Myriam's 'adverteasing': on the performative power of marketing promises

In most publications, 'performativity' has become synonymous with terms like 'impact', 'effect' and 'transformation'. As a result, recent contributions tend to focus on what various marketing ideas and frameworks are supposed to do to real markets, without caring much for the linguistic properties of these concepts. This article aims at questioning this bias by studying the linguistic and practical circumstances under which marketing knowledge and discourse can become performative. It proposes to do so through a detailed study of Myriam, a highly famous French teaser advertisement where a pretty young woman in a bikini standing on a beach promises: 'On September 2, I remove the top', and then, on September 2, now topless, declares: 'On September 4, I remove the bottom'. The careful analysis of this case shows that the performativity of marketing concepts and messages rests on a prodigious combination of words and objects, co-creation schemes and curiosity.