Rejecting the managerially-driven structures normally imposed on the subject, Saren explains marketing from the perspective of the pivotal figure in the process: the consumer. He addresses readers as active consumers and producers of marketing, and therefore already well-equipped to appreciate the rationale and practice behind the process.

Critically examining the wide range of products, businesses, technologies, information, services, ads, packaging and branding, Saren utilizes everyday images and phenomena to draw out the conceptual foundations of marketing in its social and cultural context that we all experience.

By taking this alternative approach - linking the abstract concepts to the everyday world the reader already knows -Marketing Graffiti explains marketing as consumers experience it, as active participants in it reflecting the variety in the bricollage subject that is marketing.