A Cultural Studies Perspective Toward Understanding Corporate Image: A Case Study of State Farm Insurance

Image is one of the most common terms used by public relations practitioners, but scholars generally have not developed the concept well. This article attempts to fill that void by using the articulation model of meaning in cultural studies criticism as a framework for understanding how a corporation builds images in its audiences. The author shows that images are produced by organizational, social, and personal relations; texts; and personal experiences. Neither the organization nor members of audiences produce meaning—corporate images—alone. Rather, images result from a complex process that may yield multiple, intended and unintended, positive and negative, and strong and weak meanings.