Engaging complexity through collaborative brand design

In this research we used inductive reasoning through design to understand how stakeholders in the Waterfall Way (New South Wales, Australia) perceive the relationships between themselves and the place they live in. This paper describes a collaborative design methodology used to release information about local identities, which guided the regional brand exercise. The methodology is explicit about the uncertainties and complexities of the design process and of its reception system. As such, it aims to engage with local stakeholders and experts in order to help elicit tacit knowledge and identify system patterns and trends that would possibly not be visible if a top-down expert-based process was used. Through collective design, local people were drawn together in search for a symbol to represent the meaning attached to their places/region in relation to sustainable tourism activity.

Architecture et révolution : Le Corbusier and the fascist revolution

In a letter to a close friend dated April 1922 Le Corbusier announced that he was to publish his first major book, Architecture et révolution, which would collect “a set ofarticles from L’EN.”1—L’Esprit nouveau, the revue jointly edited by him and painter Amédée Ozenfant, which ran from 1920 to 1925.2 A year later, Le Corbusier sketched a book cover design featuring “LE CORBUSIER - SAUGNIER,” the pseudonymic compound of Pierre Jeanneret and Ozenfant, above a square-framed single-point perspective of a square tunnel vanishing toward the horizon. Occupying the lower half of the frame was the book’s provisional title in large handwritten capital letters, ARCHITECTURE OU RÉVOLUTION, each word on a separate line, the “ou” a laconic inflection of Paul Laffitte’s proposed title, effected by Le Corbusier.3 Laffitte was one of two publishers Le Corbusier was courting between 1921 and 1922.4 An advertisement for the book, with the title finally settled upon, Vers une architecture, 5 was solicited for L’Esprit nouveau number 18. This was the original title conceived with Ozenfant, and had in fact already appeared in two earlier announcements.6 “Architecture ou révolution” was retained as the name of the book’s crucial and final chapter—the culmination of six chapters extracted from essays in L’Esprit nouveau. This chapter contained the most quoted passage in Vers une architecture, used by numerous scholars to adduce Le Corbusier’s political sentiment in 1923 to the extent of becoming axiomatic of his early political thought.7 Interestingly, it is the only chapter that was not published in L’Esprit nouveau, owing to a hiatus in the journal’s production from June 1922 to November 1923.8 An agitprop pamphlet was produced in 1922, after L’Esprit nouveau 11-12, advertising an imminent issue “Architecture ou révolution” with the famous warning: “the housing crisis will lead to the revolution. Worry about housing.”9

Innovative Products Focus Group Report 2012. Brisbane: QUT

This report presents the results of Phase 3 of the Innovative Road Products Project: National Focus Groups. The groups developed solutions to address the most important obstacles constraining the adoption of innovative products in Australian road construction projects. The Innovative Products Survey, the major Project deliverable in 2011, and the largest innovation survey ever undertaken in the Australian road consutrction industry, results in the identification of key obstacles constraining the adoption of innovative products on road projects.

Innovative Products Survey Report

This report presents the results of the 2011 Australian road and bridge product innovation survey, the largest survey of its kind ever undertaken. The survey sample was defined as key organisations involved in the Australian road and bridge construction industry. The survey focused on four sectors across the road and bridge product supply chain: suppliers (comprising manufacturers and distributors), consultants (primarily engineering consultant firms), contractors (comprising head and trade contractors and subcontractors) and clients (state government road agencies). The sample comprised the four sectors in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

Innovative Products Project: Background Study

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Innovative Products Project aims to facilitate project innovation by exploring means to improve the diffusion of innovative products to road and bridge projects. It adopts a highly novel approach to achieve this end, developing three different ways of viewing the problem: (1) as a relational governance issue, (2) as an absorptive capacity issue and (3) as a knowlege intermediation issue. This report presents teh results of teh first phase of a three phase fieldwork program.

Destination branding performance measurement : a non-technical discussion for practitioners

While academic interest in destination branding has been gathering momentum since the field commenced in the late 1990s, one important gap in this literature that has received relatively little attention to date is the measurement of destination brand performance. This paper sets out one method for assessing the performance of a destination brand over time. The intent is to present an approach that will appeal to marketing practitioners, and which is also conceptually sound. The method is underpinned by Decision Set Theory and the concept of Consumer-Based Brand Equity (CBBE), while the key variables mirror the branding objectives used by many destination marketing organisations (DMO). The approach is demonstrated in this paper to measure brand performance for Australia in the New Zealand market. It is suggested the findings provide indicators of both i) the success of previous marketing communications, and ii) future performance, which can be easily communicated to a DMO’s stakeholders.

What’s in a name : Is there a right to terminate a contract for purchase of a unit if the name changes?

The significance of the proposed name of a building to buyers of units off the plan has received recent attention in Queensland and the ACT with differing results. In Gough v South Sky Investments Pty Ltd the Queensland Court of Appeal concluded that the name of the building was not an essential term of the contract and rejected a claim by a number of buyers to terminate their contracts because of the change of name from Oracle to Peppers. In contrast, Rares J in the Federal Court decision of Madison Constructions Pty Ltd v Empire Building Group (ACT) Pty Ltd considered that the name of the building in a proposed development could potentially form the basis of misleading conduct about the association of the seller with a particular development corporation.

Reaction products between Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-oxide thick films and alumina substrates

The structure and composition of reaction products between Bi-Sr-Ca-Cu-oxide (BSCCO) thick films and alumina substrates have been characterized using a combination of electron diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDX). Sr and Ca are found to be the most reactive cations with alumina. Sr4Al6O12SO4 is formed between the alumina substrates and BSCCO thick films prepared from paste with composition close to Bi-2212 (and Bi-2212 + 10 wt.% Ag). For paste with composition close to Bi(Pb)-2223 + 20 wt.% Ag, a new phase with f.c.c. structure, lattice parameter about a = 24.5 A and approximate composition Al3Sr2CaBi2CuOx has been identified in the interface region. Understanding and control of these reactions is essential for growth of high quality BSCCO thick films on alumina. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science S.A.

Industry branding : attracting talent to weaker profile industries

There is global competition for engineering talent with some industries struggling to attract quality candidates. The ‘brands’ of industries and organisations are important elements in attracting talent in a competitive environment. Using brand equity and signalling theory, this paper reports a quantitative study examining factors that attract graduating engineers and technicians to engineering careers in a weak brand profile industry. The survey measures graduating engineers’ preferences for career benefits and their perceptions of the rail industry, which has identified a significant skilled labour shortfall. Knowledge of young engineers’ preferences for certain benefits and segmenting preferences can inform branding and communications strategies. The findings have implications for all industries and organisations, especially those with a weaker brand profile and issues with attracting talent.

Value added products from modified kaolins : new chemical routes to new markets

Chemical treatments of kaolins to produce nanocrystalline or "X-ray amorphous", stable aluminosilicates with variable - but reproducible - types of micro- and meso-porosity have been developed. These materials show cation exchange capacities and surface area values significantly higher (ranging from 10x to 100x) than kaolin and show good acid resistance to pH~3.0. The combination of these properties offers strong potential for many new applications of kaolin-derived materials in large worldwide markets such as environmental remediation and catalysis. Kaolin amorphous derivative (KAD) is well-suited to removal of many toxic metals down to ppb range from acid mine drainage. Engineering development trials of the KAD manufacturing process and the utilisation of KAD in polluted waters such as acid mine drainage indicates that scale-up from bench-scale is not a barrier to market entry.

Perceptions of visitor relationship marketing opportunities by destination marketers : an importance-performance analysis

Customer relationship marketing (CRM) initiatives are increasingly being adopted by businesses in the attempt to enhance brand loyalty and stimulate repeat purchases. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which destination marketing organisations (DMOs) around the world have developed a visitor relationship marketing (VRM) orientation. The proposition underpinning the study is that maintaining meaningful dialogue with previous visitors in some markets would represent a more efficient use of resources than above the line advertising to attract new visitors. Importance-performance analysis was utilised to measure destination marketers’ perceptions of the efficacy of CRM initiatives, and then rate their own organisation’s performance across the same range of initiatives. A key finding was that mean importance was higher than perceived performance for every item. While the small sample limits generalisability, in general there are appears to be a lack of strategic intent by DMOs to invest in VRM.

Fans teaching fans how to consume : the role of ritual in the consumption of entertainment

The status of entertainment as both a dimension of human culture, and a booming global industry is increasing. Given more recent consumer-centric definitions of entertainment, the entertainment consumer has grown in prominence and is now coming under closer scrutiny. However viewing entertainment consumers as always behaving in a similar fashion towards entertainment as to other products may be selling them short. For a start, entertainment consumers can exhibit a strong loyalty towards their favourite entertainment products that is the envy of the marketing world. Academic researchers and marketers who are keen to investigate entertainment consumers would benefit from a theoretical base from which to commence. This essay therefore, takes a consumer-oriented focus in defining entertainment and conceptualises a model of entertainment consumption. In approaching the study of entertainment one axiomatic question remains: how should we define it? Richard Dyer notes that, considering that the category of entertainment can include – by its own definition in the song ‘That’s entertainment!’ – everything from Hamlet and Oedipus Rex to ‘the clown with his pants falling down’ and ‘the lights on the lady in tights’, it doesn’t make much sense to try to define entertainment as being marked by particular textual features (as is done, for example, by Avrich, 2002). Dyer’s position is rather that ‘entertainment is not so much a category of things as an attitude towards things’ (Dyer, 1973: 9). He traces the modern conception of entertainment back to the writings of Molière. This writer defended the purpose of his plays against attacks from the church that they were not sufficiently edifying by insisting that, as entertainments he had no interest in edifying audiences – his ‘real purpose …was to provide people pleasure – and the definition of that was to be decided by “the people”’(Dyer, 1973: 9). In my own discipline of Marketing this approach has been embraced – Kaser and Oelkers, for example, define entertainment as ‘whatever people are willing to spend their money and spare time viewing’ (2008, 18). That is the approach taken in this paper, where I see entertainment as ‘consumer-driven culture’ (McKee and Collis, 2009) – a definition that is closely aligned with the marketing concept. Within a marketing framework I explore what the consumption of entertainment can tell us about the relationships between consumers and culture more generally. For entertainment offers an intriguing case study, and is often consumed in ways that challenge many of our assumptions about marketing and consumer behaviour.

Effects of rice husk biochar and sugar-mill by-products on methane consumption from two different soils

Methane (CH4) is an important greenhouse gas with a global warming potential (GWP) 25 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2) that can be produced or consumed in soils depending on environmental conditions and other factors. Biochar application to soils has been shown to reduce CH4 emissions and to increase CH4 consumption. However, the effects of rice husk biochar (RB) have not been thoroughly investigated. Two 60-day laboratory incubation experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of amending two soil types with RB, raw mill mud (MM) and composted mill mud (CM) on soil CH4 consumption and emissions. Soil cores incubated in 1 L glass jars and gas samples were analysed for CH4 using gas chromatography. Average CH4 consumption rates varied from -0.06 to -0.68 g CH4-C( )/ha/d in sandy loam soil and -0.59 to -1.00 g CH4-C/ha/d in clay soil. Application of RB resulted in CH4 uptake of -0.52 to -0.55 g CH4-C/ha/d in sandy loam and -0.76 to -0.91 g CH4-C/ha/d in clay soil. Addition of MM showed low CH4 emissions or consumption at 60% water-filled pore space (WFPS) in both soils. However, at high water contents (>75% WFPS) the application of MM produced high rates of CH4 emissions which were significantly suppressed when RB was added. Cumulative emissions of the MM treatment produced 108.9 g CH4-C/ha at 75% WFPS and 11 459.3 g CH4-C/ha at 90% WFPS in sandy loam soil over a period of 60 days. RB can increase CH4 uptake under low soil water content (SWC) and decrease CH4 emissions under anaerobic conditions. CM expressed more potential to reduce CH4 emissions than those of MM.

Combustion products of bulk aluminum rods burning in high pressure oxygen

Characterization of the combustion products released during the burning of commonly used engineering metallic materials may aid in material selection and risk assessment for the design of oxygen systems. The characterization of combustion products in regards to size distribution and morphology gives useful information for systems addressing fire detection. Aluminum rods (3.2-mm diameter cylinders) were vertically mounted inside a combustion chamber and ignited in pressurized oxygen by resistively heating an aluminum/palladium igniter wire attached to the bottom of the test sample. This paper describes the experimental work conducted to establish the particle size distribution and morphology of the resultant combustion products collected after the burning was completed and subsequently analyzed. In general, the combustion products consisted of a re-solidified oxidized slag and many small hollow spheres of size ranging from about 500 nm to 1000 µm in diameter, surfaced with quenched dendritic and grain-like structures. The combustion products were characterized using optical and scanning electron microscopy.

Engaging social customers : influencing new marketing strategies for social media information sources

A global, online quantitative study among 300 consumers of digital technology products found the most reliable information sources were friends, family or word of mouth (WOM) from someone they knew, followed by expert product reviews, and product reviews written by other consumers. The most unreliable information sources were advertising or infomercials, automated recommendations based on purchasing patterns or retailers. While a very small number of consumers evaluated products online, rating of products and online discussions were more frequent activities. The most popular social media websites for reviews were Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and e-Bay, indicating the importance of WOM in social networks and online media spaces that feature product reviews as it is the most persuasive piece of information in both online and offline social networks. These results suggest that ‘social customers’ must be considered as an integral part of a marketing strategy.