CII Introduction: The UK insurance sector lies at a critical juncture in its long and eventful history. On the one hand, insurers are feeling the recessionary pinch in the form of a capital squeeze and a hardening market, but they can still benefit from escaping the contagion in the global...

Over the period January-December 2008 we collected 241 separate advertisements from 61 financial institutions published in the Financial Times. Reading across the ensemble of ads for themes and evocative images, sketching an outline in symbolic space as it were, provides an impression of the...