have to
be an ‘authentic chameleon’ with a ‘lot of front and a lot of bottle’. To achieve
this, impression management (Goffman, 1959; Schlenker, 1980) was conducted
through identity work that drew on various symbolic resources used in ‘front stage’
encounters (Goffman, 1959) to construct the coolhunters as renegade. First, like
fashion retail assistants (Pettinger, 2004) or personal trainers (Smith Maguire, 2008),
the ‘aesthetic labour’ (Nickson, Warhurst, Witz, & Cullen, 2001) of the coolhunters,
as conveyed through self-presentation, played an important role in presenting an
image that was both ‘correct’ for the agency and conveyed their cool capital. The
coolhunters appeared youthful, attractive, physically fit, and rejected corporate attire
in favour of minimalistic, cutting-edge fashion by labels such as Comme des Garçons,
Ksubi, and Dsquared that also functioned as their evening and weekend wardrobes.
These symbols constructed the coolhunters as stylised dandies – socially desirable,
sartorially astute, possessing ‘good’ taste, individual, and free from the ‘seriousness’
of the trappings of societal and bureaucratic conventions:
Dimitri: A lot of my friends who are lawyers and doctors and stockbrokers and
you know, suit and tie, would consider me to be cool because I get to go to work
in jeans and a blazer and white shoes . . . it’s important to maintain our edge and
credibility.
In resisting the business suit, the coolhunters rejected the meanings it confers, such
as conformity, loyalty, and seriousness (Breward, 1999), reinforcing their rebellion.
For cool consumers, these stylistic cues functioned to construct a sense of solidarity
between themselves and the coolhunters. For clients, they served to construct
the coolhunters as aspirational, youthful, different, and cutting edge – sources of
distinction that reinforced their cultural capital.
Second, the design templates used for reports and presentations to clients
(Figures 1 and 2) constructed the coolhunters as creative, rebellious, cultural
connoisseurs. As Latour (1987, 1993, 1999) notes, within organisations, symbols
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 793

Figure 1 Agency PowerPoint template.

Figure 2 Agency PowerPoint template.

fabricate ‘inscriptions’, which spread ideas that can become translated into accepted
facts. For instance, images and charts in financial reports can inscribe understandings
of success and growth (e.g. David, 2001). The templates featured warm colour
tones, particularly the use of red, functioning to grab attention, signify authority,
and express energy and intensity. Ironic imagery was featured, such as in Figure 1
where an antique golden gilt frame connoted class, taste, and expense as reinforced
by the ‘House of’ emblem. Whilst this imagery drew on desirable characteristics
of the art world, such as creativity and originality, it also sought to construct an
incongruous and playful setting for the presentation of cutting-edge coolhunting
material. The design visuals also functioned to communicate the cultural capital of
the agencies, such as in Figure 2 where the imagery depicted draws on references
to youth culture, such as urban alleyways, street posters, and graffiti. For clients,
these symbols differentiated the coolhunters whilst simultaneously legitimising their
cool credibility, noting how they reinforced a ‘very interesting perspective on how to
develop communication’ and a ‘non-traditional way of delivering creative strategy’.
794 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

Finally, the renegadism of the coolhunters was also communicated through

interior decoration. The aesthetic elements of organisations have recently come to
the attention of researchers (e.g. Taylor & Hansen, 2005; Warren, 2008), with
sensory encounters informing perceptions and judgements about organisational life,
rendering spatiality an important ‘vehicle of meaning’ (Klotz, 1992, p. 235). The
‘work self’ is extended through possessions both brought into the workplace and
supplied by the organisation (Tian & Belk, 2005), whereby organisational interiors
serve important affective and symbolic roles beyond their decorative function
(Warren, 2006), acting as advertisements for the ‘type’ of firm they represent and
the skill and creativity of the workers within (Baldry, 1997, 1999). The coolhunters
engaged in acts of bricolage (Hebdige, 1981), appropriating everyday symbols as
acts of resistance to dominant corporate ideals. Unique ‘dramaturgical props’, such
as a surfboard, candelabras, and wallpaper that simulated a library, were used to
manipulate the physical setting and create the impression of an atypical corporate
environment (Figures 3 and 4). Clients recounted their initial impressions of the
agencies, whereby they felt they were ‘taken somewhere different and unique’
and transported from ‘traditional ways of advertising and marketing’. As Dimitri
observed, the interior design of his workplace ‘means that we’re not sort of pigeon-
holed into anything’ and demonstrated that the agency were ‘keen to do things
differently’.
The open-plan designs of the agencies (Figure 5) symbolically communicated
the anti-bureaucracy integral to the renegade spirit of the coolhunters. In ‘tearing
down the walls’ that could separate employees, a sense of equality, openness, and
spontaneity was constructed as characterising their working ethos. However, such a
structure also lined up individual employees, exposing them to surveillance and the
panopticon gaze (Hofbauer, 2000; Sewell, 1998), contrasting with the individuality
the coolhunters sought out in their identity work.
The renegade nature of the coolhunters was also communicated through the ‘fun
spaces’ within the offices, such as chill-out areas, games tables, and bars (Figure 6).
The autonomy and hedonism associated with such spaces, available at any time
to the employees, reinforced the construction of the coolhunters as rebels who
dispensed with the traditional rules of business and signified the privileging of culture

Figure 3 Meeting room.

 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 795

Figure 4 Meeting room.

Figure 5 Open-plan workspace.

and lifestyle. These symbolic spaces communicated a message of youthfulness, an

important signifier for clients aiming to connect with younger consumers. Yet, by
importing home signifiers into the office, the implication is made that working life
can offer the same pleasures as non-working life – a trend that began with the Silicon
Valley IT houses of the 1980s (Baldry & Hallier, 2010).
The spaces were also heavily gendered, with highly masculine meanings connoted
by the design choices – the interiors of one agency were strongly reminiscent of
an elitist gentlemen’s club with its heavy woods, taxidermy, portraits, and traditional
furnishings; whilst the stark minimalist choices, lack of decoration, geometric shapes,
and exposed brick surfaces of the other agency referenced a contemporary bachelor
pad. In making these allusions, the interior cues were suggestive of places in which
men could escape from their responsibilities and luxuriate in activities of pleasure
– such as relaxing with a drink – rather than engage in the daily grind of work.
Moreover, these established symbols were used in unexpected ways so that their
meanings became contested and invested with new meanings, thereby constructing
796 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

Figure 6 Agency in-house bar.

the coolhunters as unlike typical Organisation Men. The bounding of these forms of
pleasure at work in heterosexual masculinity creates an interesting tension with the
fashion consciousness of the coolhunters, further highlighting how the construction
of their identities is organised around competing, paradoxical identifications that
give rise to chameleonism. Nevertheless, the confluence of spatial references and an
under-representation of female coolhunters at both agencies gave rise to workplace
cultures that marginalised femininity. Moreover, where femininity was visible – such
as communications for and of coolhunting events – it was highly stereotyped, with
women depicted as passive, sexualised, and idealised.
Yet ‘fun’ at work can promote the idea that work is play, obfuscating the line
between home and work and subsuming an employee’s identity within an overarching
organisational identity (Fleming & Spicer, 2004). Workers in both agencies noted
that the long hours invested in coolhunting meant little time is left for leisure –
hence, the incorporation of it into their working lives is considered necessary to
provide ‘balance’. For this reason, coolhunters frequently wind down in these ‘fun
spaces’ before leaving for coolhunting events to which they also invite friends and
family. This further served to blur the perceived boundaries between the coolhunters’
personal and working lives. Consequently, the coolhunters’ workplaces came to
resemble a ‘total institution’ (Goffman, 1968), whereby the encouragement of leisure
activities within a space that bore little resemblance to a conventional workspace
impeded the experience of a differing social reality. The ‘freedom’ of the spaces
as a means to express non-worker identities thus becomes an opportunity for
normative control to secure engagement and commitment to the organisation (Baldry,
1997, 1999). Yet, these same symbols were paradoxically also used to augment talk
about their identities as rebellious and individual and signal their cultural capital,
constructing the coolhunters as ‘having gone native’ or cool themselves.

Discourses of professionalism

Pick a job, then become the person who does it. (Bobbi Barrett, Mad Men,
Season 2, Episode 5: ‘The New Girl’)
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 797

Coolhunters spoke about cool as something mercurial and hard to define, and this
subjectivity being a potential liability when dealing with clients and consumers.
Consequently, they avoided using the word ‘cool’ at all costs when undertaking a
client project:

Adrian: We don’t really talk about cool at all. It gets used as a word but then only
ever kind of used with a nervous quiver. As soon as people start to say ‘we want
to make this cool’ you start to feel now the people really don’t know what they’re
talking about. So people avoid saying that. You see it kind of feels like it’s a very
cheap stamp and really, if somebody says that we have to really define what the
problem is a lot more.

By constructing their work as specialist, creative, and intangible, the weak material
basis of their ‘product’ of cool was further magnified. This was augmented by
the slippages between work and leisure that characterised the profession. As a
result, difficulties in demonstrating competence, performance, and professionalism in
identity work arose, making demonstrations of the right impression crucial (Alvesson,
2001). In response, coolhunters managed their identities through linguistic and
symbolic means to construct themselves as credible professionals. First, they drew
heavily on the language and techniques of management consultancy. In doing so,
the perceived rigour and expertise associated with the institutionalised attributes
and practices of the management consultancy profession assisted to legitimise
coolhunting. In examples of project reports from each agency, various models,
diagrams, plans, and charts were evident (e.g. Figure 7). While these functioned to
assist in communicating relevant content, they also acted as symbols of knowledge
and expertise specific to the agencies (e.g. Gagliardi, 1990). These devices drew
on representations of management consulting as idea and innovation factories,

Figure 7 Coolhunting report.

Pre Experience Post

Awareness & Action & Conversations

Interest Hypnosis & Viral

• Retail Partneship • Event • Pedestrian

• Website • Hypnosis • Content diffusion
• Bill Posters • Band / GIG • Retail Partners
• Recruitment Team • Photos posted either
online or distributed on
• Media Partners the night
• Registration Points
• PR
798 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

equipping coolhunters with professional and authoritative symbols that constructed

them as knowledge brokers.
As ‘merchants of meaning’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1988), the coolhunters spoke
about the in-house strategy planning tools developed to conduct coolhunting
work. These ‘innovations’ aided problem-solving tasks, constructing a perceived
methodological rigor to client projects (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009). Such tools and
devices are the bread and butter of management consulting and assist in constructing
the work as credible and the consultant as authoritative. Consequently, talk about
such innovations in coolhunting sought to legitimise the work:
Dimitri: We take the components of the brief, so the brand; the expectation,
whether it’s a brand campaign, a sales campaign; what the call of action is; all the
sort of components of a marketing strategy and we put them into this strategic
planning tool that we have that helps guide what sort of options a brand has
in terms of outcomes whether it’s an event; whether it’s an outdoor initiative;
whether it’s a creative initiative. It helps us come up with the right sort of idea.
Similarly, the coolhunters spoke about research data collected by the agencies that
provided analytical insights into consumer markets for clients. Armed with these
‘scientific facts’, the coolhunters constructed themselves as bona fide gurus and
their knowledge work took on a more material basis. The necessity of evidence
in problem solving is fundamental to the management-consulting profession (e.g.
Kipping & Engwall, 2002), and in making these parallels, coolhunting work was in
turn constructed as more rigorous and credible:
Dimitri: We have very, very detailed information and insights on the 16 to 30 year
old market . . . We understood everything there is to know about what this
market values; what their attitudes are; what their behaviours are; what their
core interest groups are – sport, music, travel, fashion, entertainment; what
their financial positions are; education; communication; finance; sex; health;
wellbeing; self-concept . . . we had qualitative and quantitative research on this
market to support the ideas that we would actually come out with. So that puts
us in more of a dominating position.
Other symbols that conveyed widespread, collective understandings of
professionalism were used to construct beliefs about the credibility of the coolhunters
(Pratt & Rafaeli, 2001). Job titles commonly found in professional service firms,
such as Partner and Chief Executive Officer, were used at the upper levels of the
agencies’ hierarchy. However, less serious job titles were evident at lower and
non-client facing levels, such as an office manager’s title of ‘Head of Internal Affairs’.
Talk about various industry awards won by the agencies also sought to construct the
coolhunters as recognised experts and credible professionals, with dedicated areas
in the offices displaying these recognitions. Reception and waiting areas were also
evident in both agencies (Figure 8), functioning as visual cues to suggest a corporate
environment, albeit of a funkier nature. Through these symbols, coolhunters sought
to construct themselves in a likeminded fashion to other business professionals.
By being perceived as the same as others, coolhunters strove to legitimise their
profession. This was particularly important given that even their clients perceived
coolhunting to be a new profession that was relatively opaque to outsiders, one
noting that ‘it was a picture on a piece of paper that was pitched to start with . . .
I still really have no idea how all of those ideas came together to make this event’.
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 799

Figure 8 Agency reception.

Although the terms are often used synonymously in marketing, coolhunters also
sought to construct themselves as credible professionals by differentiating themselves
from trend-spotters. They claimed confusion between the identities stemmed
from developments that had taken place in the industry. Originally, coolhunting
focused on trend forecasting. However, continued problems with time lags in the
commodification of trends, coupled with the fast rate of their appropriation in
the marketplace, created obstacles for clients, diminishing its perceived value. Also,
some trends did not live up to the zeal that had been forecast. As a consequence,
coolhunters began to focus on connecting organisations with influential consumers
and using trend research to inform client projects. In contrast, trend-spotting was
constructed as the ‘failed’ version of coolhunting due to its myopic focus on being at
the forefront of cultural innovations:
Dimitri: I look at that as qualifying what we do. We’re not forecasting or predicting
trends as much as we are documenting and detailing their values. There are
differences because trends are you’ll be here today and gone tomorrow . . .
whereas values are more foundation. And if you can as a brand, understand the
values and tap into the values then you have a much deeper relationship with
the audience so that when trends do come and go and you jump on to them your
market already respects you from a value perspective and therefore will trust
your judgement.

The trend-spotter identity was othered for its perceived irrelevance and lack of
rigour. For Dimitri, the emphasis trend-spotters placed on aesthetics as opposed
to strategic insights and analysis rendered their identity little more than a ‘shop
window’ – they ‘enable you access enough to talk about it, but not do anything about
it’. Similar claims by other coolhunters in the agencies constructed trend-spotting
as superficial, indulgent, and lacking ‘real world’ applicability and by association
framed trend-spotters as inappropriately skilled or resourced to participate properly
in the business context – ‘they’re just out there while we’re out there scoping, then
800 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

we’re interpreting, then we’re briefing, and then we’re responding’. Compounding
this was the virtual environment in which trend-spotters worked, as opposed
to the bricks-and-mortar space and ‘real life’ human interaction offered by the
coolhunters. Combined, these claims sought to problematise trend-spotting as a
serious, commercially viable profession:
Adrian: They’re people who’re just looking for the latest aesthetic kind of style
and then put it on a blog or put it on a website . . . it’s just a cool retail shop
basically, it’s somebody who’s collecting cool stuff and putting it on display . . .
I don’t think these people are trying to understand cool at all. There’s no analytics
involved, it’s the equivalent of picking out shiny things.
Through this discursive positioning, coolhunters augmented their identity
construction as professional, credible, and expert. However, the coolhunters
despaired that the key stumbling block to the legitimacy of their professionalism
was not being confused with trend-spotters, but the very term that informed their
identity – the title of ‘coolhunter’:
Adrian: You used to be able to say coolhunter and not feel too cringey, now you
just can’t say it at all. So I’m wondering if actually the term is dying as well
because it really got a bit fanatical there . . . I think the term of coolhunting’s
been bastardised.
The coolhunters claimed that although an industry of coolhunting certainly existed,
those who participated in it no longer embraced the term. To this end, the two
agencies investigated in this study were formally referred to as ‘strategic youth
communication agencies’ despite the fact it was informally acknowledged that
coolhunters worked within their walls. As such, the identity struggles for coolhunters
began with the very term that signified who they were to the world around them.
For this reason, drawing on language and symbols to validate their professionalism
became fundamental to their livelihood in a marketplace where coolhunting was
considered opaque at best, or on the nose at worst. However, this veneer of slick and
professionalism was vastly at odds with the renegade, anti-corporate spirit they also
invoked, illustrating again how their identity work was organised around competing,
paradoxical identifications.

Discussion and conclusions

I can’t decide . . . if you have everything . . . or nothing. (Don Draper, Mad Men,
Season 1, Episode 2: ‘Ladies Room’)
By examining coolhunting as a case study of cultural intermediaries, this paper
illustrates how tensions arise in identity construction and boundary work. For
coolhunters, a conflict between reconciling being renegade and professional arose.
They engaged in chameleon-like identity work – one moment seeking to present
themselves as creative and original rebels of commerce, the next striving to construct
themselves as rigorous professionals. In doing so, they echoed Ellis et al.’s (2010)
observations that market actors construct their selves across a perceived boundary
between ‘internal’ ideas and desires and ‘external’ images and evaluations. The
coolhunters’ identity work involved them engaging with, resisting, negotiating,
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 801

modifying, and refusing identity positions provided by discourses (Thomas &

Davies, 2005). Within this space, as reflexive producers/consumers navigating
economy/culture, categories of work and leisure become increasingly blurred, and
this instability forced coolhunters to undergo more challenging instances of identity
work due to the destabilisation of self that transpired (Sveningsson & Alvesson,
2003). Work and pleasure have traditionally been viewed as structural opposites
(Turner, 2001), with leisure associated with freedom, release, fun, and choice, and
work with compulsion, routine, and restriction (Guerrier & Adib, 2003). However,
the boundary between work and leisure is becoming less oppositional, and this is
particularly the case for cultural intermediaries (McRobbie, 2003). For coolhunters,
this ‘weisure’ (Conley, 2009) means that the ‘time off’ from work normally reserved
for leisure is often marked by productive activities developing their cool capital. The
confusing implications of this can be observed in the identity work of coolhunters,
for whom the pleasurable aspects of their work that dis-identifies them from
mainstream identities also provokes the anxiety of not being taken seriously in
a professional capacity. Moreover, even when coolhunters use aesthetic elements
to construct themselves as ‘uncorporate’, they simultaneously invoke masculine
and classist symbols to safeguard their professional identity. Such slippages have
important implications for the identity work of cultural intermediaries that render
it complex and difficult to disentangle.
Extant research examining cultural intermediaries’ identities has signalled their
hybrid, liminal, and paradoxical nature (e.g. DeFillippi, Grabher, & Jones, 2007;
Hackley & Kover, 2007; Nixon & Crewe, 2004). Missing, however, is a path forward
in understanding the struggles that pervade the discursive construction of boundaries
and identities for cultural intermediaries (Smith Maguire, 2010). This paper contends
that paradox theory offers such direction. Paradox is ‘constructed by individuals
when oppositional tendencies are brought into recognizable proximity through
reflection or interaction’ (Ford & Backoff, 1988, p. 89). In the case of coolhunters,
a tension between renegadism and professionalism manifests in their interwoven
work and leisure practices, permeating their identity work in contradictory ways.
Research has highlighted the utility of a paradox lens for understanding divergent and
disruptive experiences and managing contradictions and their associated outcomes
(Gotsi, Andriopoulos, Lewis, & Ingram, 2010; Ofori-Dankwa & Julian, 2004).
For a concept like identity, which is characterised by ambiguity and contradiction
(Knights & Wilmott, 1999), a paradox lens provides particular value. This paper
proposes that paradox theory can be effectively leveraged in research seeking to
unpack the decentred, multiple, and shifting identities of marketers that can be
experienced in contradictory ways. Lewis (2000) emphasises that the polarities of
paradoxical tensions must be identified and understood, as favouring one pole can
trigger and perpetuate reinforcing cycles with negative dynamics. She argues that
these tensions can moreover be managed to create distinctions and enable synergy.
In this way, a paradox lens is helpful in reframing identity tensions and enabling
a more accepting, holistic, and fluid understanding of them – seeing seemingly
opposing identity positions as two sides of the same coin instead of polarised conflicts
(Gotsi et al., 2010). By accommodating these tensions, individuals are better able to
leverage paradox effectively, embracing contradictory identities as mutually enabling
and co-existing.
Lewis (2000) identifies three ways of representing paradox – mapping, theorising,
and conceptualising. As noted, various field studies have identified the paradoxes
802 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

evident in cultural intermediaries’ identity work, and this paper further contributes
to this mapping of paradox by highlighting the polarities of coolhunters’ identities.
Less work, however, has been conducted in theorising (Lewis, 2000; Quinn &
Cameron, 1988) and conceptualising (Ofori-Dankwa & Julian, 2004) paradox. This
paper seeks to contribute to theorising on paradox by offering the metaphor of the
nomad as a way of interrogating polarities as both/and as opposed to either/or
choices. This reflects Lewis’s (2000) assertion that paradoxical tensions may not
be possible to resolve nor it desirable to do so, with paradox instead offering
inventive ways of considering phenomena. This research proffers the metaphor of the
nomadic subject as an insightful path forward in interrogating marketer subjectivity
and representing interwoven identity tensions, such as production/consumption,
culture/economy, and work/leisure. Metaphor provides a vivid way of understanding
complex and abstract phenomena (Grant & Oswick, 1996; Tsoukas, 1991) by
creating subtle connections and functioning as a communicative tool (Ritchie,
2004). For example, Morgan’s (1986) metaphorical schema of organisations, such
as ‘organisation as machine’ and ‘organisation as brain’, prompted a reconsideration
of how organisations are understood. Expressing abstract experiences such as identity
work through metaphor provides a way for individuals with different experiences to
use imagination and symbols grounded in the way they talk and think to understand
phenomena more intuitively (Inkson, 2004).
The nomadic metaphor has been used by a variety of researchers in theories of
subjectivity (e.g. Boltanski & Chiapello, 2005; Braidotti, 1994; Deleuze & Guattari,
1988). Primarily, the nomad functions as a way of expressing contradiction, fluid
boundaries, and a constant state of being ‘in process’ and ‘becoming’ – ‘the kind of
subject who has relinquished all idea, desire or nostalgia for fixity’ (Braidotti, 1994,
p. 22). Not only does this framing suit conceptions of identity that dispense with a
unitary self, it also accommodates emerging understandings of marketer subjectivity
marked by flux and ambiguity (e.g. Smith Maguire, 2010). Marketers are constantly
on the move, looking for new expressions, both economic and cultural, to appeal to
and persuade fragmented and ever-changing audiences. As the case of the coolhunter
demonstrates, this requires the marketer to inhabit a variety of spheres in which
leisure time increasingly becomes productive, engaged in a hive of activity that crosses
the boundaries of personal and working lives in which they must always be available,
flexible, creative, adaptable, innovative, and mobile. This mirrors conceptions of the
nomad, whereby:
What is relevant is to be always pursuing some sort of activity, never to be without
a project, without ideas, to be always looking forward to, and preparing for,
something along with other persons, who are brought together by the same drive
for activity (Chiapello & Fairclough, 2002, p. 192)
The nomad moves through a series of networks, rootless and without fixed territory.
Such a conception corresponds with extant understandings of the role of marketing
within organisations as something fluid and changing that pervades all aspects of the
organisation as a philosophy or orientation (Holbrook & Hulbert, 2002; Woodall,
2007). Correspondingly, the marketer operates in transforming conditions where
they must exploit the continuous possibilities entailed by their changing and multiple
activities. The nomadic metaphor for the marketer enables it to be simultaneously
conceived as complex, contradictory, dynamic, liminal, situated in shifting contexts,
and without fixed destination. To bring this metaphor further to life, the research
 Gurrieri Consuming work, productive leisure, and marketer boundary work 803

proposes that marketer subjectivity can be represented as a kind of ‘Don Draper

complex’, inspired by the fictional protagonist of Mad Men. Don Draper is the
ultimate nomad – a man so uncomfortable in his own skin he takes on another
identity to form a new life for himself. Yet, despite its veneer of ‘perfection’, even
that proves to become something else from which he must escape – whether through
work, drinking, infidelities, or abandoning his responsibilities in New York for
the pleasures of California. As the series evolves, Don’s work and personal selves
become increasingly inseparable, leading to moments of intense identity crisis in
which he takes on new and different personas. Although Draper represents some
obvious stereotypes, he nevertheless provides an illuminating figure in conceiving the
marketer as nomad.
Guided by this framing, future research should more fully explore how marketer
identities are produced and regulated. This may relate to how the marketer seeks
sovereignty and autonomy through a liberatory self-identity (Firat & Venkatesh,
1995). For instance, in spite of the tensions, the coolhunters perceived that their
overlapping work and leisure aided the construction of a more coherent sense
of personal authenticity. Future research could also develop the implications of
paradoxical tensions in terms of identity regulation, exploring whether this process
is empowering or controlling. The ways in which marketers manage these tensions
is also of interest, such as generating resistance through cynical detachment, irony,
humour, or image manipulation (Collinson, 1994; Costas & Fleming, 2009).
For instance, the coolhunters managed tensions by using observable displays of
conspicuous consumption produced in their working lives as markers of cultural
capital and social advantage – although its accomplishment through allusions to
masculinity highlighted gender issues.
This research has examined the subjectivities of a marketing cultural intermediary
group that researchers have historically found difficult to penetrate (Nancarrow,
Nancarrow, & Page, 2002). It offers three contributions to understandings of
marketer identity construction – the metaphor of marketer as nomad; paradox
theory as a lens for understanding the tensions that pervade boundary and identity
construction for marketers; and the use of thick description to offer nuanced
understandings of the complexities of identity work. In doing so, this research
hopes to stimulate further debate and explorations of the subjectivities of marketing
practitioners and the ways they navigate and accomplish boundaries in economic and
cultural life, work and leisure, and production and consumption. For if they are as
complex as Mad Men’s protagonist Don Draper, we certainly have our work cut out.

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About the author

Lauren Gurrieri is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Griffith Business School, Griffith
University, Australia. Her research interests focus on consumption, identity, cultural
production, and embodiment, as reflected in her PhD work undertaken at the University of
808 Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 28

Melbourne which examined the discursive construction of cool identities in the context of
consumer culture.

Corresponding author: Dr. Lauren Gurrieri, Department of Marketing, Griffith Business

School, Griffith University, Building N63, 170 Kessels Road, Nathan, Queensland 4111
Australia.
T +617 3735 3716
E l.gurrieri@griffith.edu.au
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