Imagine Paradise in Ads. Imagination and Visual Matrices in Tourism and Consumer Culture

Paradise has been a significant concept in tourism as well in consumer culture. The present article demonstrates how paradise is presented as visual, spatial and ideal concepts in ads, and how they illustrate imagination as a central communicative effect in marketing and consumer culture. Through an analysis of selected consumer and tourism ads for TV and cinema presented in Denmark, the author points out different ways of reflecting viewersʹ imagination of paradise as a place and condition. The author outlines a theoretical framework for understanding imagination from a media-specific perspective as involving cognitive, emotional and sensuous processes, respectively, and looks at how paradise, as an active and present visual matrix in tourism and consumer communication, has a specific appeal to viewersʹ imagination.