‘The Pinocchio Effect’ – when managing the brand creation process, across cultures

In global marketing and international management, the fields of Branding and Culture are well discussed as separate disciplines; within both academia and industry. However, there appears to be limited supporting literature, examining brands and culture as a collective discipline. In addition, environmental factors such as ethnicity, nationality and religion are also seen to play a significant role. This in itself adds to the challenges encountered, by those looking to critically apply learning and frameworks, to any information gathered. In the first instance, this paper tries to bring aspects together from Branding and Culture and in doing so, aims to find linkages between the two. The main purpose of this paper is to distil current brand thinking and explore what impact cross-cultural, cross-national, and ethnic interactions have on a brand’s creation. The position of the authors is that without further understanding in this field, a brand will experience what has been termed by them as the ‘Pinocchio Effect’. Pinocchio was a puppet who longed to become a real human being; but sadly encountered difficulties. The conclusion presented is that the critical long-term success of a brand lies in three areas: how it is created; the subsequent associated perceptions; and more specifically in the reality of the relationships that it enjoys. Collectively these processes necessitate an appraisal of connecting strategic management procedures and thinking. Finally, this paper looks into proposing future methods for brand evaluation and strategic management. The aim is to stimulate further thinking in a field; which transcends national, ethnic and cultural boundaries - in the interests of developing new insight, and to provide a platform for marketers to develop more effective communications.

Stochastic monotonicity and duality for continuous time Markov chains with general q-Matrix

The key problems in discussing stochastic monotonicity and duality for continuous time Markov chains are to give the criteria for existence and uniqueness and to construct the associated monotone processes in terms of their infinitesimal q -matrices. In their recent paper, Chen and Zhang [6] discussed these problems under the condition that the given q-matrix Q is conservative. The aim of this paper is to generalize their results to a more general case, i.e., the given q-matrix Q is not necessarily conservative. New problems arise 'in removing the conservative assumption. The existence and uniqueness criteria for this general case are given in this paper. Another important problem, the construction of all stochastically monotone Q-processes, is also considered.

What students can tell about lecturers when they are teaching: manifestations of confident and under-confident lecturers

Delivering a lecture requires confidence, a sound knowledge and well developed teaching skills (Cooper and Simonds, 2007, Quinn and Hughes, 2007). However, practitioners who are new to lecturing large groups in higher education may initially lack the confidence to do so which can manifest itself in their verbal and non-verbal cues and the fluency of their teaching skills. This results in the perception that students can identify the confident and non-confident teacher during a lecture (Street, 2007) and so potentially contributing to a lecturer’s level of anxiety prior to, and during, a lecture. Therefore, in the current educational climate of consumerisation, with the increased evaluation of teaching by students, having the ability to deliver high-quality, informed, and interesting lectures assumes greater significance for both lecturers and universities (Carr, 2007; Higher Education Founding Council 2008, Glass et al., 2006). This paper will present both the quantitative and qualitative data from a two-phase mixed method study with 75 nurse lecturers and 62 nursing students in one university in the United Kingdom. The study investigated the notion that lecturing has similarities to acting (Street, 2007). The findings presented here are concerned with how students perceived lecturers’ level of confidence and how lecturers believed they demonstrated confidence. In phase one a specifically designed questionnaire was distributed to both lecturers and students and a response rate of 91% (n=125) was achieved, while in phase two 12 in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with lecturers. Results suggested that students in a lecture could identify if the lecturer was confident or not by the way they performed a lecture. Students identified 57 manifestations of non-confidence and lecturers identified 85, while 57 manifestations of confidence were identified by students and 88 by lecturers. Overall, these fell into 12 main converse categories, ranging from body language to the use of space within the room. Both students and lecturers ranked body language, vocal qualities, delivery skills, involving the students and the ability to share knowledge as the most evident manifestations of confidence. Elements like good eye contact, smiling, speaking clearly and being fluent in the use of media recourses where all seen as manifestations confidence, conversely if these were poorly executed then a presentation of under confidence was evident. Furthermore, if the lecturer appeared enthusiastic it was clearly underpinned by the manifestation of a highly confidence lecturer who was secure in their knowledge base and teaching abilities: Some lecturers do appear enthusiastic but others don’t. I think the ones that do know what they are talking about, you can see it in their voice and in their lively body language. I think they are also good at involving the students even. I think the good ones are able to turn boring subjects into lively and interesting ones. (Student 50) Significantly more lecturers than students felt the lecturer should appear confident when lecturing. The lecturers stated it was particularly important to do so when they did not feel confident, because they were concerned with appearing capable. It seems that these students and lecturers perceived that expressive and apparently confident lecturers can make a positive impact on student groups in terms of involvement in lectures; the data also suggested the reverse, for the under confident lecturer. Findings from phase two indicated that these lecturers assumed a persona when lecturing, particularly, but not exclusively, when they were nervous. These lecturers went through a process of assuming and maintaining this persona before and during a lecture as a way of promoting their internal perceptions of confidence but also their outward manifestation of confidence. Although assuming a convincing persona may have a degree of deception about it, providing the knowledge communicated is accurate, the deception may aid rather than hinder learning, because enhances the delivery of a lecture. Therefore, the deception of acting a little more confidently than one feels might be justified when the lecturer knows the knowledge they are communicating is correct, unlike the Dr Fox Effect where the person delivering a lecture is an actor and does not know the subject in any detail or depth and where the deception to be justified (Naftulin, et al., 1973). In conclusion, these students and lecturers perceive that confident and enthusiastic lecturers communicate their passion for the subject in an interesting and meaningful manner through the use of their voice, body, space and interactions in such a way that shows confidence in their knowledge as well as their teaching abilities. If lecturers, therefore, can take a step back to consider how they deliver lectures in apparently confident ways this may increase their ability to engage their students and not only help them being perceived as good lecturers, but also contribute to the genuine act of education.

To tremble the zero: art in the age of algorithmic reproduction

'To Tremble the Zero: Art in the Age of Algorithmic Reproduction' is a philosophic, political and sensuous journey playing with (and against) Benjamin's 'Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. In an age inundated by the 'post-': postmodernity, posthuman, post art, postsexual, post-feminist, post-society, post-nation, etc, 'To Tremble the Zero' sets out to re/present the nature of what it means to do or make 'art', as well as what it means to be or have 'human/ity' when the ground is nothing other than the fractal, and algorithmically infinite, combinations of zero and one. The work will address also the unfortunate way in which modern forms of metaphysics continue to creep 'unsuspectingly' into our understanding of contemporary media/electronic arts, despite (or perhaps even because of) the attempts by Latour, Badiou, or Agamben especially when addressing the zero/one as if a contradictory 'binary' rather than as a kind of 'slice' or (to use Deleuze and Guattari) an immanent plane of immanence. This work argues that by retrieving Benjamin, Einstein, Gödel, and Haraway, a rather different story of art can be told.

Astonishing apples: visualising the novel

This paper explores the developing relationship between fictional and visual representations. The impact of visual art on the novel as mimetic is an issue that writers have engaged with and written about from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, often raising the question of the art/life dialectic and how it has evolved through the novel’s exploration of ideas. From painting, photography, cinema, television and newer digital visual cultures writers have sought to involve themselves in a critical examination of the impact of changes in these forms on other art form and on wider society. How do these visual forms affect what it means to be an artist, a writer, a human being? The paper takes the work of Paul Cezanne as a starting point in the history of representation. Writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, theorists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and other artists like Picasso, have been influenced by, or responded to, Cezanne’s work and to Cezanne’s writings on art and his letters to his great childhood friend, the novelist Emile Zola. By discussing the creative practice of writing a novel this paper will examine questions of how the novel can, and should, respond to the impact of visual culture’s seeming dominance over other art forms. It also explores what impact new forms of visual culture have had upon the mimetic and formal aspects of the novel and how the novel works as representational, especially in relation to representations of human consciousness. [From the Author]

The Olympic Games and urban displacement: the case of Beijing

Urban spectacles such as the Olympic Games have been long perceived as being able to impose desired effects in the city that act as host. This kind of urban boost may include the creation of new jobs and revenue for local community, growth in tourism and convention business, improvements to city infrastructure and environment, and the stimulation of broad reform in the social, political and institutional realm. Nevertheless at the other end of the debate, the potentially detrimental impacts of Olympic urban development, particularly on disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, have also been increasingly noticed in recent years and subsequently cited by a number of high profile anti-Olympic groups to campaign against Olympic bids and awards. The common areas of concern over Olympic-related projects include the cost and debts risk, environmental threat, the occurrence of social imbalance, and disruption and disturbance of existing community life. Among these issues, displacement of low income households and squatter communities resulting from Olympic-inspired urban renewal are comparatively under-explored and have emerged as an imperative area for research inquiry. This is particularly the case where many other problems have become less prominent. Changing a city’s demographic landscape, particularly displacing lower income people from the area proposed for a profitable development is a highly contentious matter in its own right. Some see it as a natural and inevitable outgrowth of the process of urban evolution, without which cities cannot move towards a more attractive location for consumption-based business. Others believe it reflects urban crises and conflicts, highlighting the market failures, polarization and injustice. Regardless of perception,these phenomena are visible everywhere in post-industrial cities and particularly cannot be ignored when planning for the Olympic Games and other mega-events. The aim of this paper is to start the process of placing the displacement issue in the context of Olympic preparation and to seek a better understanding of their interrelations. In order to develop a better understanding of this issue in terms of cause, process, influential factors and its implication on planning policy, this paper studies the topic from both theoretic and empirical angles. It portrays various situations where the Olympics may trigger or facilitate displacement in host cities during the preparation of the Games, identifies several major variables that may affect the process and the overall outcome, and explores what could be learnt in generic terms for planning Olympic oriented infrastructure so that ill-effects to the local community can be effectively controlled. The paper concludes that the selection of development sites, the integration of Olympic facilities with the city’s fabric, the diversity of housing type produced for local residents and the dynamics of the new socioeconomic structure.

Venetian time and the meander

Argues that the past is necessary to architectural modernity for its self-definition. Goes on to look at Le Corbusier and the past in relation to his revolutionary architectural manifesto, 'Vers une architecture' (1923), and his and Tafuri's views on Venice. Also considers Le Corbusier's 'law of meander' as a strategy for urbanism and his Venice Hospital project