Title:
Brewing Up History: History and Beer Marketing in Canada, 1840-2021
Creator:
Gillies, Emma
Date Created:
2021
Degree Awarded:
Master of Arts - Public History
Subjects:
Neural Networks Image Analysis Beer Brewing Marketing Consumer
Geographical Focus:
Canada
Supporting Materials:
n/a
Description:
This research essay employs a novel use of a particular computer vision technology – “convolutional neural networks” - on a corpus of 1345 Canadian beer labels dating from 1840 to 2021 to calculate, and visualize, the visual similarity of beer labels. The resulting clusters are analyzed to see how they cluster over time and space or brand, which enables patterns in the historical consciousness of Canadian beer producers/consumers to emerge. I find that there is a major trend to appeal to people’s emotions that continues in similar form throughout Canada’s history. Particularly, beer marketing tends to use history in two major ways: one, through heraldic imagery to denote quality; the other to evoke a sense of escape/adventure through narrative illustration. These uses – what I am referring to as the Heraldic-Comic divide - allude to consumers' romanticized notions of history, and predominantly appeal to white, male audiences.
Source
Preferred Citation:
Gillies, Emma. 2021. "Brewing Up History: History and Beer Marketing in Canada, 1840-2021", Department of History, Carleton University
Link to this page:
https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_341.html
Rights
Rights:
Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.