Journal articles on the topic 'Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria'

Purpose This paper aims to provide a comprehensive record of the development of Thai advertising, which started as being heavily influenced by the West and subsequently evolved with a unique style that fits well with the global advertising trends. Design/methodology/approach The analysis was done based on literature review and content analysis of Thai advertising. In addition, ten in-depth interviews were conducted with executives of the Advertising Association of Thailand and academics. Findings Thai advertising progressed from being influenced by the growth of transnational advertising agencies. This resulted in strong creative foundations that blended well with the unique Thai emotional flair. In addition, consumer protection has grown in importance, leading to a strong commitment in pushing for self-regulation. Research limitations/implications Examination of Thai advertising shows that the strength of Thai advertising lies in its human resources. This exploration of challenges and success of Thai advertising has shed light on how the advertising industry can be developed for creativity leadership in the global arena. The limitation is that the paper misses interviews with digital agencies. Practical implications This paper provides a comprehensive presentation of Thai advertising history in terms of agency development, creativity, and self-regulation. Originality/value This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the Thai advertising industry based on agency ownership and growth, creativity development leading to the unique Thai emotional advertising and self-regulation.

This study investigated motivating and inhibiting (perceived sacrifice, privacy concerns) factors influencing undergraduate students' perceived advertising value and response to intrusive advertisements on mobile applications. Descriptive survey approach and multistage sampling were adopted. Data was collected from 311 four hundred level undergraduate students of University of Ibadan, Nigeria using structure questionnaire. Findings revealed that utilization of contextual information and perceived sacrifice were the strongest determinants of perceived advertising value of intrusive advertisements. Perceived control and privacy concerns were the strongest determinants of both responses to purchase and avoid advertised products. Trust and perceived sacrifice had the strongest influence on response to pass along advertisement to family and friends, while utilization of contextual information significantly determined response to search for more information on the advertised product. The study discusses implications of findings for mobile advertising agencies.

Advertising on the Internet showed fascinating results in Russia in 2019 – according to the statistics of the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia (ACAR), the Internet was the only growing platform of advertising distribution, while such channels as TV, radio and printed media shortened their advertising profits. Along with growth of the online advertising market the interest and attention to legal aspects of digital advertising is increasing. Cases on digital advertising are always creative just like advertising itself is. The main challenges relate to the application of regular requirements of the advertising law, which are already well understood in the TV or radio business, to the Internet. While doing this, we in Russia also take into account international experience and trends in the field of digital advertising and try to predict further development of legal landscape and practice.

Language is the chief means by which humans communicate among themselves; it is also a veritable means of socialisation. In essence, language is an important arsenal used to influence others around us. Clive Johnson and Jackie Keddie (2011) assert that “the impact of what and how we communicate can be very profound for others”. This paper examines the use of language in the advertising industry and posits that in advertising, not only is language used to inform or sensitize, but it is also used to deceive. Language has immense power, and its impact depends entirely on how we wield it. Advertising has a great influence on our purchasing decisions. Consumers are exposed to countless commercial messages everyday “persuading them to buy brand name products”. This is achieved through certain contrivances, which the paper fully discusses. The searchlight of this paper beams on such questions as: does advertising tempt us into buying things we don’t need; does it affect us subliminally in ways we can’t control; how much latitude should marketers have in the kind of products they promote and how they advertise them; do consumers have some responsibilities in the process; what is the proper role of government, especially in protecting the consumers? In sum, the paper sets for itself the task of determining the “border line” between persuasion and deception, in the language of advertisement. It finds that through the subtle means of “appealing” and “persuading, certain deceptive contrivances and even outright falsehood are sued to hoodwink the consumer. The implications are that consumers are “tricked” to buy what they don’t really need; advertisers “overstretch” claim on their products and services; and, finally the advertising, not the product itself, becomes the selling point. It also recommends among others that the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Advertisement Practitioners’ Council of Nigeria and such other regulatory agencies should be empowered to verify all claims in advertisements before such claims are published.

This paper is aimed at exploring African children's attitudinal reactions to television advertisements. A total of 65 children from four African countries - Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda - participated in 12 focus group discussions on the subject matter. Findings suggest that they like television advertising in relation to its entertainment features - especially when the messages feature children characters, cartoons, music, celebrities and humour - and those promoting foods. They also derive excitement from advertising messages that are presented in Pidgin language and/or humorously integrated with local languages. However, they have an aversion to messages that terrify them and those they consider boring. This paper supplements the existing literature on the attitudes of children to advertising, but from Africa as a different contextual platform. It also suggests directions for the effective use of marketing communications strategies in relation to television advertising for marketers and other bodies with special roles in communicating with children such as government agencies and NGOs.

Shortly after the end of World War II, on 11 December 1945, James Webb Young, Chairman of the Advertising Council and Director of the J. Walter Thompson Company, spoke to the annual meeting of the American Association of Advertising Agencies at the Continental Hotel in Chicago. The title of his speech was, “What Advertising Learned From the War,” and in it Young talked about an immediate post-war period that was, by most accounts, an exuberant time for an America flushed by a victory that finally marked it as a true global power. The American government proclaimed it, the American people believed it, and American business stood ready to sell it through an advertising industry that itself had come of age during, and because of, the war.

The study examined the relationship between green marketing and competitive advantage of table water production in Nigeria. The objective of the paper is to investigate green marketing and competitive advantage in the production of table water in Nigeria. 227 table water companies/factory formed the sample of the study drawn randomly across Edo State, Nigeria. The study used Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple regression method to analyse the data collected from respondents. The study’s findings reveal that eco-labelling had no significant relationship with competitive advantage while environmental advertising was found to be significant and positively related to competitive advantage in the table water industry in Nigeria. The study recommended that table water companies/factories should obtain eco-certification of their table water from certification agencies as well as embarking on green advertisement devoid of greenwash. Keywords: advertisement, eco-labelling, green, certification, competitive.

This study investigated the compliance of marketers of agrochemicals with the approved and banned cocoa pesticides in selected cocoa producing states of southwest Nigeria. Primary data was collected through the use of structured questionnaire administered to randomly selected agrochemical marketers. All the marketers (100%) were aware of the recently banned cocoa pesticides, however, majority still have the pesticides in stock. About 70.6% of the marketers in Osun state and 58.8% in Ogun state stated that they did not receive information on the banned pesticides from government agencies but through other channels. More than half of the marketers (52.9% in Ogun, 55% in Kwara and 47.1% in Osun) strongly disagreed that government should place a ban on pesticides. Availability of banned pesticides in their stock, insufficient information from the concerned government agricultural agencies, and fear of short supply of approved pesticides are among the reasons proffered by the marketers for not supporting the ban of pesticides. Relevant government regulatory agencies should conduct a comprehensive inventory of pesticides offered for sale by the marketers of agrochemicals. There should be massive public awareness programme, and wellcoordinated association for all the marketers of agrochemicals. Agrochemical manufacturers should translate instructions and warnings on pesticide labels to local languages understood by the farmers.

In 1926, President Coolidge delivered an address to the American Association of Advertising Agencies in which he acknowledged and praised the role played by advertising in the economic life of the nation. His speech was fraught with cultural contradictions: one moment he affirmed the traditional values of industry and thrift, and the next moment, almost in the same breath, he heralded the idea of increased spending and consumption. The address reflected the small-town ideology of a government leadership trying to remain convinced that modern-day advertising posed no threat to the 19th-century work ethic. The ideological dividedness of Coolidge's speech brings to mind a man happily sawing away at the branch on which he is sitting. Advertising is “not an economic waste”:[R]ightfully applied, it is the method by which the desire is created for better things. When that once exists, new ambition is developed for the creation and use of wealth.

The article focuses on the problems of the rapidly developing segment of the advertising line - outdoor advertising. The results of studying the dynamics and structure of the outdoor advertising market allowed to consider this segment promising, since outdoor advertising is the only media channel, in which sales have steadily increased over the past ten years. It has been stated that outdoor advertising irritates a relatively small number of respondents (14%); for comparison: TV advertising - 56%, Internet advertising - 67% of respondents. The structure of the advertising market of the Russian Federation from 2008 to 2019 has been analyzed. The analysis has illustrated that the most significant segment of the global outdoor advertising market is roadside billboards; second and third places are occupied by street furniture and transit advertising. Roadside billboards are being phased out in many markets due to tightening legislation; according to the experts, by 2021 the share of this segment will decrease by 4%. The research was carried out taking into account the data of such businesses as MAGNA and the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia. The US has the world's largest outdoor advertising market; Japan has the highest outdoor advertising spending. The key factors that ensure the priority of outdoor advertising in comparison with other advertising media are highlighted: wide audience coverage, largest advertising space, relatively low cost of advertising contact, variety of types and formats of advertising structures, etc. Topical problems are formulated that hinder the further growth of the studied segment: low level performance and quality of visual content, difficulties in assessing the effectiveness of outdoor advertising.

Extant studies in the literature have found that informal entrepreneurship education has concentrated largely on technical skills and has continually ignored the current needs of informal entrepreneurs at the stage of entry and development performance of most informal enterprises. In spite of Africa informal sector that accounted for 85.5% informal enterprises in size than other continents, yet, it is worrisome that the sub-Saharan Africa contribution of informal sector to gross domestic product (GDP) between 2000 and 2010 has dropped from 63.6% to 55%, resulting to rising poverty rate, alarming youth unemployment rate, higher enterprises closure rate, and indeed, declining unstable enterprises. As such, this study empirically examines the impact of informal entrepreneurial network education on women’s enterprises sustainability in Nigeria, using NECA Women entrepreneurs association. To achieve this specific objective, the study decomposed informal entrepreneurial network into three networks, the NECA Women entrepreneurs association, the Government agencies association, and the social media platform and the average value represent the informal entrepreneurial network education to regress on the dependent variable, the women enterprises sustainability. A total of 100 questionnaires were distributed and administered via the google survey from the six-geopolitical regions in Nigeria. The study employed statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS) to estimate the research questions and the impact of informal entrepreneurial network education on women enterprises sustainability, using descriptive statistics and OLS regression respectively. The descriptive results found that of the three informal entrepreneurial networks, NECA women association exhibited a strong interactive (3.28 of 5.00 Likert scale) entrepreneurial network education than use of government agencies and social media platform that exhibited weak interactive (1.8 and 1.94 of 5.00 Likert scale) enterperneurial network education among informal entrepreneurs in Nigeria. In addition, OLS regression result found that all three informal entrepreneurial networks education has a 38.9% impact on women’s enterprises sustainability within the study periods of October and December, 2020 in Nigeria at 1% level of significance. Based on the results, the study concluded that NECA women entrepreneurial interactive network outperformed both government agencies and social media interactive networks and thus, the study recommends that the NECA women entrepreneurs should consolidate more than the economic perspective by extending to the remaining triple bottom line factors such as environmental and social factors as to meet both current needs and future generation needs of the enterprises stakeholders in this study.

Abstract This study examines the social factors that underpin the feeling of safety among residents in metropolitan Lagos. The paper is anchored on the instrumental and expressive theories of fear of crime and feeling of safety. It utilized quantitative data that were generated from 1,107 community members aged 18 who were drawn from four Local Government Areas of Lagos state. The study found a strong positive association between sex, employment, ethnicity, income; perceived neighbourhood crime level, experience of victimization, neighbourhood disorderliness and feeling of safety.It was recommended that relevant agencies of government-the police especially, must strive harder to improve citizens’ feeling of safety, because of its profound implications for the flourishing of democracy, economic development, social capital, associational life and the quality of life.

Solid waste management is a disturbing issue in Nigerian cities as waste generation is increasing. The informal waste management sector has intensified efforts partly due to failure of government to manage waste effectively in the country. Hence, this study focuses on activities of waste recyclers in a rapidly growing city of Nigeria Ota in Ogun State. Its specific objectives are to examine spatial attributes of recycling depots, and examine recycling potentials and challenges. Data were obtained through semi-structured interview and observation. 11 recycling depot operators (recyclers) were purposively interviewed out of 20 operators making up the Recyclers Association. Majority of recycling depots are secured on a lease agreement with monthly rent ranging from N4,000 (US$11.11) to N21,667 (US$60.19). 72.7% recyclers are motivated by job opportunities made possible by recycling: 65% of recycling workers at the recymonthly salary is between N4,500 (US$12.50) and N15,000 (US$41.67). Major challenges of recyclers are lack of funds, complaint by neighbors and non-recognition by the government. Recycling depots are not regulated by government agencies and thus, recycling depots develop without planning permits. Finally, recommendations toward achieving sustainable recycling were presented.

This study aims to observe the gender role portrayal in food and non-food television advertisement in Pakistan, in order to find out gender discrimination (if any) and association of gender with different content variables. Content analysis of selected TV commercials was used to fulfill the purpose of this study. Services of two independent coders (business graduates) were utilized to code content variables for a sample of 103 commercials (54 food and 49 non-food commercials). Based on the extant literature, seven content variables were selected for this study including: main product user, voiceover, primary character, end comment, soundtrack level, activity level and aggression level. The gender role portrayals in both food and non-food commercials have been compared and discussed. There exists gender discrimination in Pakistani television advertisement, where males dominate more. The reason behind this phenomenon is expected to lie in social and cultural values. This male dominance is higher in food advertisement as compared to non-food advertisement. Results also favor the association of male character with the relatively higher activity and aggression levels in television commercials. The findings of this study are supportive for key players in advertising industry like advertisers and advertising agencies, for self-regulation of their advertising campaigns with respect to gender role. However, more important implication for them is to know about the forces of traditional cultural values and preferences of target audience, for effective planning of the commercials and forecasting their impact. Such knowledge can provide them a better base to assess the need for self-regulation of their advertising campaigns, guiding them towards making more successful commercials. This study reflects the true picture of gender discrimination in Pakistani television advertisement. It has been concluded using a well defined methodology, provides original data for Pakistan and can be considered a good reference for further analysis.

This study examined the effect of International Financial Reporting Standards on value relevance of accounting information of quoted firms in Nigeria. The objective is to examine if International Financial Reporting Standards affect value relevance of accounting information. The study focus on the commercial banks, manufacturing firms, insurance, government agencies and the oil and gas firms, questionnaires were structured and administered to accountants and finance managers. The data analyses adopted was the simple percentages and correlation coefficient. The results found a coefficient of 85.1 %, R2 and adjusted R2 of 60.3% and 51.4 %. We conclude that there is significant relationship between International Financial Reporting Standard and value relevance of accounting information of quoted firms in Nigeria. We therefore recommend full compliance to the International Financial Reporting Standard, audit firms should adopt fully the International Financial Reporting Standard and Nigerian accounting bodies such as Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and Association of National Accountants of Nigeria should endeavor to encourage the auditing firms on the relevance of adopting International Financial Reporting Standard.

This study investigated those factors which influenced the adoption of Moringa olefera as water purifier by the farmers in Kaduna state. Data were collected with the aid of structured questionnaire from 30 respondents. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and logit regression model. The results showed that the respondents had one form of education or the other. About 90 percent were married average household size of 10 persons per household. About 73 percent adopted Moringa oleifera water purification. Socio-economic factors influencing adoption of Moringa oleifera water purification were age, education, extension contact and membership of cooperative. The study therefore recommends that farmers should form themselves into association because such association will aid in collective soliciting for government assistance, NGOs and other funding agencies. Also, more awareness should be created by the extension agents on the importance of Moringa oleifera seed powder in rural development.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) infection is increasing steadily in Nigeria. The aim of this study is to assess the perception of people living in low income and densely populated area about COVID-19. This study was carried out in one of the most popular low income area (Abakpa-Nike) in a major city in South East, Nigeria (Enugu). Four hundred questionnaires were administered to heads of the household in this community. A return rate of 77.5% was achieved. Descriptive (frequency, percentages, weighted average and median) and inferential statistics were used for the study. Our tests show that females are more likely to use facemask more frequently than males (p=0.000). However, there is no association between gender and frequent use of hand sanitizers (p=0.06). also, no association exists between gender and regular observation of social distancing (p=0.272). There was also an association between educational status and perception that Nigeria’s tropical climate “kills” COVID-19 virus (p=0.021). No association exist between educational status and the perception that Nigerians immune system is “stronger” than COVID-19 virus (p=0.147). Therefore, National Center for Diseases and Control, Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 and pertinent state agencies should put into consideration educational attainment and economic status of the people in communication output.

Nigeria is regarded as the giant of Africa because of its huge oil resource wealth. For years the country has been restoring peace in troubled countries. It also has the support of world leaders because of its strong advocacy against corruption and terrorism. This achievement in the global governance agenda is a blessing. However, the problem of corruption and mismanagement is a curse. In the context of the curse or blessing debate in oil-rich countries, it is clear from evidence that the experience of Nigeria is a mixed blend of blessing and curse. Exploratory research design was used for the study, and data analyses showed positive association between poor public management and public governance failure, as a result of the gross negative effect. To mitigate such a negative trend, it was recommended that government should institute management teams in government, departments, agencies, and parastatals to monitor the use of public resources for public good.

This paper investigated the capacity building needs of poultry farmers for quail production in Kwara State, Nigeria. A questionnaire was used to elicit information from 80 randomly sampled poultry farmers from the Poultry Association of Nigeria, Kwara State Chapter. The findings revealed that the majority (70.0%) of the poultry farmers were male with a mean age of 44 years, married (75.0%) and formally educated (98.75%). The poultry farmers were mostly (78.75%) small-scale producers rearing less than or equal to 500 birds on their farms. Capacity building was highly needed for quail husbandry and management practices, feeding and nutrition, housing and equipment, processing and marketing of products, among others. Seven challenges were identified by the poultry farmers as severe challenges militating against the diversification of their poultry enterprise to include quail production. Chi-square analysis revealed a significant relationship between the poultry farmers? capacity building needs for quail production and their age (X2 = 5.545), educational level (X2 = 11.859) and years of farming experience (X2 = 9.604). It was recommended that extension agencies should package a robust training programme for poultry farmers on the areas of capacity deficiencies indicated for quail production.

This study analysed the effect of social capital on food security status of rural farm households in Enugu state, Nigeria. Multistage random sampling technique was employed in collecting data from 180 farm households using structured interview schedule. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, food security index, Tobit regression and Pearson product moment correlation. Results showed that the farm households had mean monthly food expenditure/consumption of ₦14,600. Result of social capital dimensions showed that the farm households belonged to at least 2 associations and had cash contribution index of 68.01% and participated in two out of three decision making processes of their association. Result also showed that 58.33% of the farm households were relatively food secure. Result of Tobit regression analysis showed that cash contribution index, membership density index, association heterogeneity index and decision making index significantly influenced the rural farm households’ food security status. The Pearson correlation analysis showed that there was a significant positive correlation between social capital and food security status of the farm households at 5% level. The study recommends that relevant agencies with mandate to enhance food security status of farm households should make policies aimed at promoting membership of farmers to local agricultural associations/cooperatives where opportunities for access to social capital abound. Keywords: Farm households, food security, social capital

Primary Health Care programs should not stop with the training of PHW's. Not only do these village-based workers need regular supervision; they also need continual access to the resources required for them to carry out their duties. Formal health agencies have had difficulties in meeting these demands for supervision and management on the scale required to bring health to all in even the remotest hamlet. There is consequently a need to look for ways that a community can manage its own PHC program. Efforts to develop a PHW Association in Idere, Nigeria, have shown that self-management is a realistic goal. They have also shown the need for health educators to focus on organizational and leadership development as part of their contribution to primary health care.

AbstractDuring the twentieth century, Obasinjom became one of the best known and most effective cult agencies in the Cross River area of Cameroon and Nigeria. This paper aims at reconstructing the history of Obasinjom and some of its variants. Unlike many other witch-hunting cults, Obasinjom usually did not disappear after accomplishing the immediate job for which it was acquired. The owners additionally desired to possess the institution because it created wealth, influence and prestige for them as well as their village as a whole. Obasinjom and other cult agencies (as well as women's and men's societies and dance associations) spread from village to village across ethnic or language boundaries. Along with their dissemination, something of their identities and agency diffused and was incorporated into their histories over time and space. As intellectual property they were owned by the buying village and at the same time remained the property of the selling village. Obasinjom, as well as more important institutions, created decentralised networks of owners who had no definite knowledge of all the other participants. The recently formed pan-Obasinjom association, however, has changed this situation and, at least among some owners, created a feeling of identity and a greater sense of unity.

Purpose High dispositional optimism is often associated with people engaging in behaviour that has adverse effects on their health such as smoking. This study aims to investigate people’s intention to adopt preventive health behaviour by observing the effectiveness of anti-smoking ads during the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Design/methodology/approach Two studies have been carried out, first with a UK sample and second with the US sample. The studies examined the effectiveness of anti-smoking ad (appeal: high fear vs low fear), smoking behaviour elicited perception of vulnerability to COVID-19 and dispositional optimism on lowering people’s urge to smoke. Findings The study findings revealed a high fear appeal ad is more effective in lowering people’s urge to smoke. However, this association is significantly mediated by perception of vulnerability to COVID-19. Further, high dispositional optimism was found to moderate the effect of the anti-smoking ad on the perception of vulnerability to COVID-19, although a comparatively smaller effect was observed for the UK sample. Finally, high dispositional optimism significantly moderated the mediation of vulnerability to COVID-19 on lower urge to smoke only for the US sample. Originality/value The study highlights a need for a greater collaborative effort by the public, government, firms in the business of nicotine replacement solutions, socially responsible cigarette and tobacco manufacturing firms and health agencies that may lead to increased preventive health behaviour during the ongoing pandemic.

This study investigated the determinants of access to credit among cocoa farmers in Osun state, Nigeria. Specifically, the study described the socio-economic characteristics of cocoa farmers in the study area, examined the factors affecting access to credit by cocoa farmers in the study area; and identified the constraints faced by cocoa farmers in credit acquisition. The study was conducted in Osun state, south-western Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used for selecting respondents for this study. A total number of 180 farmers were selected for the study. Data were analyzed using Descriptive statistics and logit Regression. The results for the entire respondents showed average values of 46 years for age, 25 years for year of experience, 8 persons for household size, and about 88% of the respondents have formal education. Farm size (p<0.05), income (p<0.05) and years of schooling (p<0.05) show significant and positive effects on access to credit. On the other hand, gender (p<0.05), distance to credit source (p<0.1) and interest rate (p<0.01) are significant but have negative effects on access to credit by cocoa farmers in the study area. Majority (85.6%) of the cocoa farmers acknowledged lack of collateral security as a constraint in credit acquisition, while about 71.1 % acknowledged that high interest rate was a factor hindering credit acquisition. Other factors are acknowledged in the following order: Bureaucratic procedures 60.6%, lack of information about available credit sources 45%, mode of repayment 40%, no credit association 31.1% and non- membership of farmers’-based organization had 23.3%. Following the findings of the study, government, non-governmental agencies and financial institutions should provide cocoa farmers with adequate access to credit facilities and soft loans with low interest and without collateral security. In addition, cocoa farmers should be educated on the acquisition of credit. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. Tech. 9(2): 57-61, December 2019

The exploration and mining of Nigerian barite are primarily by artisanal and small-scale miners (ASM) whose operations are characterized by poor productivity. As a result, the quantity and quality of barites produced do not satisfy the nation’s oil sector demands and other industries that require the mineral. This situation leads to massive importation of the mineral with negative impact on the country’s drive toward increasing the contribution of solid minerals to the gross domestic product (GDP). This study reviews the existing policies and government interventions on ASM of Nigerian barite; evaluates the operations of ASM through a survey of mines in Nasarawa state, Nigeria; identifies factors that affect sustainability of the sector and proffers solutions to foster sustainability of ASM of barite in the region. The study adopted the 4Is optimization technique (Information gathering, Interpretation, Implication, and Implementation) through personal interactions with the stakeholders at the barite mining sites, and government agencies, regarding policies and interventions specific to ASM of barite. Challenges identified include: weak implementation and enforcement of mining laws; inadequate support from government and development partners; poor access to mining equipment and technology; poor infrastructure (access road, water, electricity); poor pricing of products (marketing challenges); poor remuneration of mine workers; poor mining skills; inadequate formal education; limited awareness on environmental health and safety hazards; fragility and conflict; insufficient information and data on mines and miners; security issues; lack of access to finance; lack of formalization of operations and poor legal framework for operations. The strategies suggested for fostering the sustainability of ASM of barites include: enhanced policy and legislation formulation and implementation, strengthening of institutions, formalization of ASM operations, training of miners, awareness campaign, improvement in environmental and safety of operations, empowerment and support by government and development partners for individual miners and processors and organized groups within the sector (such as Miners Association of Nigeria, Association of Miner and Processors of Barite, AMAPOB). Implementation of these strategies will lead to sustainable operations of the sector and hence improved rural livelihoods, stimulation of entrepreneurship in an environmentally responsible manner, and improvement in the contribution of the mineral sector to the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), and hence national development.

Abstract Background Nigeria is a significant tobacco market and influential country in Africa. Nigeria ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2005. We reviewed Nigeria’s tobacco control legislation since 2000 and compliance of the National Tobacco Control Act (NTCA) 2015 with the FCTC. Methods We reviewed the National Tobacco Control Bills 2011 (proposed by legislature) and 2014 (proposed by Executive), the NTCA 2015, and media stories on tobacco control from 2008 to 2017. Results The NTCA, despite being more comprehensive than Nigeria’s first Tobacco Smoking (Control) law of 1990, maintained provisions promoted by the tobacco industry, for example: allowing designated smoking areas in hospitality venues, higher educational institutions, and transportation venues; a loophole in the advertising restrictions allowing communications with consenting adults; and having the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) (which includes tobacco companies) on the National Tobacco Control Committee charged with working with the Ministry of Health to implement the law. The industry is also directly involved with the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) in preparing regulations on cigarette constituents and emissions. In an unprecedented step globally, the law requires that implementing regulations be approved by the National Assembly, giving the industry another opportunity to weaken this law further by lobbying the legislators to favor the industry. As of January 2018, the law was still not being enforced. Conclusion The NTCA can be strengthened through implementation guidelines still being developed. The industry should be prevented from interfering with through MAN and SON, as required by FCTC Article 5.3. Implications The tobacco industry works to block Framework Convention on Tobacco Control implementation even after a country ratifies the treaty. The Nigerian case illustrates that it is essential for health authorities to remain vigilant and ensure that the tobacco industry does not play a decision-making role in the process of tobacco legislation and regulation either directly or indirectly. The unprecedented step of requiring approval of implementing regulations for the Nigerian law should not be allowed to become a precedent in other countries.

AbstractThis study assessed the constraints faced by commercial poultry farmers in waste management practices in Kogi and Kwara States, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used to elicit information from randomly selected 138 and 125 registered commercial poultry farmers from both states, giving a total sample size of 263 for the study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse the data for the study. Results of analysis showed that mean age was 46.7 years, farm size was 991 birds and poultry farming experience was 11 years. Also, majority were male (82.0 %), married (88.8 %), had tertiary education (94.0 %). Mean age of farm was 9 years. Poultry dropping was the most (mean = 2.36) generated waste in the study area. The most prevalent waste management methods used by poultry farmers were open dumping around the farm (mean = 2.23), giving wastes free to the public as farmyard manure (mean = 2.16), poultry wastes are dumped in a nearby bush (mean = 2.09), dead birds are buried in a pit near the farm (mean = 2.08), dead birds are thrown into a nearby bush (mean = 2.01) and dead birds are burnt inside a pit or in a heap near the farm (mean = 2.01). The major constraints faced by farmers in waste management practices were lack of awareness on how to use the wastes productively (mean = 4.06), no agricultural land nearby where wastes can be used (mean = 3.69), excessive odour from waste (mean = 3.66), high cost of chemical treatment (mean = 3.56), high transportation cost (mean = 3.24) and high cost of private waste management agencies (mean = 3.01). Results of Multiple Regression Analysis show that poultry wastes used as farm yard manure, burnt and buried in a pit, sun-dried and burnt and given freely to interested farm workers had inverse significant relationship to constraints while dumping of poultry wastes around the farm, nearby bush and to animals such as dogs had positive significant relationship to constraints faced by respondents in waste management. The study concluded that the level of constraints faced by commercial poultry farmers in waste management practices was high (mean = 3.39) in the study area. The study recommends among others the needs for existing poultry farmers association to include programmes that will enlighten members on poultry waste management practices that will not have negative effect upon their birds and the environments.

Purpose This study aims to examine the innovations available in the small-scale palm kernel processing firms in southwestern Nigeria. The sample population of 265 respondents was obtained through respondent-driven sampling tools. The research tools used were questionnaire, personal observations, interviews and secondary data collection approach. The questionnaire was administered to palm kernel processors and elicited information on innovations available in the firms. Both descriptive and inferential statistical techniques were used for data analysis. Design/methodology/approach The study area consisted of Oyo, Ogun, Osun and Ondo states in the southwestern Nigeria, because of the abundant supply of palm kernel as well as the presence of small and medium palm kernel oil (PKO) processing firms. The study population consists of all small palm kernel processing enterprises in these states. A total of 265 firms were purposively selected for the study. The sampling procedure involved the initial purposive selection of a palm kernel processing firm in a location, from where other firms within the locality were then identified. The primary data were collected through the use of questionnaire, interview and personal observation. Findings The results of the study showed that only process, organisational and market innovations were recorded by the palm kernel processing firms. Apart from the sieving operation where majority of the firms (91.30 per cent) used manual method, other unit operations were done mechanically. There was evidence of one or two innovation(s) available in the unit operations of these firms. Also, improvements were carried out occasionally in the process and marketing operations; the major sources of ideas for innovation were from related firms and customers. The organisations where majority of these firms had linkage with were Nigeria Palm Kernel Processing Association, government agencies and customer/suppliers. Research limitations/implications The findings are limited to the south-western part of Nigeria, there is need to extend the study to other states in the southern part where palm produce is the major cash crop. This will assist in making better generalisation on the innovation and innovation capability of the processors in Nigeria. Practical implications The study showed that the palm kernel processing firms experienced low innovation capability which could be due to their weak interactions with the knowledge institutions. Hence, there is need for these palm kernel processing firms to establish strong linkage with the knowledge institutions where their innovation capability can be enhanced. Social implications The findings in this paper can serve as an input to the design of policies that can enhance the innovation capability of the various actors in the value chain. This will assist in preventing wastages, increasing the quantity and quality of products and creating job opportunities. This is because the quality of PKO depends on the processing method; hence, better process innovation will improve the characteristics of the oil and widen its application. Originality/value Much has been written about palm kernel processing in medium and large enterprises, but information is still scanty on the small-scale processing enterprises. This paper contributed to knowledge by examining the innovations existing in the palm kernel processing enterprises in the south-western part of Nigeria and the innovation capability possessed by these enterprises.

The usage of celebrities by the Indian advertising agencies has experienced a phenomenal increase in the last five years. Effective communication between the marketer and the consumers is the need of the hour and celebrity endorsement is a strategy that is perceived as making full use of this opportunity. Most of the countries have adopted this strategy as an effective marketing tool and even India is carving out space for itself in this arena. The present study attempts to meet three objectives: to identify the mode⁄s in which a celebrity is depicted in Indian television commercials to ascertain relationship (if any) between the category of product endorsed and the type of celebrity used to identify the correspondence between product categories and mode of celebrity presence. For the first objective of identifying the nature of celebrity portrayal, four modes given by McCracken (1989) were used: Explicit mode (the celebrity overtly declares the product endorsement) Implicit mode (physical or verbal communication is used by the celebrity) Imperative mode (the celebrity suggests the viewers to use the product) Co-present mode (the celebrity only appears with the product). For the second and third objectives, cross-tabulated frequency distribution method was used. Content analysis of Indian television commercials was done for the period 1995–2007. The criterion used for selection of advertisements was the presence of celebrity in any form in the ad. On this basis, 558 television commercials (TVCs) were selected featuring a total of 56 celebrities. The findings of the study indicated that: Around 64 per cent of the commercials used the implicit mode of celebrity portrayal for different product categories. Usage of film celebrities was more extensive than sports celebrities in major product categories. This was probably because the shelf life of fame for a film celebrity is more than that of the sports celebrity. Male celebrities dominated the product categories like food and beverage, automobiles, and consumer durables. The female celebrities were featured majorly in beauty products. No distinct association was found between the product categories considered and the mode used for celebrity portrayal. The study findings contributed to the academia as well as practitioners. For the academia, the study identified the most dominant mode of celebrity advertising in India and found that there was no correspondence between the mode in which a celebrity was portrayed and the product category endorsed. For the practitioners, the study identified the lesser used modes of celebrity endorsements which could be used as opportunities.

The study investigated the adoption of improved rice varieties by farmers in Bende Local Government Area, Abia State, Nigeria. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select a total of 120 rice farmers. Descriptive statistics and tobit regression model were employed to analyze the data. Results showed that cumulatively 73.3% of the farmers fell within the age range of 20-50 years, most (86.7%) of the rice farmers were literate. More than half (57.5%) of the rice farmers are females. Result further indicated that 43.3% had household sizes of 5-8 persons. A fair proportion (33.3%) had been in rice production for 11-15 years, while majority (73.3%) belongs to farmers’ associations. Fairly good (51.6%) were aware of the improved rice varieties and used it, while a substantial number (93.3%) number of the farmers cultivated swamp rice. MAS 240 variety (mean=3.13), Faro 7 variety (mean=2.95), Faro II variety (mean=2.75), Faro 8 variety (mean=2.70.) and Faro 48 variety (mean=2.68) were highly adopted by farmers in the area. The Chi square value of 7.290 was significant at 1.0% probability level and indicates goodness of fit of the model used. Coefficient of age (-0.023), and gender (-1.967) were negative and significant at 10.0% and 1.0% level of probability respectively. The coefficient of education level (0.041), farm size (0.940), farming experience (0.206) and membership of farmers’ association (0.168) were significant at 5.0% and were positively related to adoption of improved rice varieties. Farmers encountered various problems of paucity of funds (35.8%), scarcity of inputs (22.5%), and dearth of information (20.89). Based on these findings it was recommended that rice farmers should form cooperative societies to enable them raise funds for buying agricultural equipment to boost rice production. More young male farmers should be sensitized and motivated by the state government to take up rice production since female farmers dominate rice production in the area. Extension agencies should increase the level of information dissemination and teaching to the rice farmers’ clientele.Key words: Adoption, Improved Varieties, Rice

I have the honour and privilege to welcome you to the Vol. 1 Issue 3 of Indian-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Finance. In this Issue 3, the journal emphasises on accounting information system, corporate governance and risk management, accounting regulation and financial reporting, and accounting. In the first paper with the caption “Examining AIS Software and Co-operatives Performance in Malaysia”, Mr Mohd Hadzrami Harun Rasit (Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, Universiti Utara Malaysia) and Dr Mohammad Azhar Ibrahim (Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, Universiti Utara Malaysia) examine the use of Accounting Information System (AIS) software in the context of Malaysian co-operatives. The objectives of this paper are categorised into two, namely: to document the types of AIS software used by co-operatives, and to examine the relationship between the types of AIS software used and performance of the co-operatives. Furthermore, the paper draws on the resource-based view (RBV) to examine the gap issue. Findings from this study suggest that commercial and developed-in-house AIS software are mostly used by co-operatives. Also, the results reveal that co-operatives performance is not associated with the types of AIS software used by the co-operatives. The research provides valuable insights into the implementation of AIS among Malaysian co-operatives, which has received little attention thus far from academic, governmental and professional bodies. In the second paper with the title “A Review of Financial Distress Prediction Models: Logistic Regression and Multivariate Discriminant Analysis”, Mr Ehsan ul Hassan (School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia), Dr Zaemah Zainuddin (School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia), Dr Sabariah Nordin (School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia) present a review of literature for early prediction of financial bankruptcy. The study contributes to the formation of a systematic review of the literature regarding previous studies done in the field of bankruptcy. It addresses two most commonly used financial distress prediction models, that is, multivariate discriminant analysis and logit regression. Models are discussed with their advantages and disadvantages. After methodological review, the authors advance that logit regression model (LRM) might perhaps have more advantages than multivariate discriminant analysis (MDA) for better prediction of financial bankruptcy. However, accurate prediction of bankruptcy is beneficial to improve the regulation of companies, to form policies for companies and to take any precautionary measures if any crisis is about to come in future. In the third paper captioned “Accounting Regulation and Financial Reporting Quality: Pre-and-Post IFRS Nigeria Evidence”, Philip Jehu (Federal University Kashere, Gombe, Nigeria) and Dr Mohammad Azhar Ibrahim (Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, Universiti Utara Malaysia) examine whether accounting regulation is associated with financial reporting quality in Nigeria. The authors use accrual-based earnings management construct – abnormal accruals as a proxy for financial reporting quality. The study reveals some significant variation in abnormal accruals with the implementation of International financial reporting standards (IFRS) to regulate accounting practice. Similarly, the research finds that the control variables - firm size, leverage, and return on asset have significant effects on financial reporting quality. This study aligns and consistent with previous studies indicating the effectiveness of IFRS adoption in improving financial reporting quality. The study contributes to the discussion on IFRS adoption across reporting environments. Regulatory agencies in Nigeria might need to consider the combined effect of other corporate governance laws to ensure quality reporting. The study is limited by our sample (2009 - 2014), and by the proxies for both accounting regulation and financial reporting quality, the data of which was in most part handpicked. The authors recommend future research to consider perhaps testing the combined effect of other corporate governance variables like audit committees and board characteristics. In the fourth paper entitled “Investigating Ownership Structure, Company Characteristics and Online Environmental Disclosure in Malaysia”, Dr. Ali Saleh Ahmed Al_arussi (Xiamen University Malaysia) and Dr. Redhwan Ahmed Al_dhamari (Tunku Puteri Intan Safinaz School of Accountancy, Universiti Utara Malaysia) focus on environmental disclosure on the Internet and examine whether ownership structure and company characteristics have a significant association with the level of Internet environmental disclosure (IED) amongst Malaysian companies. Six variables – management ownership, government ownership, firm size, level of technology, industry type, and profitability – have been chosen to be examined in this study. Multiple regression analysis is used to test these relationships by analysing the data of 201 online annual reports on the websites of Malaysian companies. The results indicate that government ownership, firm size, level of technology and industry type are positively and significantly associated with IED; management ownership is negatively and significantly associated with IED, and profitability did not show a significant relationship. The results of this paper can be used by regulators to enhance and regulate online environmental reports as it is still voluntary based. In the fifth paper with the title “Examining the Livelihood Assets and Sustainable Livelihoods among the Vulnerability Groups in Malaysia”, Dr Ahmad Zubir Ibrahim (School of Government, Universiti Utara Malaysia), Dr Kalthum Hassan (School of Government, Universiti Utara Malaysia), Dr Roslina Kamaruddin (School of Economics, Finance and Banking, Universiti Utara Malaysia), and Associate Prof. Dr. Abdul Rahim Anuar (School of International Studies, Universiti Utara Malaysia) investigate the relationship between livelihood assets and sustainable livelihoods. The study is in response to the livelihood vulnerability group such as paddy farmers, coastal fishers and rubber tappers in rural areas, which are susceptible to economic shock and climate change such as flood and drought. This condition will, no doubt, jeopardise the livelihoods of this group and hence the research gap. This study adopts quantitative study with stratified sampling method to select a total of 600 respondents from rural areas in Kedah and Kelantan. The findings confirm that physical asset, natural asset and social asset are significantly related to the achievement of sustainable livelihoods. Some recommendations have been highlighted to assist the concerned parties in improving sustainable livelihoods among the vulnerable group in rural areas. As you read through this Vol. 1 Issue 3 of IPJAF, I would like to summarise that the success of the journal depends on your active participation and those of your colleagues and friends through submission of high-quality articles within the journal scope for review and publication. I beseech our revered authors to enjoy the benefits IPJAF provides about mentoring nature of the unique review process that offers high quality and helpful reviews tailored to improving their manuscripts. I acknowledge your support as we endeavour to make IPJAF the most authoritative journal on accounting and finance for the community of academic, professional, industry, society and government.

I welcome you to the Vol. 1 Issue 2 of Indian-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Finance. You will recall in Issue 1, I made known our commitment to publish high-quality, impactful papers and to bring scholars who share our vision and mission into the Editorial Advisory Board. Dr Ishaya John Dabari (Modibbo Adamawa University of Technology, Adamawa, Nigeria) has consented to join the Editorial Advisory Board. I am pleased to welcome him on board. In Issue 2, all the presentations are international research with emphasis on corporate governance and risk management, internal auditing, accounting information system, education, telecommunications, and banking sectors. In the first paper captioned “Effect of Risk Management Committee on Monitoring Mechanisms”, Dr Rachael Oluyemisi Arowolo (Chrisland University), Prof Dr Ayoib B. Che-Ahmad (Universiti Utara Malaysia), and Asst. Prof. Dr Oluwatoyin Muse Johnson Popoola (Universiti Utara Malaysia) examines the influence of risk management committee (RMC) on monitoring mechanisms (MM) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The paper provides empirical supports for RMC association with monitoring mechanisms to reduce agency problems, using the secondary data (2010-2012) of Nigerian non-financial listed companies. The article recommends to the board of Nigerian companies to explore the usefulness of RMC in monitoring the management and controlling shareholders to lessen agency problems and protect the interests of the minority shareholders. In the second paper entitled “Aligning Corporate Governance with Enterprise Risk Management Adoption in the Nigerian Deposit Money Banks”, Dr Ishaya John Dabari (Modibbo Adama University of Technology), Sini Fave Kwaji (Modibbo Adama University of Technology), and Ghazali Zulkurnai (Universiti Utara Malaysia) align corporate governance (CG) with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) adoption in the Nigerian Deposit Money banks (DMBs). Their study used cross-sectional research design, survey method and questionnaire technique to collect data in 21 Nigerian DMBs. Out of 722 questionnaires distributed, 435 were found usable for further analysis through Structural Equation Modeling in Stata. The paper empirically reveals the significant positive relationship between CG and ERM adoption regarding internal audit effectiveness, human resource competency and top management commitment. The study provides insightful results for the banking industry, regulators, practitioners, academia and other stakeholders, perhaps to render assistance in the areas of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. In the third paper titled “Independence and Management Support: The advocate for Internal Auditors’ Task Performance in Tertiary Institutions”, Oyewumi Hassan Kehinde (Universiti Utara Malaysia), Prof Dr Ayoib B. Che-Ahmad (Universiti Utara Malaysia), and Asst. Prof. Dr Oluwatoyin Muse Johnson Popoola (Universiti Utara Malaysia) examine the influence of independence (IND) and management support (MS) on the task performance (TP) of internal auditors in the South-West tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The study formulates and tests two hypotheses on the relationship between IND and TP in one hand, and MS and TP on the other hand. This study employs a quantitative approach, cross-sectional design, and survey questionnaire in obtaining data from 350 internal auditors from the internal audit departments/units of the universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. The results of the PLS-SEM algorithm and bootstrapping reveal positive significant relationships between IND and TP, and the MS and TP, and hence, support the two hypotheses. The paper has a policy implication on the government/private proprietors who are owners of tertiary institutions; management and Council who control the institutions, internal auditors who are operators of internal auditing; regulatory authorities who perform oversight function on the institutions, and professional accounting and auditing bodies. The article adds to the body of knowledge and extends internal audit research to tertiary institutions. In the fourth paper entitled “Examining Information Disclosure on Regulatory Compliance of Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria”, Sini Fave Kwaji (Modibbo Adama University of Technology), Dr Ishaya John Dabari (Modibbo Adama University of Technology) examine the impact of information disclosure on regulatory compliance of telecommunication companies in Nigeria. The study adopted ex-post facto research design, which relies on secondary data collected from the financial statements of three (3) telecommunication companies out of the eight (8) telecommunication companies for the period of 2004 to 2015 and analysed through the multiple regression statistics. The results reveal that computed compliance index of telecommunication companies was above average (av. 75.6%) with the requirements of regulatory agencies. Also, the findings indicate that mandatory information disclosure (MID) recorded a significant impact at 10% (weak compliance), while voluntary information disclosure (VID) showed an effect at 5% (partial compliance). The article makes a clarion call for the enforcement of full compliance by all the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria and therefore, recommends to the National Communication Commission (NCC) to monitor the compliance with the requirements of information disclosure and pursue its objective to achieve best corporate governance practices in Nigerian telecommunication companies. In the fifth paper titled “Examining CAATTs implementation by internal auditors in the public sector.” Dr Aidi Ahmi (Universiti Utara Malaysia), Associate Prof Dr Siti Zabedah Saidin (Universiti Utara Malaysia), and Dr Akilah Abdullah (Universiti Utara Malaysia) investigate the implementation of CAATTs by internal auditors in the Malaysian public sector. Their research reports the results from 12 interviews conducted with internal audit departments in both federal and state levels. The study revealed the implementation of CAATTs by internal auditors in public sector is still low because of lack of expertise, high implementation and maintenance cost, limited access of auditee’s data, and preference to conduct the audit manually. Furthermore, it is not mandatory for them to use CAATTs. The evidence is a contrast with the encouragement made by the government to improve the IT usage in public sector. The results implied that training for future auditors in CAATTs to ensure the successful implementation is crucial and strategic. For CAATTs to be a success, the head of internal audit must possess the awareness about the importance of CAATTs as well as enforcement of its implementation. As you read through this Vol. 1 Issue 2 of IPJAF, I would like to recap that the success of the journal depends on your active participation and those of your colleagues and friends through submission of high-quality articles for review and publication. I reiterate to our prospective authors to enjoy the benefits IPJAF provides about mentoring nature of the unique review process, which offers high quality, and helpful reviews tailored to assist authors in improving their manuscripts. I acknowledge your support as we endeavour to make IPJAF the most authoritative journal on accounting and finance for the community of academic, professional, industry, society and government.

This paper. examins the awareness of poultry farmers on quail production 111 K wara State, Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used to collect information from eighty randomly sampled poultry farmers from the Poultry Association of Nigeria in Kwara State. Majority (75%) of the poultry farmers shows a low awareness level on the characteristics of quail birds and its products. Correlation analysis reveals a significant relationship between the respondents' age, education and their awareness level. It is recommended that extension agencies should improve their efforts on the information and awareness of poultry farmers about quail production.

Attorneys in South Africa may soon be permitted to advertise their services for the first time. This recommendation put forward by the Association of Law Societies, though still to be ratified by the four provincial law societies, has come amid increasing competition between attorneys and non- professionals. The marketing fraternity is, however, uncertain as to how members of the public are likely to react to legal services advertising. This study attempts to provide some tentative guidelines for decision-making on advertising by attorneys. Interested parties like attorneys, marketing consultants, and advertising agencies could use the researched information to structure marketing communication strategies which will not transgress the ethical code of the attorneys' profession, but which will satisfy the information needs of consumers. The study reports the findings of a survey conducted among 1 000 members of the public. Indications are that consumers not only think that advertising should be permitted, but also that it will benefit both themselves and the legal profession. Opsomming Prokureurs mag moontlik binnekort toegelaat word om hul dienste te adverteer. Die aanbeveling van die Vereniging van Prokureursordes, wat nog deur die vier provinsiale wetsgenootskappe bekragtig moet word, is geneem as gevolg van toenemende mededinging tussen prokureurs en nie-professionele praktisyns. Bemarkingsdeskundiges is egter onseker oor wat die publiek se reaksie sal wees. Die studie poog om enkele tentatiewe riglyne voor te stel vir bemarkingskommunikasiestrategieë wat nie die regsprofessie se etiese kode sal oortree nie, maar tog voldoende inligting aan verbruikers sal beskikbaar stel. Die bevindinge van 'n opname onder 1 000 lede van die publiek dui daarop dat reklame nie alleen verwelkom sal word nie, maar dat dit moontlik tot voordeel van sowel die publiek as die regsprofessie sal strek.

This study examines the social causes and effects of corruption on the Nigerian public sector. The study applies the qualitative research method where 19 cases were selected purposively from the Nigerian public sector. Some of the selected cases are key regulatory Federal Government agencies, Education sector, Judiciary, Internal Affairs Ministry and four NGOs such as the Nigerian Labour Congress, Nigeria Bar Association, CSO members and Legal Practitioners. In-depth interviews were conducted across all the selected cases in 2014 and the study used a thematic approach for data analysis. Results showed that some of the civil servants and political office holders embarked on corrupt behavior as a result of a number of causes. However, the study under context limits its finding only on social causes of corruption and the effects. The corrupt behavior exerts its effects on the social institutions, causes a downturn in the people’s well-being and the country’s development at large. The findings serve as guidelines for policy-makers and investors. While this research focused on Nigeria, the implication is universal in scope.

The new and creative marketing strategies came into existence to attract consumers towards the brand by marketing agencies. One of these innovative marketing tools is mobile advergame which is observed as an attractive marketing tactic to enhance product awareness. The present study aims to identify the use of mobile advergame as a brand communication tool in Malaysia. A total of 366Malaysian gamers were taken into consideration as respondents of this study. A structured online based questionnaire wasdesigned for the study and self-brand congruity measurement was adopted to measure an association between consumer’s self-image and characteristics of brand’s value among gamers. The participants were asked about their experiences related to the advertisements occurred during the game. The findings revealed a positive relationship between self-brand congruity’s brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention, entertainment brand recall, and brand attitude. As the main purpose of mobile advergame is to enhance the brand awareness; therefore, a consistency between the product and game content should be identified by the advertising company.

Abstract Background Patent and Proprietary Medicine Vendors (PPMVs) play a major role in Nigeria’s health care delivery but regulation and monitoring of their practice needs appreciable improvement to ensure they deliver quality services. Most PPMVs belong to associations which may be useful in improving their regulation. However, little is known about how the PPMV associations function and how they can partner with relevant regulatory agencies to ensure members’ compliance and observance of good practice. This study sought to describe the PPMV associations’ structure and operations and the regulatory environment in which PPMVs function. With this information we explore ways in which the associations could help improve the coverage of Nigeria’s population with basic quality health care services. Methods A mixed methods study was conducted across four rural local government areas (LGAs) (districts) in two Nigerian states of Bayelsa and Oyo. The study comprises a quantitative data collection of 160 randomly selected PPMVs and their shops, eight PPMV focus group discussions, in-depth interviews with 26 PPMV association executives and eight regulatory agency representatives overseeing PPMVs’ practice. Results The majority of the PPMVs in the four LGAs belonged to the local chapters of National Association of Patent and Proprietary Medicine Dealers (NAPPMED). The associations were led by executive members and had regular monthly meetings. NAPPMED monitored members’ activities, provided professional and social support, and offered protection from regulatory agencies. More than 80% of PPMVs received at least one monitoring visit in the previous 6 months and local NAPPMED was the organization that monitored PPMVs the most, having visited 68.8% of respondents. The three major regulators, who reached 30.0–36.3% of PPMVs reported lack of human and financial resources as the main challenge they faced in regulation. Conclusions Quality services at drug shops would benefit from stronger monitoring and regulation. The PPMV associations already play a role in monitoring their members. Regulatory agencies and other organizations could partner with the PPMV associations to strengthen the regulatory environment and expand access to basic quality health services at PPMV shops in Nigeria.

Aim: To investigate outdoor recreational potentials and constraints in relation to forestry in five recreational sites within Ibadan metropolis, Nigeria. Study design: The survey was purposively conducted in five (5) locations based on recreational potentials associated with forests and other green environments. Place and Duration of Study: Bower’s Tower; UI Zoological Gardens; Polo Club; Trans Amusement Park and Agodi Gardens between January and February, 2019. Methodology: Total enumeration of visitors who patronized the recreation sites during the course of the study was carried out. Structured questionnaires focused on demographic and perception of visitors on benefits and problems of the green recreational centres were sought. In all, 160 respondents were interviewed. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-square to test for association between the demographic factors of respondents and their perceptions towards the benefits of green areas. Results: Most of the visitors were within 21- 40 years (57.5%) old; males (61.2%), unmarried/singles (48.8%) while 89.7% had a tertiary education. Recreational visitors spend between N500:00 and N2000:00 averagely per visit and were acquainted with environmental amelioration benefits such as shade, air purification and watershed protection. Visitors identified poor awareness as a major hindrance towards proper management of the centres. Age, marital status and academic qualifications had significant influence on how respondents spend their leisure using chi-square test at p = 0.01. Age (21–40years) is positively associated with outdoor recreation activities. Conclusion: Tourists in Ibadan are aware of multiple benefits associated with green space recreation. Also visitors of all ages and marital status visit green spaces for recreational activities. It is recommended that efforts should be made by owner agencies to improve recreational facilities in the existing urban green areas such as tree planting for improved landscape and engage trained professionals for improved management.

Housing is a basic need and a human right. The role that housing plays in the social and economic development of a country cannot be underestimated. Interventions in housing by government are widely acknowledged as one of the ways by which the social aspect of the life of the citizenry can be impacted especially through mass housing otherwise called social housing. This paper aims to examine the various potentials in the housing sector in order to enhance the delivery of more housing to Nigerians. A survey research approach was used in the study. Descriptive analysis was employed to explain the potentials in the housing sector. Housing deficit in Nigeria currently stands at about 17 million units. Efforts to meet and rectify the deficit will need a concerted effort of individuals and government. It requires unleashing the potentials in the housing sector to stimulate growth in the economy, thereby diversifying the economy from the mono to a multi sector economy. Interventions of governments at all levels as well as the involvement of informal sector in the housing sector will have a multiplier effect. It will generate multiple employment opportunities which will in turn stimulate the economy through the circulation of money in the system. The paper noted that interventions in housing sector will stimulate industries in the production of local building materials. Additionally, ailing companies will be revitalized, thereby improving the standard of living of the citizens. The paper concludes that strengthening and repositioning of agencies such as the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria, Real Estate Developers Association of Nigeria, Nigeria Mortgage Refinance Company, will accelerate the release of the potentials in the housing sector and thereby enhance the delivery of affordable houses for Nigerians.

The study was conducted in Akko Local Government Area, Gombe state, Nigeria to examine the cost and return analysis of maize-cowpea intercrop enterprise. Data were collected using a structured questionnaire administered to 50 respondents on their socio economic characteristics, inputs and output, cost incurred and the revenue realized for the 2013 production season using random sampling techniques. Descriptive statistics, gross margin analysis and regression analysis were the analytical tools used in analyzing the data. The result showed that majority of the sampled farmers (74.6%) was within the age bracket of 31-50 years with (88.9%) that had one form of education or the other. Fertilizer constituted the bulk (47.6%) of the total cost of production. The gross margin, net farm income and return per naira invested were found to be Naira 21245, Naira 20608, N0. 93 per hectare respectively. Double-log model was chosen as the lead equation, the result further indicated that age, seeds and fertilizer are positively significant at p>_ 0.05 with R2 of 55.4% while educational level hired labor and insecticides gave a negative elasticity of their respective coefficients. Insufficient credit facilities, high cost of inputs pest and diseases and use of manual operation are the major constraints in the study area. Therefore it is recommended that credit delivery from lending agencies, inputs early and resistant varieties and labor saving techniques should be made readily available and affordable to farmers to improve their production with the generation of optimum profit. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbayr.v2i1.20537 Journal of the Bangladesh Association of Young Researchers (JBAYR): Vol.2(1), 2012 & 2013: 9-20

Background: The concerted effort of government and donor agencies to limit fertility by the use of contraceptives has been reported in some studies to predispose to urinary tract infection (UTI). Similar studies have not been conducted in the General Outpatient Department (GOPD) of the University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital (UPTH). Objectives: This study was aimed at assessing the role of contraceptives in the development of UTI amongst adult females attending the GOPD of UPTH.Method: A case control study in which contraceptive users who attended the GOPD of the UPTH in four months, and an equal number of age-matched controls, were screened for UTI. The information obtained from them was entered into a specially designed pre-tested questionnaire for analysis. The results were analysed using SPSS version 14.Results: A total of 150 contraceptive users and controls were evaluated. Their age range was 18–50 years, with a mean of 27.8 ± 5.3 years. Most of the participants belonged to the lower socioeconomic classes. The combined prevalence of UTI amongst the contraceptive users and the controls was 23.7%, with the contraceptive users at 35.3% and the controls at 12.0%. The association of UTI with contraceptive use was statistically significant, with McNemar’s χ2 = 16.28, p = 0.000, odds ratio (OR) = 2.9, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.7 – 5.3, attributable risk (AR) = 23.3, population attributable risk (PAR) = 11.7. The users of barrier contraceptives were more predisposed to UTI (OR = 17.30, 95% CI = 7.49 -39.96).Conclusion: Contraceptive use is a significant risk factor for acquiring urinary tract infection, with the barrier methods being more predisposing. Health education for the hygienic and safe use of family planning methods will prevent long-term complications.

Introduction. In spite of doubts over the safety and nutritional benefits of singed cowhide meat, called ponmo in some parts of Nigeria, and its potential negative impact on the hide and leather industry, consumption in Nigeria and many parts of Africa has continued unabated. Objectives. In the present study, physicochemical and genotoxic assessments of wastewater used to rinse ready-to-cook singed cowhide meat were carried out. Methods. Physicochemical analyses were carried out using the American Public Health Association procedures, while genotoxic assessment was carried out using Allium cepa chromosome assay. Results. The results of the physicochemical analyses indicated that some of the parameters, especially metals, were within the threshold of the limits set by the country's regulatory agencies, but some parameters like phosphate, chloride, nitrate, biological oxygen demand, and chemical oxygen demand were higher in concentration. The wastewater inhibited the growth of A. cepa roots and caused a decrease in its mitotic index relative to the control onions exposed to water only. The highest root growth inhibition of 72.14% was induced by a 10% wastewater concentration, while the lowest (53.57%) was induced by a 5% wastewater concentration. In addition, the wastewater induced bi-nucleated, attached, vagrant, C-mitosis, sticky and bridged chromosomal aberrations. Wastewater at a 5% concentration induced the highest significant (P &lt; 0.05) percentage chromosome aberration of 36.62% at 48 hours of exposure. Sticky chromosomes had the highest significant frequency (P &lt;0.01) at the end of the 72-hour exposure period. No chromosomal aberration was observed in the control. Conclusions. These results indicate that singed cowhide meat wastewater is potentially genotoxic and environmentally harmful. Governments, public health practitioners, and relevant stakeholders should work in synergy to discourage the habit of processing cowhide into cowhide meat. Competing Interests. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Background. Scavengers, due to the nature of their work, are at risk of various occupational hazards while sorting for materials for recycling and sale. They are exposed to blood borne infections such as hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection from injuries from sharps and contact with discarded materials due to non-compliance with standard precautions. Objective. The present study assessed the prevalence of HBV and compliance with safety precautions among scavengers in Ilorin Metropolis, Kwara State, Nigeria. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 236 scavengers (comprised of scavengers dealing with biomedical wastes and those that were not) using structured questionnaires during the first stage of the study and a second testing stage. Data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 20.0 for descriptive and inferential statistics at a 5% level of significance. Results. The prevalence of HBV infection among the scavengers was found to be 17.4%, indicating that scavengers are at high risk of HBV infection. There was a significant difference in the prevalence of HBV among scavengers that handled biomedical wastes and those that did not. The majority of the scavengers (74.2%) did not have knowledge of or use standard precautions such as personal protective equipment (PPE). The level of injuries was considerably high and the treatment of injuries among scavengers illustrated their lack of awareness of the hazards involved in their occupations, as the majority of respondents (51.3%) engaged in self-treatment of occupational injuries. Conclusions. The probable pathway for virus transmission was waste handling, especially biomedical waste, which is mostly handled with bare hands without standard safety precautions. Vaccination against HBV, proper personal hygiene practices, regular training in occupational safety, monitoring by regulatory agencies and inclusion of scavengers in a mandatory health insurance scheme are recommended to control the risk of HBV infection among scavengers. Informed Consent. Obtained Ethical Approval: This study was approved by the Kwara State Ministry of Health Ethical Review Committee. Permission was also granted by the scrap dealers association through the Kwara State Environmental Protection Agency that oversees issues relating to the environment and public health in the state. Competing Interests. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

This study attempts to evaluate culture-dependent microbial and proximate composition of African salad (Abacha) sold at Nkpolu Oroworukwo (mile 3) market, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria. Samples were bought from stationary vendors at market within the months of March, 2019 to March, 2021. Garnished African salad (GAS) and ungarnished African salad (UAS) samples were determined by standard microbiological techniques whereas proximate composition (PC) was analysed by the methods of Association of Official of Analytical Chemists (AOAC) Total aerobic plate counts (TAPCs), total coliform counts (TCCs) and fungal counts (FCs) of GAS were higher 4.5x104CFU/g, 5.3x104CFU/g and 1.1x104CFU/g respectively as against 3.4x104CFU/g, 3.8x104 CFU/g and 0.8x104CFU/g for UAG. Microfloral diversity were more in GAS with species such as Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Klebsiella sp., Micrococcus sp.. Bacillus sp., Enterobacter sp., and Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp., Rhizopus sp., Fusarium sp., Mucor sp., Saccharomyces and Candida species than in UAS. Nutrient composition, energy (116.00Kcal/100g) and pH (6.4) values were higher in GAS. In contrast, only the moisture (62.52±0.53%) and carbohydrate (23.21±0.21%) contents were slightly higher in UAS than those in GAS. The study revealed that African salad’ bioburden was slightly above the microbiological standard limits of International Commission on Microbiological Specification for Foods (ICMSF) and (Public Health Laboratory Service (PHLS) for RTE foods for mesophilic aerobic bacteria (MAB)/TAPC but exceeded that for total coliforms. However, the microbes detected are likely aetiologic agents of several food borne diseases (FBDs) in human and animal pathologies. Therefore, adequate surveillance, monitoring and compliance with hygienic practices and environmental sanitary measures during processing, fortification and distribution should be enforced by regulatory agencies and stakeholders for wholesome and palatable RTE foods.

The brand began, quite literally, as a method for ranchers to identify their cattle. By burning a distinct symbol into the hide of a baby calf, the owner could insure that if it one day wandered off his property or was stolen by a competitor, he’d be able to point to that logo and claim the animal as his rightful property. When the manufacturers of products adopted the brand as a way of guaranteeing the quality of their goods, its function remained pretty much the same. Buying a package of oats with the Quaker label meant the customer could trace back these otherwise generic oats to their source. If there was a problem, he knew where he could turn. More important, if the oats were of satisfactory or superior quality, he knew where he could get them again. Trademarking a brand meant that no one else could call his oats Quaker. Advertising in this innocent age simply meant publicizing the existence of one’s brand. The sole objective was to increase consumers awareness of the product or company that made it. Those who even thought to employ specialists for the exclusive purpose of writing ad copy hired newspaper reporters and travelling salesmen, who knew how to explain the attributes of an item in words that people tended to remember. It wasn’t until 1922 that a preacher and travelling “medicine show” salesman-turned-copywriter named Claude Hopkins decided that advertising should be systematized into a science. His short but groundbreaking book Scientific Advertising proposed that the advertisement is merely a printed extension of the salesman¹s pitch and should follow the same rules. Hopkins believed in using hard descriptions over hype, and text over image: “The more you tell, the more you sell” and “White space is wasted space” were his mantras. Hopkins believed that any illustrations used in an ad should be directly relevant to the product itself, not just a loose or emotional association. He insisted on avoiding “frivolity” at all costs, arguing that “no one ever bought from a clown.” Although some images did appear in advertisements and on packaging as early as the 1800s - the Quaker Oats man showed up in 1877 - these weren¹t consciously crafted to induce psychological states in customers. They were meant just to help people remember one brand over another. How better to recall the brand Quaker than to see a picture of one? It wasn’t until the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, as Americans turned toward movies and television and away from newspapers and radio, that advertisers’ focus shifted away from describing their brands and to creating images for them. During these decades, Midwestern adman Leo Burnett concocted what is often called the Chicago school of advertising, in which lovable characters are used to represent products. Green Giant, which was originally just the Minnesota Valley Canning Company’s code name for an experimental pea, became the Jolly Green Giant in young Burnett’s world of animated characters. He understood that the figure would make a perfect and enticing brand image for an otherwise boring product and could also serve as a mnemonic device for consumers. As he watched his character grow in popularity, Burnett discovered that the mythical figure of a green giant had resonance in many different cultures around the world. It became a kind of archetype and managed to penetrate the psyche in more ways than one. Burnett was responsible for dozens of character-based brand images, including Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna, Morris the Cat, and the Marlboro Man. In each case, the character creates a sense of drama, which engages the audience in the pitch. This was Burnett’s great insight. He still wanted to sell a product based on its attributes, but he knew he had to draw in his audience using characters. Brand images were also based on places, like Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing, or on recognizable situations, such as the significant childhood memories labelled “Kodak moments” or a mother nurturing her son on a cold day, a defining image for Campbell’s soup. In all these cases, however, the moment, location, or character went only so far as to draw the audience into the ad, after which they would be subjected to a standard pitch: ‘Soup is good food’, or ‘Sorry, Charlie, only the best tuna get to be Starkist’. Burnett saw himself as a homespun Midwesterner who was contributing to American folklore while speaking in the plain language of the people. He took pride in the fact that his ads used words like “ain’t”; not because they had some calculated psychological effect on the audience, but because they communicated in a natural, plainspoken style. As these methods found their way to Madison Avenue and came to be practiced much more self-consciously, Burnett¹s love for American values and his focus on brand attributes were left behind. Branding became much more ethereal and image-based, and ads only occasionally nodded to a product’s attributes. In the 1960s, advertising gurus like David Ogilvy came up with rules about television advertising that would have made Claude Hopkins shudder. “Food in motion” dictated that food should always be shot by a moving camera. “Open with fire” meant that ads should start in a very exciting and captivating way. Ogilvy told his creatives to use supers - text superimposed on the screen to emphasize important phrases and taglines. All these techniques were devised to promote brand image, not the product. Ogilvy didn’t believe consumers could distinguish between products were it not for their images. In Ogilvy on Advertising, he explains that most people cannot tell the difference between their own “favourite” whiskey and the closest two competitors’: ‘Have they tried all three and compared the taste? Don¹t make me laugh. The reality is that these three brands have different images which appeal to different kinds of people. It isn¹t the whiskey they choose, it’s the image. The brand image is ninety percent of what the distiller has to sell.’ (Ogilvy, 1993). Thus, we learned to “trust our car to the man who wears the star” not because Texaco had better gasoline than Shell, but because the company’s advertisers had created a better brand image. While Burnett and his disciples were building brand myths, another school of advertisers was busy learning about its audience. Back in the 1920s, Raymond Rubicam, who eventually founded the agency Young and Rubicam, thought it might be interesting to hire a pollster named Dr. Gallup from Northwestern University to see what could be gleaned about consumers from a little market research. The advertising industry’s version of cultural anthropology, or demographics, was born. Like the public-relations experts who study their target populations in order to manipulate them later, marketers began conducting polls, market surveys, and focus groups on the segments of the population they hoped to influence. And to draw clear, clean lines between demographic groups, researchers must almost always base distinctions on four factors: race, age, sex, and wages. Demographic research is reductionist by design. I once consulted to an FM radio station whose station manager wanted to know, “Who is our listener?” Asking such a question reduces an entire listenership down to one fictional person. It’s possible that no single individual will ever match the “customer profile” meant to apply to all customers, which is why so much targeted marketing often borders on classist, racist, and sexist pandering. Billboards for most menthol cigarettes, for example, picture African-Americans because, according to demographic research, black people prefer them to regular cigarettes. Microsoft chose Rolling Stones songs to launch Windows 95, a product targeted at wealthy baby boomers. “The Women’s Global Challenge” was an advertising-industry-created Olympics for women, with no purpose other than to market to active females. By the 1970s, the two strands of advertising theory - demographic research and brand image - were combined to develop campaigns that work on both levels. To this day, we know to associate Volvos with safety, Dr. Pepper with individuality, and Harley-Davidson with American heritage. Each of these brand images is crafted to appeal to the target consumer’s underlying psychological needs: Volvo ads are aimed at upper-middle-class white parents who fear for their children’s health and security, Dr. Pepper is directed to young nonconformists, and the Harley-Davidson image supports its riders’ self-perception as renegades. Today’s modern (or perhaps postmodern) brands don’t invent a corporate image on their own; they appropriate one from the media itself, such as MetLife did with Snoopy, Butterfinger did with Bart Simpson, or Kmart did by hiring Penny Marshall and Rosie O’Donnell. These mascots were selected because their perceived characteristics match the values of their target consumers - not the products themselves. In the language of today’s marketers, brand images do not reflect on products but on advertisers’ perceptions of their audiences’ psychology. This focus on audience composition and values has become the standard operating procedure in all of broadcasting. When Fox TV executives learned that their animated series “King of the Hill”, about a Texan propane distributor, was not faring well with certain demographics, for example, they took a targeted approach to their character’s rehabilitation. The Brandweek piece on Fox’s ethnic campaign uncomfortably dances around the issue. Hank Hill is the proverbial everyman, and Fox wants viewers to get comfortable with him; especially viewers in New York, where “King of the Hill”’s homespun humor hasn’t quite caught on with the young urbanites. So far this season, the show has pulled in a 10.1 rating/15 share in households nationally, while garnering a 7.9 rating/12 share in New York (Brandweek, 1997) As far as Fox was concerned, while regular people could identify with the network’s new “everyman” character, New Yorkers weren’t buying his middle-American patter. The television show’s ratings proved what TV executives had known all along: that New York City’s Jewish demographic doesn’t see itself as part of the rest of America. Fox’s strategy for “humanizing” the character to those irascible urbanites was to target the group’s ethnographic self-image. Fox put ads for the show on the panels of sidewalk coffee wagons throughout Manhattan, with the tagline “Have a bagel with Hank”. In an appeal to the target market’s well-developed (and well-researched) cynicism, Hank himself is shown saying, “May I suggest you have that with a schmear”. The disarmingly ethnic humor here is meant to underscore the absurdity of a Texas propane salesman using a Jewish insider’s word like “schmear.” In another Upper West Side billboard, Hank’s son appeals to the passing traffic: “Hey yo! Somebody toss me up a knish!” As far as the New York demographic is concerned, these jokes transform the characters from potentially threatening Southern rednecks into loveable hicks bending over backward to appeal to Jewish sensibilities, and doing so with a comic and, most important, nonthreatening inadequacy. Today, the most intensely targeted demographic is the baby - the future consumer. Before an average American child is twenty months old, he can recognize the McDonald’s logo and many other branded icons. Nearly everything a toddler encounters - from Band-Aids to underpants - features the trademarked characters of Disney or other marketing empires. Although this target market may not be in a position to exercise its preferences for many years, it pays for marketers to imprint their brands early. General Motors bought a two-page ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids for its Chevy Venture minivan. Their brand manager rationalized that the eight-to-fourteen-year-old demographic consists of “back-seat consumers” (Leonhardt, 1997). The real intention of target marketing to children and babies, however, goes deeper. The fresh neurons of young brains are valuable mental real estate to admen. By seeding their products and images early, the marketers can do more than just develop brand recognition; they can literally cultivate a demographic’s sensibilities as they are formed. A nine-year-old child who can recognize the Budweiser frogs and recite their slogan (Bud-weis-er) is more likely to start drinking beer than one who can remember only Tony the Tiger yelling, “They¹re great!” (Currently, more children recognize the frogs than Tony.) This indicates a long-term coercive strategy. The abstraction of brand images from the products they represent, combined with an increasing assault on our demographically targeted psychological profiles, led to some justifiable consumer paranoia by the 1970s. Advertising was working on us in ways we couldn’t fully understand, and people began to look for an explanation. In 1973, Wilson Bryan Key, a communications researcher, wrote the first of four books about “subliminal advertising,” in which he accused advertisers of hiding sexual imagery in ice cubes, and psychoactive words like “sex” onto the airbrushed surfaces of fashion photographs. Having worked on many advertising campaigns from start to finish, in close proximity to everyone from copywriters and art directors to printers, I can comfortably put to rest any rumours that major advertising agencies are engaging in subliminal campaigns. How do images that could be interpreted as “sexual” show up in ice cubes or elbows? The final photographs chosen for ads are selected by committee out of hundreds that are actually shot. After hours or days of consideration, the group eventually feels drawn to one or two photos out of the batch. Not surprising, these photos tend to have more evocative compositions and details, but no penises, breasts, or skulls are ever superimposed onto the images. In fact, the man who claims to have developed subliminal persuasion, James Vicary, admitted to Advertising Age in 1984 that he had fabricated his evidence that the technique worked in order to drum up business for his failing research company. But this confession has not assuaged Key and others who relentlessly, perhaps obsessively, continue to pursue those they feel are planting secret visual messages in advertisements. To be fair to Key, advertisers have left themselves open to suspicion by relegating their work to the abstract world of the image and then targeting consumer psychology so deliberately. According to research by the Roper Organization in 1992, fifty-seven percent of American consumers still believe that subliminal advertising is practiced on a regular basis, and only one in twelve think it “almost never” happens. To protect themselves from the techniques they believe are being used against them, the advertising audience has adopted a stance of cynical suspicion. To combat our increasing awareness and suspicion of demographic targeting, marketers have developed a more camouflaged form of categorization based on psychological profiles instead of race and age. Jim Schroer, the executive director of new marketing strategy at Ford explains his abandonment of broad-demographic targeting: ‘It’s smarter to think about emotions and attitudes, which all go under the term: psychographics - those things that can transcend demographic groups.’ (Schroer, 1997) Instead, he now appeals to what he calls “consumers’ images of themselves.” Unlike broad demographics, the psychographic is developed using more narrowly structured qualitative-analysis techniques, like focus groups, in-depth interviews, and even home surveillance. Marketing analysts observe the behaviors of volunteer subjects, ask questions, and try to draw causal links between feelings, self-image, and purchases. A company called Strategic Directions Group provides just such analysis of the human psyche. In their study of the car-buying habits of the forty-plus baby boomers and their elders, they sought to define the main psychological predilections that human beings in this age group have regarding car purchases. Although they began with a demographic subset of the overall population, their analysis led them to segment the group into psychographic types. For example, members of one psychographic segment, called the ³Reliables,² think of driving as a way to get from point A to point B. The “Everyday People” campaign for Toyota is aimed at this group and features people depending on their reliable and efficient little Toyotas. A convertible Saab, on the other hand, appeals to the ³Stylish Fun² category, who like trendy and fun-to-drive imports. One of the company’s commercials shows a woman at a boring party fantasizing herself into an oil painting, where she drives along the canvas in a sporty yellow Saab. Psychographic targeting is more effective than demographic targeting because it reaches for an individual customer more directly - like a fly fisherman who sets bait and jiggles his rod in a prescribed pattern for a particular kind of fish. It’s as if a marketing campaign has singled you out and recognizes your core values and aspirations, without having lumped you into a racial or economic stereotype. It amounts to a game of cat-and-mouse between advertisers and their target psychographic groups. The more effort we expend to escape categorization, the more ruthlessly the marketers pursue us. In some cases, in fact, our psychographic profiles are based more on the extent to which we try to avoid marketers than on our fundamental goals or values. The so-called “Generation X” adopted the anti-chic aesthetic of thrift-store grunge in an effort to find a style that could not be so easily identified and exploited. Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying “Whatever.” The members of Generation X are putting up a good fight. Having already developed an awareness of how marketers attempt to target their hearts and wallets, they use their insight into programming to resist these attacks. Unlike the adult marketers pursuing them, young people have grown up immersed in the language of advertising and public relations. They speak it like natives. As a result, they are more than aware when a commercial or billboard is targeting them. In conscious defiance of demographic-based pandering, they adopt a stance of self-protective irony‹distancing themselves from the emotional ploys of the advertisers. Lorraine Ketch, the director of planning in charge of Levi¹s trendy Silvertab line, explained, “This audience hates marketing that’s in your face. It eyeballs it a mile away, chews it up and spits it out” (On Advertising, 1998). Chiat/Day, one of the world’s best-known and experimental advertising agencies, found the answer to the crisis was simply to break up the Gen-X demographic into separate “tribes” or subdemographics - and include subtle visual references to each one of them in the ads they produce for the brand. According to Levi’s director of consumer marketing, the campaign meant to communicate, “We really understand them, but we are not trying too hard” (On Advertising, 1998). Probably unintentionally, Ms. Ketch has revealed the new, even more highly abstract plane on which advertising is now being communicated. Instead of creating and marketing a brand image, advertisers are creating marketing campaigns about the advertising itself. Silvertab’s target market is supposed to feel good about being understood, but even better about understanding the way they are being marketed to. The “drama” invented by Leo Burnett and refined by David Ogilvy and others has become a play within a play. The scene itself has shifted. The dramatic action no longer occurs between the audience and the product, the brand, or the brand image, but between the audience and the brand marketers. As audiences gain even more control over the media in which these interactive stories unfold, advertising evolves ever closer to a theatre of the absurd. excerpted from Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say)? Works Cited Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising. New York: Vintage, 1983. Brandweek Staff, "Number Crunching, Hollywood Style," Brandweek. October 6, 1997. Leonhardt, David, and Kathleen Kerwin, "Hey Kid, Buy This!" Business Week. June 30, 1997 Schroer, Jim. Quoted in "Why We Kick Tires," by Carol Morgan and Doron Levy. Brandweek. Sept 29, 1997. "On Advertising," The New York Times. August 14, 1998 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Rushkoff, Douglas. "Coercion " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>. APA Style Rushkoff, D. (2003, Jun 19). Coercion . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/06-coercion.php>

Introduction‘Dream’ has been researched across numerous fields in its multiplicity within both a physical and emotional capacity. For Pagel et al., there is no fixed definition of what ‘dream’ is or are. However, in an advertising context, ’dream’ is the idealised version of our desires, re-visualised in real life (Coombes and Batchelor 103). It could be said that for countless consumers, advertising imagery has elicited dreams of living the perfect life and procuring material pleasures (Manca et al.; Hood). Goodis asserts, “advertising doesn’t always mirror how people are acting but how they are dreaming, in a sense what we are doing is wrapping up your emotions and selling them back to you” (qtd. in Back and Quaade 65). One component of this notion of ‘dream’ in advertising is captured by wishful images of the face and body in their ‘perfect form’ presented in a field of other beauty ideals. For our purposes, ‘dream’ is a “philosophical concept” (Pagel et al. 14) by which dreams are a series of aspirations and desires that consumers internalise, while at the same time, find difficult to achieve. ‘Dream’, then, will be used to critically explore how the beauty and advertising industries collectively employ ethnic ambiguity in addition to other tactics and strategies to sell us dream-like visions of idealised beauty. Forever Dreaming: The Introduction of Ethnic AmbiguityWe can link dreams to beauty as both areas of analysis contain many cultural interpretations and can be deconstructed to reveal different meanings (Sontag). In many ways, beauty is another dream and Sontag notes that the concept of beauty is often linked to certain physical traits that an individual possesses. These physical traits are capitalised upon by product marketing by which Hood claims, aims to enhance one, or even more, of them. For example, lipstick is not marketed as simply as a mixture of wax and pigment but rather a way to “obtain beauty, find romance or gain confidence” (7). As a result, global beauty brands can find long term marketing success through meaningful product marketing. This long-term marketing success relies on influencing human behaviour and perceptions. As a result of meaningful marketing, consumers may find themselves driven to purchase implicit qualities in products advertised to reflect their dreams (Hood).Following the 1980s, this version of meaningful marketing has become a driving purpose for advertising agencies around the globe (Steel). Advertising agencies rely on deeper human insights, identifying latent desires to create a brief that must ultimately sell a dream (Steel). The ideal strategy needs to define something that will build brand loyalty and encourage consumers to have a symbiotic relationship connecting their dreams with the product being sold. As Hood argues, “advertising consists of selling not just things but also dreams”. While this concept is one that “some see as inherently damning”, it is also inherently necessary (7). We understand that people are emotional beings, investing in the artefacts they build, obtain or use with significance “beyond merely utilitarian” (7). For these reasons, beauty advertisers act as the purveyors of dreams in the form of physical perfection as an articulation of consumer’s own aspirations of beauty.These aspirations of dream beauty are a direct representation of our thoughts and feelings. As such, it should be noted that we as consumers are often encouraged to draw inspiration from imagery that is often times seen as ethnically ambiguous. “Ethnic ambiguity” is the absence of any one prominent ethnic or racial feature that is easily discernible to one specific group (Garcia 234; Harrison et al.). An example of this ethnic ambiguity can be seen in marketing campaigns by high end makeup artist and her eponymous range of cosmetics, Charlotte Tilbury. Most notably, in a 2015 launch for her “Makeup Wardrobe”, Tilbury’s makeup palettes boasted 10 aspirational ‘looks’ and personas that could be achieved simply through purchase. The images of women featured on a figurative ‘wheel of fortune’ digital display used to market products online. This digital ‘wheel of fortune’ comprised of ethnically ambiguous models against descriptive persona’s such as “The Dolce Vita” and “The Glamour Muse”. These kinds of digital marketing tools required consumers to make a decision based on what their dream ‘look’ is through an ethnically ambiguous lens and from here are guided to purchase their desired aesthetic. Like Charlotte Tilbury, the beauty industry has seen a growing body of cosmetic brands that employ ethnic ambiguity to sell dreams of homogenised beauty. We will see the ways in which modern day beauty brands, such as Kylie Jenner Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty have come to adopt ethnic ambiguity or embrace entire ethnic and racial groups in order to expand their consumer influence.Aspirational Ambiguity: Dreams of DisempowermentSince the early 2000s, beauty advertising has seen a prominent rise in the use of ethnically ambiguous models. Some see this as an effort to answer the global desire for diversity and inclusion. However, the notion that beauty standards transcend racial boundaries and is inclusive, is simply another form of appropriating and fetishising ethnicity (R. Sengupta). In many ways, these manufactured dream-like versions of beauty have evolved to reach wider markets, in the hope that consumers will be emboldened to both embrace their racial heritage, and at the same time conform to homogenised standards of beauty (Frith et al.; Harrison et al.).In this bid to diversify and extend consumer reach, there are three prominent reasons why ethnically ambiguous models are more likely to be featured over models whose African, Indigenous, and/or Asian heritage is more prominent. Firstly, ethnically ambiguous models do not seem to conform to a particular notion of what is considered beautiful. For many decades, popular culture has been saturated with images of thin, of young, of narrow noses and hips, of blonde, blue eyes, and Caucasian hair textures (Harrison et al.; Hunter; Saraswati). These Westernised beauty ideals have been historically shaped through years of colonial influence, grounded in an imbalance of power and imposed to create a culture of dominance and oppression (Saraswati). Secondly, ethnic models are featured to convey “the sense of the ‘exotic’, and their ‘otherness’ acts to normalise and entrench the dominant ideal of white beauty” (qtd. in Redmond 175). ‘Otherness’ can be defined as the opposite of the majority, in Westernised society this ‘other’ can mean “people who are other than white, male, able bodied, heterosexual” (qtd. in Graycar 74). This ‘otherness’ showcased by ethnically ambiguous models draws viewers in. Physical features that were possessed by one specific ethnic group such as African, Asian, Latinx or Indigenous peoples have now become blended and are no longer confined to one race. Additionally, ethnically ambiguous models enable white consumers to dream about an exotic local or lifestyle, while at the same time providing ethnic audiences a way to see themselves.Finally, it is undeniable that ethnically ambiguous and mixed-race models have become desirable due to a historical preference for light skin (Saraswati). The visual references of light-skinned beauty epitomise a colonial dream and this standardisation has been transferred to indigenous peoples, or ethnic minorities in Western countries. According to Harrison et al, “marketers use mixed-race representations as cultural currency by mythologising mixed-race bodies as the new beauty standard” to represent a racial bridge, “tailored to ameliorate perceived racial divides” (503). Therefore, ethnically ambiguous models have an assumed advantage over their racially dominant counterparts, because they appear to straddle various racial boundaries. They are constructed to embody whomever, from wherever and whenever, fetishising their roleplay for the industry, when it pleases. This further exoticises multi-racial beauty models and renders them a commodified fantasy for many consumers alike. The continued commodification of ethnic ambiguity is problematic as it exploits models with distinctly mixed-race heritage to continue to sell images of white-washed beauty (Solomon et al.). An argument could be made that scarcity contributes to mixed-race models’ value, and therefore the total number of advertising opportunities that are offered to mixed-race models remains limited. To date, numerous studies highlight a limited use of racially diverse models within the beauty industry and does not reflect the growing global body of diverse consumers with purchasing power (Wasylkiw et al.; Redmond; Johnson; Jung and Lee; Frith et al.). In fact, prior to globalisation, Yan and Bissell claim that “each culture had a unique standard of attractiveness, derived from traditional views about beauty as well as the physical features of the people” (197) and over time the construction of dream beauty is characterised using Western features combined with exoticised traits of indigenous ethnic groups. Akinro and Mbunyuza-Memani claim that this “trend of normalising white or 'western' feminine looks as the standard of beauty” has pervaded a number of these indigenous cultures, eventually disseminated through the media as the ultimate goal (308). It can also be argued that the “growing inclusion of mixed-race models in ads is driven less by the motivation to portray diversity and driven more by pragmatism,” and in a more practical sense has implications for the “financial future of the advertised brands and the advertising industry as a whole” (Harrison et al. 513). As a result, uses of mixed-race models “are rather understood as palatable responses within dominant white culture to racial and ethnic minority populations growing in … cultural prominence” (513) in a tokenistic bid to sell a dream of unified beauty.The Dream Girl: Normalisation of Mixed-RaceIn 2017, an article in CNN’s Style section highlighted the growing number of mixed-race models in Japan’s fashion and beauty industry as a modern-day phenomenon from Japan’s interlocking history with the United States (Chung and Ogura). These beauty and fashion influencers refer to themselves as hafu, an exclusionary term that historically represented an “othered” minority of mixed-race heritage in Japanese society signalling complex and troubled interactions with majority Japanese (Oshima). The complications once associated with the term ‘hafu’ are now being reclaimed by bi-racial beauty and fashion models and as such, these models are beginning to defy categorisation and, in some ways, national identity because of their chameleon-like qualities. However, while there is an increasing use of mixed-race Japanese models, everyday mixed-race women are regularly excluded within general society; which highlights the incongruent nature of ‘half’ identity. And yet there is an increasing preference and demand from fashion and beauty outlets to feature them in Japanese and Western popular culture (Harrison et al.; Chung and Ogura). Numéro Tokyo’s editorial director Sayumi Gunji, estimated that almost 30-40 per cent of runway models in present day Japan, identify as either bi-racial mixed-race or multi-racial (Chung and Ogura).Gunji claims:"Almost all top models in the their 20s are hafu, especially the top models of popular fashion magazines ... . [In] the Japanese media and market, a foreigner's flawless looks aren't as readily accepted -- they feel a little distant. But biracial models, who are taller, have bigger eyes, higher noses [and] Barbie-doll-like looks, are admired because they are dreamy looking but not totally different from the Japanese. That's the key to their popularity," she adds. (Qtd. in Chung and Ogura)The "dreamy look" that Gunji describes is attributed to a historical preference toward light skin and a kind of willingness and sensuality, that once, only white models could be seen to tout (Frith et al. 58). Frith et al. and O’Barr discuss that beauty in Japanese advertising mirrors “the way women are portrayed in advertising in the West” (qtd. in Frith et al. 58). The emergence of hafu in Japanese beauty advertising sees these two worlds, a mixture of doll-like and sensual beauty, converging to create a dream-like standard for Japanese consumers. The growing presence of Japanese-American models such as Kiko Mizuhara and Jun Hasegawa are both a direct example of the unattainable ‘dreamy look’ that pervades the Japanese beauty industry. Given this ongoing trend of mixed-race models in beauty advertising, a recent article on Refinery29 talks about the significance of how mixed-race models are disassembling their once marginalised status.A. Sengupta writes:In contrast to passing, in which mixedness was marginalized and hidden, visibly multiracial models now feature prominently in affirmative sites of social norms. Multiracial looks are normalized, and, by extension, mixed identity is validated. There’s no cohesive social movement behind it, but it’s a quiet sea change that’s come with broadened beauty standards and the slow dismantling of social hierarchies.Another example of the normalisation in multi-racial identity is Adwoa Aboah, a mixed-race British model and feminist activist who has been featured on the covers of numerous fashion publications and on runways worldwide. In British Vogue’s December 2017 issue, titled “Great BRITAIN”, Adwoa Aboah achieved front cover status, alongside her image featured other politically powerful names, perhaps suggesting that Aboah represents not only the changing face of a historically white publication but as an embodiment of an increasingly diverse consumer landscape. Not only is she seen as both as a voice for those disenfranchised by the industry, by which she is employed, but as a symbol of new dreams. To conclude this section, it seems the evolution of advertising’s inclusion of multi-racial models reveals a progressive step change for the beauty industry. However, relying simply on the faces of ethnically ambiguous talent has become a covert way to fulfil consumer’s desire for diversity without wholly dismantling the destructive hierarchies of white dominance. Over this time however, new beauty creations have entered the market and with it two modern day icons.Architecting Black Beauty through the American DreamAccording to Kiick, the conception of the ‘American Dream’ is born out of a desire to “seek out a more advantageous existence than the current situation” (qtd. in Manca et al. 84). As a result of diligent hard work, Americans were rewarded with an opportunity for a better life (Manca et al.). Kylie Jenner’s entry into the beauty space seemed like a natural move for the then eighteen-year-old; it was a new-age representation of the ‘American Dream’ (Robehmed 2018). In less than five years, Jenner has created Kylie Cosmetics, a beauty empire that has since amassed a global consumer base, helping her earn billionaire status. A more critical investigation into Jenner’s performance however illustrates that her eponymous range of beauty products sells dreams which have been appropriated from black culture (Phelps). The term cultural appropriation refers to the way dominant cultures “adopt and adapt certain aspects of another’s culture and make it their own” (qtd. in Han 9). In Jenner’s case, her connection to ethnic Armenian roots through her sisters Kourtney, Kim, and Khloe Kardashian have significantly influenced her expression of ‘othered’ culture and moreover ethnic beauty ideals such as curvier body shapes and textured hair. Jenner’s beauty advertisements have epitomised what it means to be black in America, cherry picking racialised features of black women (namely their lips, hips/buttocks and afro-braided hairstyles) and rearticulated them through a white lens. The omission of the ‘black experience’ in her promotion of product is problematic for three reasons. Firstly, representing groups or people without invitation enables room for systemic stereotyping (Han). Secondly, this stereotyping can lead to continued marginalisation of minority cultures (Kulchyski). And finally, the over exaggeration of physical attributes, such as Jenner’s lips, hips and buttocks, reinforces her complicity in exoticising and fetishising the “other”. As a result, consumers of social media beauty advertising may pay less attention to cultural appropriation if they are already unaware that the beauty imagery they consume is based on the exploitation of black culture.Another perspective on Jenner’s use of black culture is in large part due to her cultural appreciation of black beauty. This meaning behind Jenner’s cultural appreciation can be attributed to the inherent value placed on another person’s culture, in the recognition of the positive qualities and the celebration of all aspects of that culture (Han). This is evidenced by her recent addition of cosmetic products for darker complexions (Brown). However, Jenner’s supposed fascination with black culture may be in large part due to the environment in which she was nurtured (Phelps). As Phelps reveals, “consider the cultural significance of the Kardashian family, and the various ways in which the Kardashian women, who are tremendously wealthy and present as white, have integrated elements of black culture as seemingly “natural” in their public bodily performances” (9). Although the Kardashian-Jenner family have faced public backlash for their collective appropriation they have acquired a tremendous “capital gain in terms of celebrity staying power and hyper-visibility” (Phelps 9). Despite the negative attention, Kylie Jenner’s expression of black culture has resurfaced the very issues that had once been historically deemed insignificant. In spite of Jenner’s cultural appropriation of black beauty, her promotion through Kylie Cosmetics continues to sell dreams of idealised beauty through the white lens.In comparison, Rihanna Fenty’s cosmetic empire has been touted as a celebration of diversity and inclusion for modern-age beauty. Unlike Kylie Cosmetics, Fenty’s eponymous brand has become popular for its broader message of inclusivity across both skin tone, body shape and gender. Upon her product release, Fenty Beauty acknowledged a growing body of diverse consumers and as a direct response to feature models of diverse skin tones, cultural background and racial heritage. Perhaps more importantly, Fenty Beauty’s challenge to the ongoing debate around diversity and inclusion has been in stark contrast to Kylie Jenner’s ongoing appropriation of black culture. Images featured at the first brand and product launch of Fenty Beauty and in present day advertising, show South Sudanese model Duckie Thot and hijab-wearing model Halima Aden as central characters within the Fenty narrative, illustrating that inclusion need not remain ambiguous and diversity need not be appropriated. Fenty’s initial product line up included ninety products, but most notably, the Pro Filt’r foundation caused the most publicity. Since its introduction in 2017, the foundation collection contained range of 40 (now 50) inclusive foundation shades, 13 of these shades were designed to cater for much darker complexions, an industry first (Walters). As a result of the brand’s inclusion of diverse product shades and models, Fenty Beauty has been shown to push boundaries within the beauty industry and the social media landscape (Walters). Capitalising on all races and expanding beauty ideals, Fenty’s showcase of beauty subscribes to the notion that for women everywhere in the world, their dreams can and do come true. In conclusion, Fenty Beauty has played a critical role in re-educating global consumers about diversity in beauty (Walters) but perhaps more importantly Rihanna, by definition, has become a true embodiment of the ‘American Dream’.Conclusion: Future Dreams in BeautyIt is undeniable that beauty advertising has remained complicit in selling unattainable dreams to consumers. In the context of ‘dream’ as a philosophical concept, it is more important than ever to ensure our dreams are mirrored, not as an ambiguous body of consumers, but as diverse and unique individuals. Changemakers in the industry such as Fenty Beauty are challenging this status quo and beauty advertising in general will have to evolve their strategy in a bid to answer to an increasingly globalised market. It must be reinforced however, that while “beauty companies and advertisers work effectively to reach a growingly multicultural market, scholars have a responsibility to assess the ramifications that accompany such change,” (Harrison et al. 518). If advertising’s role is to mirror consumers’ dreams then, our roles as dreamers have never been so important. ReferencesAkinro, Ngozi, and Lindani Mbunyuza-Memani. "Black Is Not Beautiful: Persistent Messages and the Globalization of 'White' Beauty in African Women’s Magazines." 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A friend of mine once tried to capture the feeling that one gets from a new thing. He decided that there was no word to describe the sensation of having an unblemished eraser when you were in primary school, but nevertheless it produced a kind of fascinating awe in the apparent perfection of the new. A similar feeling captures the new car owner in smelling the interior's recently minted plastic. Used car dealers would doubtless love to bottle that smell because it produces the momentary pleasure of new ownership. And I am sure there are certain people who are addicted to that smell, and go test drive new cars with no intention of buying just for the experience of the "new" smell. New clothes produce that same sensation: most of us ignore the label which says "wash before wearing" because we want to experience the incredible stiff tactile sensation of a new shirt. My friend called this gle-gle, and it is a pervasive relationship to New in a variety of guises. New implies two kinds of objects or practices: it implies either the replacement of the old or it points to the emergence of something that has not existed before. In both cases, new always heralds change and has the potential for social or cultural transformation. As a result, popular writers and ad copy editors often link new with revolution. For example, the advent of the computer was seen to be revolutionary. Similarly a new detergent which worked in cold water promised cataclysmic change in the 1960s. But these promises of revolution through some innovation have not necessarily led to massive social upheaval; rather they have identified a discursive trope of contemporary culture which links new with rejuvenation. The claim that something is new is the mantra of modernity and the kitsch of the postmodern. This double-play of the concept of the new is best untangled through thinking how a once new object becomes the contemporary way of expressing the former hope of progress and change -- with raised and knowing eyebrow. I recently stumbled into one of these double-plays. While searching for bedding for yet another birthday slumber party, I picked up an old mattress which still had its 1950s label, where it proudly announced that the cushioning was the wonderful new revolutionary foam system called the Dunlopillo. The Dunlopillo system was certainly trademarked and no doubt patented for its then unique system of troughs and cones of army green foam; but in its current incarnation the foam was weak and the bed easily crumpled in half. All that was left of the sentiment of newness was the label, which in its graphics expressed the necessary connection to science as the future, and authoritative zeal in its seriousness of its revolutionary potential. But seen from 1998, the claims seemed bombastic and beautifully optimistic. Modernity's relationship to the new is to celebrate the potential for change. It is a cultural project that has enveloped the sentiments of capitalism and socialism from their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries, and manifested itself in what Schudson labelled "capitalist realism" in advertising, and what is known as socialist realism as a state-sanctioned artistic movement in the Soviet Union. Both representations provided their systems with the capacity to repaint the cultural canvas with each new product such as Dunlopillo, or in the Soviet system with each new five-year productivity plan for the collective. Maintaining the unity of the cultural project was a challenge to each system's representational regime; sustaining the power of the new as a revolutionary force is the fundamental link between capitalist and socialist systems throughout the twentieth century. These representational regimes were in fact connected to the production of new phenomena, new materials, new social formations. However, the message of the new has gradually weakened over the last thirty years. Think of the way in which the Space Race produced all sorts of new technologies of computing, calculation and the integration of electronics into the running of the automobile. It also produced the breakfast orange-juice substitute, 'Tang'. Indeed, the first advertisements for Tang intoned that it was the drink that astronauts enjoyed in space. Tang and its flavour crystals provided the ultimate form of efficiency and convenience, and provided a clear link between the highly ideologically driven space program and the everyday lives of citizens of the "free" world. In the 60s and 70s the link between the general project of modernity and improving everyday life was made evidently clear every time you added water to your Tang flavour crystals. One has to ask: where is Tang today? Not only is it difficult to find in my supermarket, but even if it were available it would not operate as the same representation of progress and the project of modernity. Instead, it would have little more than a nostalgic -- or, kitsch -- hold on a generation that has seen too many representations of the new and too many attempts at indicating improvement. The decay of the cultural power of the new is clearly linked to consumer culture's dependence on and overuse of the concept. The entire century has been enveloped by an accelerating pattern of symbolic change. Symbolic change is not necessarily the same as the futurologist Toffler claiming that we are in a constant state of "future shock"; rather it is much more the introduction of new designs as if there were not only transformed designs, but fundamentally transformed products. This perpetually 'new' is a feature of the fashion industry as it works toward seasonal transformation. Toothbrushes have also been the object of this design therapy, which produces both continual change over the last twenty years, and claims of new revolutionary designs. Central to this notion of symbolic change is advertising. Advertising plays with the hopes and desires of its audience by providing the contradictory symbolic materiality of progressive change. The cultural and political power of the new is the symbolic terrain that advertising has mined to present its "images of well-being". What one can now detect in the circulation of advertising is at least two responses to the decay of the power of the new. First, instead of advertising invoking the wonders of science and its technological offspring providing you with something revolutionary, advertising has moved increasingly towards personal transformation, echoing the 30-year-old self-help, self-discovery book industry. In Australia, GM-Holden's Barina television ads provide a typical example. No technical detail about the car is given in the ads, but a great deal of information --- via the singing, the superimposed dancers, and the graphics employed -- signifies that the car is designed for the young female driver. Symbolically, the car is transformed into a new space of feminine subjectivity. Second, advertising plays with the cynicism of the cognoscenti. If the new itself can no longer work to signify genuine change and improvement in contemporary culture, it is instead represented as a changed attitude to the contemporary world that only a particular demographic will actually comprehend. The level of sophistication in reading the new as a cultural phenomenon by advertisers (or by proxy, their agencies) is sometimes astounding. A recent Coca-Cola radio ad played with a singing style of ennui and anger that embodied punk, but only as punk has been reinvented in the mid-90s through such groups as Green Day. The lyrics were identical to the rest of the "Always Coca-Cola" campaign that has been circulating internationally for the last five years; however, the cynicism of the singers, the bare tunefulness, and even the use of a popular culture icon such as Coke as the object of a song (and ridicule), tries to capture a particular new cultural moment with a different audience. Advertising as a cultural discourse on its own expresses a malaise within the transforming promise of the new that has been so much a part of modernity. However, the myths of modernity -- its clear association with social progress -- have never completely dissipated. In contemporary culture, it has fallen on new computer technologies to keep the ember of modernity and progress glowing. Over the last two decades the personal computer has maintained the naiveté of the new that was central to mid-twentieth century advertising, if not post-war culture in general. Very much like the Space Race stitched together an ideological weave that connected the populace to the interests of what Eisenhower first described as a military-industrial complex, the computer has ignited a new generation of optimism. It has been appropriated by governments from Singapore and Malaysia (think of the Multimedia Super Corridor) to the United States (think of Vice President Al Gore's NII) as the rescue package for the organisation of capitalism. Through Microsoft's hegemony there is a sense of coherence in "operating systems" which makes their slogan "where do you want to go today?", in its evocation of choice, also an invocation of unity of purpose. The wonderful synergy of the personal computer is that it weaves the conception of personal desire back into a generalisable social system of value. Despite all these efforts at harnessing the new computer technologies into established political and economic forces, the new nature of computer technology draws us back to the reason why new is intrinsically exciting: the defining nature of the new is that it offers the potential for some form of social change. The Internet has been the source for this new discourse of utopia. If we follow Howard Rheingold's logic, New "virtual communities" are formed online. A disequilibrium in who controls the flow of information is part of the appeal of the Internet, and the very appearance of this journal stems from that sense of new access. The Internet is said to challenge the boundaries of nations and states (although English language hegemony and pure economic access continue to operate to control the flow of those boundaries), with regulation devolving out of state policy towards the individual. Transforming identities are also very much an element of online communities: if nothing else, the play of gender in online game and chat programs identifies the constructed nature of our identities. All of this energy, and what I would call affect, refers to how computer technology and the Internet have managed to produce a sensation of agency. What I mean by agency is not necessarily attached to the project of modernity; rather it is the sense of being able to produce the new itself, as opposed to just living in the architecture of the new provided by someone else. On one level, the Internet and personal computers do provide a way to make your information look as if it is more significant and of a higher quality. The continuing proliferation of personal websites attests to this narcissistic drive of contemporary culture. On another level, the narcissism also identifies activity and agency in engaging in a form of communication with others. The Internet then can be thought of as paralleling movements in contemporary music, where the ability to construct soundscapes through computer interfaces has given the musician greater agency in the production of new electronic music. The new is intrinsically an odd phenomenon. It continually threatens established patterns. What is different about the new and its meaning in the twentieth century is that it has become part of the central ideology of western culture in its characterised representation of modernity. In a strange mix, the new reinforces the old and established. Nonetheless, the new, like culture itself, is never completely contained by any overarching architecture. The new expresses the potential, and occasionally the enactment, of significant cultural change. The fatigue that I have identified in our thinking about the new identifies a decline in the power of modernity to capture change, difference and transformation. That very fatigue may indicate in and of itself something profoundly new. References Rheingold, Howard. The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994. Schudson, Michael. Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion: Its Dubious Impact on American Society. New York: Basic Books, 1984. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: Pan Books, 1971. Citation reference for this article MLA style: P. David Marshall. "Thinking through New." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1.1 (1998). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php>. Chicago style: P. David Marshall, "Thinking through New," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1, no. 1 (1998), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: P. David Marshall. (1998) Thinking through new. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 1(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9807/think.php> ([your date of access]).

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s.There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs. This article investigates the use of brands as prosthesis.Coats and Crests: Identity Garnered on Garments in the Middle Ages and the Muromachi PeriodA logo, at its most basic, is a pictorial sign. In his essay, The Visual Language, Ernest Gombrich described the principle as reducing images to “distinctive features” (Gombrich 46). They represent a “simplification of code,” the meaning of which we are conditioned to recognise (Gombrich 46). Logos may also be interpreted as a manifestation of totemism. According to anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, the principle exists in all civilisations and reflects an effort to evoke the power of nature (71-127). Totemism is also a method of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166).This principle, in a form garnered on garments, is manifested in Mon Kiri. The practice of cutting out family crests evolved into a form of corporate branding in Japan during the Meiji Period (1868-1912) (Christensen 14). During the Muromachi period (1336-1573) the crests provided an integral means of identification on the battlefield (Christensen 13). The adorning of crests on armour was also exercised in Europe during the twelfth century, when the faces of knights were similarly obscured by helmets (Family Crests of Japan 8). Both Mon Kiri and “Coat[s] of Arms” utilised totemic symbols (Family Crests of Japan 8; Elven 14; Christensen 13). The mon for the imperial family (figs. 1 & 2) during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia flowers (Goin’ Japaneque). “Coat[s] of Arms” in Britain featured a menagerie of animals including lions (fig. 3), horses and eagles (Elven).The prothesis of identity through garnering symbols on the battlefield provided “safety” through demonstrating “belongingness”. This constituted a conflation of two separate “needs” in the “hierarchy of prepotency” propositioned by Maslow. Fig. 1. The mon symbolising the Imperial Family during the Muromachi Period featured chrysanthemum and paulownia. "Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>.Fig. 2. An example of the crest being utilised on a garment can be found in this portrait of samurai Oda Nobunaga. "Japan's 12 Most Famous Samurai." All About Japan. 27 Aug. 2018. 27 July 2019 <https://allabout-japan.com/en/article/5818/>.Fig. 3. A detail from the “Index of Subjects of Crests.” Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. Henry Washbourne, 1847.The Pursuit of Prestige: Prosthetic Pedigree from the Late Georgian to the Victorian Eras In 1817, the seal engraver to Prince Regent, Alexander Deuchar, described the function of family crests in British Crests: Containing The Crest and Mottos of The Families of Great Britain and Ireland; Together with Those of The Principal Cities and Heraldic Terms as follows: The first approach to civilization is the distinction of ranks. So necessary is this to the welfare and existence of society, that, without it, anarchy and confusion must prevail… In an early stage, heraldic emblems were characteristic of the bearer… Certain ordinances were made, regulating the mode of bearing arms, and who were entitled to bear them. (i-v)The partitioning of social classes in Britain had deteriorated by the time this compendium was published, with displays of “conspicuous consumption” displacing “heraldic emblems” as a primary method of status signalling (Deuchar 2; Han et al. 18). A consumerism born of newfound affluence, and the desire to signify this wealth through luxury goods, was as integral to the Industrial Revolution as technological development. In Rebels against the Future, published in 1996, Kirkpatrick Sale described the phenomenon:A substantial part of the new population, though still a distinct minority, was made modestly affluent, in some places quite wealthy, by privatization of of the countryside and the industrialization of the cities, and by the sorts of commercial and other services that this called forth. The new money stimulated the consumer demand… that allowed a market economy of a scope not known before. (40)This also reflected improvements in the provision of “health, food [and] education” (Maslow; Snow 25-28). With their “physiological needs” accommodated, this ”substantial part” of the population were able to prioritised their “esteem needs” including the pursuit for prestige (Sale 40; Maslow).In Britain during the Middle Ages laws “specified in minute detail” what each class was permitted to wear (Han et al. 15). A groom, for example, was not able to wear clothing that exceeded two marks in value (Han et al. 15). In a distinct departure during the Industrial Era, it was common for the “middling and lower classes” to “ape” the “fashionable vices of their superiors” (Sale 41). Although mon-like labels that were “simplified so as to be conspicuous and instantly recognisable” emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century their application on garments remained discrete up until the early twentieth century (Christensen 13-14; Moore and Reid 24). During the 1920s, the French companies Hermes and Coco Chanel were amongst the clothing manufacturers to pioneer this principle (Chaney; Icon).During the 1860s, Lincolnshire-born Charles Frederick Worth affixed gold stamped labels to the insides of his garments (Polan et al. 9; Press). Operating from Paris, the innovation was consistent with the introduction of trademark laws in France in 1857 (Lopes et al.). He would become known as the “Father of Haute Couture”, creating dresses for royalty and celebrities including Empress Eugene from Constantinople, French actress Sarah Bernhardt and Australian Opera Singer Nellie Melba (Lopes et al.; Krick). The clothing labels proved and ineffective deterrent to counterfeit, and by the 1890s the House of Worth implemented other measures to authenticate their products (Press). The legitimisation of the origin of a product is, arguably, the primary function of branding. This principle is also applicable to subjects. The prothesis of brands, as totemic symbols, assisted consumers to relocate themselves within a new system of population distribution (Levi-Strauss 166). It was one born of commerce as opposed to heraldry.Selling of Self: Conferring Identity from the Neolithic to Modern ErasIn his 1817 compendium on family crests, Deuchar elaborated on heraldry by writing:Ignoble birth was considered as a stain almost indelible… Illustrious parentage, on the other hand, constituted the very basis of honour: it communicated peculiar rights and privileges, to which the meaner born man might not aspire. (v-vi)The Twinings Logo (fig. 4) has remained unchanged since the design was commissioned by the grandson of the company founder Richard Twining in 1787 (Twining). In addition to reflecting the heritage of the family-owned company, the brand indicated the origin of the tea. This became pertinent during the nineteenth century. Plantations began to operate from Assam to Ceylon (Jones 267-269). Amidst the rampant diversification of tea sources in the Victorian era, concerns about the “unhygienic practices” of Chinese producers were proliferated (Wengrow 11). Subsequently, the brand also offered consumers assurance in quality. Fig. 4. The Twinings Logo reproduced from "History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>.The term ‘brand’, adapted from the Norse “brandr”, was introduced into the English language during the sixteenth century (Starcevic 179). At its most literal, it translates as to “burn down” (Starcevic 179). Using hot elements to singe markings onto animals been recorded as early as 2700 BCE in Egypt (Starcevic 182). However, archaeologists concur that the modern principle of branding predates this practice. The implementation of carved seals or stamps to make indelible impressions of handcrafted objects dates back to Prehistoric Mesopotamia (Starcevic 183; Wengrow 13). Similar traditions developed during the Bronze Age in both China and the Indus Valley (Starcevic 185). In all three civilisations branding facilitated both commerce and aspects of Totemism. In the sixth millennium BCE in “Prehistoric” Mesopotamia, referred to as the Halaf period, stone seals were carved to emulate organic form such as animal teeth (Wengrow 13-14). They were used to safeguard objects by “confer[ring] part of the bearer’s personality” (Wengrow 14). They were concurrently applied to secure the contents of vessels containing “exotic goods” used in transactions (Wengrow 15). Worn as amulets (figs. 5 & 6) the seals, and the symbols they produced, were a physical extension of their owners (Wengrow 14).Fig. 5. Recreation of stamp seal amulets from Neolithic Mesopotamia during the sixth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49.1 (2008): 14.Fig. 6. “Lot 25Y: Rare Syrian Steatite Amulet – Fertility God 5000 BCE.” The Salesroom. 27 July 2019 <https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/artemis-gallery-ancient-art/catalogue-id-srartem10006/lot-a850d229-a303-4bae-b68c-a6130005c48a>. Fig. 7. Recreation of stamp seal designs from Mesopotamia from the late fifth to fourth millennium BCE. Wengrow, David. "Prehistories of Commodity Branding." Current Anthropology 49. 1 (2008): 16.In the following millennia, the seals would increase exponentially in application and aesthetic complexity (fig. 7) to support the development of household cum cottage industries (Wengrow 15). In addition to handcrafts, sealed vessels would transport consumables such as wine, aromatic oils and animal fats (Wengrow 18). The illustrations on the seals included depictions of rituals undertaken by human figures and/or allegories using animals. It can be ascertained that the transition in the Victorian Era from heraldry to commerce, from family to corporation, had precedence. By extension, consumers were able to participate in this process of value attribution using brands as signifiers. The principle remained prevalent during the modern and post-modern eras and can be respectively interpreted using structuralist and post-structuralist theory.Totemism to Simulacrum: The Evolution of Advertising from the Modern to Post-Modern Eras In 2011, Lisa Chaney wrote of the inception of the Coco Chanel logo (fig. 8) in her biography Chanel: An Intimate Life: A crucial element in the signature design of the Chanel No.5 bottle is the small black ‘C’ within a black circle set as the seal at the neck. On the top of the lid are two more ‘C’s, intertwined back to back… from at least 1924, the No5 bottles sported the unmistakable logo… these two ‘C’s referred to Gabrielle, – in other words Coco Chanel herself, and would become the logo for the House of Chanel. Chaney continued by describing Chanel’s fascination of totemic symbols as expressed through her use of tarot cards. She also “surrounded herself with objects ripe with meaning” such as representations of wheat and lions in reference prosperity and to her zodiac symbol ‘Leo’ respectively. Fig. 8. No5 Chanel Perfume, released in 1924, featured a seal-like logo attached to the bottle neck. “No5.” Chanel. 25 July 2019 <https://www.chanel.com/us/fragrance/p/120450/n5-parfum-grand-extrait/>.Fig. 9. This illustration of the bottle by Georges Goursat was published in a women’s magazine circa 1920s. “1921 Chanel No5.” Inside Chanel. 26 July 2019 <http://inside.chanel.com/en/timeline/1921_no5>; “La 4éme Fête de l’Histoire Samedi 16 et dimache 17 juin.” Ville de Perigueux. Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord. 28 Mar. 2018. 26 July 2019 <https://www.perigueux-maap.fr/category/archives/page/5/>. This product was considered the “financial basis” of the Chanel “empire” which emerged during the second and third decades of the twentieth century (Tikkanen). Chanel is credited for revolutionising Haute Couture by introducing chic modern designs that emphasised “simplicity and comfort.” This was as opposed to the corseted highly embellished fashion that characterised the Victorian Era (Tikkanen). The lavish designs released by the House of Worth were, in and of themselves, “conspicuous” displays of “consumption” (Veblen 17). In contrast, the prestige and status associated with the “poor girl” look introduced by Chanel was invested in the story of the designer (Tikkanen). A primary example is her marinière or sailor’s blouse with a Breton stripe that epitomised her ascension from café singer to couturier (Tikkanen; Burstein 8). This signifier might have gone unobserved by less discerning consumers of fashion if it were not for branding. Not unlike the Prehistoric Mesopotamians, this iteration of branding is a process which “confer[s]” the “personality” of the designer into the garment (Wengrow 13 -14). The wearer of the garment is, in turn, is imbued by extension. Advertisers in the post-structuralist era embraced Levi-Strauss’s structuralist anthropological theories (Williamson 50). This is with particular reference to “bricolage” or the “preconditioning” of totemic symbols (Williamson 173; Pool 50). Subsequently, advertising creatives cum “bricoleur” employed his principles to imbue the brands with symbolic power. This symbolic capital was, arguably, transferable to the product and, ultimately, to its consumer (Williamson 173).Post-structuralist and semiotician Jean Baudrillard “exhaustively” critiqued brands and the advertising, or simulacrum, that embellished them between the late 1960s and early 1980s (Wengrow 10-11). In Simulacra and Simulation he wrote,it is the reflection of a profound reality; it masks and denatures a profound reality; it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)The symbolic power of the Chanel brand resonates in the ‘profound reality’ of her story. It is efficiently ‘denatured’ through becoming simplified, conspicuous and instantly recognisable. It is, as a logo, physically juxtaposed as simulacra onto apparel. This simulacrum, in turn, effects the ‘profound reality’ of the consumer. In 1899, economist Thorstein Veblen wrote in The Theory of the Leisure Class:Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods it the means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure… costly entertainments, such as potlatch or the ball, are peculiarly adapted to serve this end… he consumes vicariously for his host at the same time that he is witness to the consumption… he is also made to witness his host’s facility in etiquette. (47)Therefore, according to Veblen, it was the witnessing of “wasteful” consumption that “confers status” as opposed the primary conspicuous act (Han et al. 18). Despite television being in its experimental infancy advertising was at “the height of its powers” during the 1920s (Clark et al. 18; Hill 30). Post-World War I consumers, in America, experienced an unaccustomed level of prosperity and were unsuspecting of the motives of the newly formed advertising agencies (Clark et al. 18). Subsequently, the ‘witnessing’ of consumption could be constructed across a plethora of media from the newly emerged commercial radio to billboards (Hill viii–25). The resulting ‘status’ was ‘conferred’ onto brand logos. Women’s magazines, with a legacy dating back to 1828, were a primary locus (Hill 10).Belonging in a Post-Structuralist WorldIt is significant to note that, in a post-structuralist world, consumers do not exclusively seek upward mobility in their selection of brands. The establishment of counter-culture icon Levi-Strauss and Co. was concurrent to the emergence of both The House of Worth and Coco Chanel. The Bavarian-born Levi Strauss commenced selling apparel in San Francisco in 1853 (Levi’s). Two decades later, in partnership with Nevada born tailor Jacob Davis, he patented the “riveted-for-strength” workwear using blue denim (Levi’s). Although the ontology of ‘jeans’ is contested, references to “Jene Fustyan” date back the sixteenth century (Snyder 139). It involved the combining cotton, wool and linen to create “vestments” for Geonese sailors (Snyder 138). The Two Horse Logo (fig. 10), depicting them unable to pull apart a pair of jeans to symbolise strength, has been in continuous use by Levi Strauss & Co. company since its design in 1886 (Levi’s). Fig. 10. The Two Horse Logo by Levi Strauss & Co. has been in continuous use since 1886. Staff Unzipped. "Two Horses. One Message." Heritage. Levi Strauss & Co. 1 July 2011. 25 July 2019 <https://www.levistrauss.com/2011/07/01/two-horses-many-versions-one-message/>.The “rugged wear” would become the favoured apparel amongst miners at American Gold Rush (Muthu 6). Subsequently, between the 1930s – 1960s Hollywood films cultivated jeans as a symbol of “defiance” from Stage Coach staring John Wayne in 1939 to Rebel without A Cause staring James Dean in 1955 (Muthu 6; Edgar). Consequently, during the 1960s college students protesting in America (fig. 11) against the draft chose the attire to symbolise their solidarity with the working class (Hedarty). Notwithstanding a 1990s fashion revision of denim into a diversity of garments ranging from jackets to skirts, jeans have remained a wardrobe mainstay for the past half century (Hedarty; Muthu 10). Fig. 11. Although the brand label is not visible, jeans as initially introduced to the American Goldfields in the nineteenth century by Levi Strauss & Co. were cultivated as a symbol of defiance from the 1930s – 1960s. It documents an anti-war protest that occurred at the Pentagon in 1967. Cox, Savannah. "The Anti-Vietnam War Movement." ATI. 14 Dec. 2016. 16 July 2019 <https://allthatsinteresting.com/vietnam-war-protests#7>.In 2003, the journal Science published an article “Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion” (Eisenberger et al.). The cross-institutional study demonstrated that the neurological reaction to rejection is indistinguishable to physical pain. Whereas during the 1940s Maslow classified the desire for “belonging” as secondary to “physiological needs,” early twenty-first century psychologists would suggest “[social] acceptance is a mechanism for survival” (Weir 50). In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard wrote: Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal… (1)In the intervening thirty-eight years since this document was published the artifice of our interactions has increased exponentially. In order to locate ‘belongness’ in this hyperreality, the identities of the seekers require a level of encoding. Brands, as signifiers, provide a vehicle.Whereas in Prehistoric Mesopotamia carved seals, worn as amulets, were used to extend the identity of a person, in post-digital China WeChat QR codes (fig. 12), stored in mobile phones, are used to facilitate transactions from exchanging contact details to commerce. Like other totems, they provide access to information such as locations, preferences, beliefs, marital status and financial circumstances. These individualised brands are the most recent incarnation of a technology that has developed over the past eight thousand years. The intermediary iteration, emblems affixed to garments, has remained prevalent since the twelfth century. Their continued salience is due to their visibility and, subsequent, accessibility as signifiers. Fig. 12. It may be posited that Wechat QR codes are a form individualised branding. Like other totems, they store information pertaining to the owner’s location, beliefs, preferences, marital status and financial circumstances. “Join Wechat groups using QR code on 2019.” Techwebsites. 26 July 2019 <https://techwebsites.net/join-wechat-group-qr-code/>.Fig. 13. Brands function effectively as signifiers is due to the international distribution of multinational corporations. This is the shopfront of Chanel in Dubai, which offers customers apparel bearing consistent insignia as the Parisian outlet at on Rue Cambon. Customers of Chanel can signify to each other with the confidence that their products will be recognised. “Chanel.” The Dubai Mall. 26 July 2019 <https://thedubaimall.com/en/shop/chanel>.Navigating a post-structuralist world of increasing mobility necessitates a rudimental understanding of these symbols. Whereas in the nineteenth century status was conveyed through consumption and witnessing consumption, from the twentieth century onwards the garnering of brands made this transaction immediate (Veblen 47; Han et al. 18). The bricolage of the brands is constructed by bricoleurs working in any number of contemporary creative fields such as advertising, filmmaking or song writing. They provide a system by which individuals can convey and recognise identities at prima facie. They enable the prosthesis of identity.ReferencesBaudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. United States: University of Michigan Press, 1994.Burstein, Jessica. Cold Modernism: Literature, Fashion, Art. United States: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.Chaney, Lisa. Chanel: An Intimate Life. United Kingdom: Penguin Books Limited, 2011.Christensen, J.A. Cut-Art: An Introduction to Chung-Hua and Kiri-E. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1989. Clark, Eddie M., Timothy C. Brock, David E. Stewart, David W. Stewart. Attention, Attitude, and Affect in Response to Advertising. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 1994.Deuchar, Alexander. British Crests: Containing the Crests and Mottos of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland Together with Those of the Principal Cities – Primary So. London: Kirkwood & Sons, 1817.Ebert, Robert. “Great Movie: Stage Coach.” Robert Ebert.com. 1 Aug. 2011. 10 Mar. 2019 <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-stagecoach-1939>.Elven, John Peter. The Book of Family Crests: Comprising Nearly Every Family Bearing, Properly Blazoned and Explained, Accompanied by Upwards of Four Thousand Engravings. London: Henry Washbourne, 1847.Eisenberger, Naomi I., Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams. "Does Rejection Hurt? An Fmri Study of Social Exclusion." Science 302.5643 (2003): 290-92.Family Crests of Japan. California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007.Gombrich, Ernst. "The Visual Image: Its Place in Communication." Scientific American 272 (1972): 82-96.Hedarty, Stephanie. "How Jeans Conquered the World." BBC World Service. 28 Feb. 2012. 26 July 2019 <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17101768>. Han, Young Jee, Joseph C. Nunes, and Xavier Drèze. "Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence." Journal of Marketing 74.4 (2010): 15-30.Hill, Daniel Delis. Advertising to the American Woman, 1900-1999. United States of Ame: Ohio State University Press, 2002."History of Twinings." Twinings. 24 July 2019 <https://www.twinings.co.uk/about-twinings/history-of-twinings>. icon-icon: Telling You More about Icons. 18 Dec. 2016. 26 July 2019 <http://www.icon-icon.com/en/hermes-logo-the-horse-drawn-carriage/>. Jones, Geoffrey. Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Kamon (Japanese Family Crests): Ancient Key to Samurai Culture." Goin' Japaneque! 15 Nov. 2015. 27 July 2019 <http://goinjapanesque.com/05983/>. Krick, Jessa. "Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895) and the House of Worth." Heilburnn Timeline of Art History. The Met. Oct. 2004. 23 July 2019 <https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrth/hd_wrth.htm>. Levi’s. "About Levis Strauss & Co." 25 July 2019 <https://www.levis.com.au/about-us.html>. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Totemism. London: Penguin, 1969.Lopes, Teresa de Silva, and Paul Duguid. Trademarks, Brands, and Competitiveness. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010.Maslow, Abraham. "A Theory of Human Motivation." British Journal of Psychiatry 208.4 (1942): 313-13.Moore, Karl, and Susan Reid. "The Birth of Brand: 4000 Years of Branding History." Business History 4.4 (2008).Muthu, Subramanian Senthikannan. Sustainability in Denim. Cambridge Woodhead Publishing, 2017.Polan, Brenda, and Roger Tredre. The Great Fashion Designers. Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2009.Pool, Roger C. Introduction. Totemism. New ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969.Press, Claire. Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion. Melbourne: Schwartz Publishing, 2016.Sale, K. Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and Their War on the Industrial Revolution: Lessons for the Computer Age. Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1996.Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959. Snyder, Rachel Louise. Fugitive Denim: A Moving Story of People and Pants in the Borderless World of Global Trade. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008.Starcevic, Sladjana. "The Origin and Historical Development of Branding and Advertising in the Old Civilizations of Africa, Asia and Europe." Marketing 46.3 (2015): 179-96.Tikkanen, Amy. "Coco Chanel." Encyclopaedia Britannica. 19 Apr. 2019. 25 July 2019 <https://www.britannica.com/biography/Coco-Chanel>.Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. London: Macmillan, 1975.Weir, Kirsten. "The Pain of Social Rejection." American Psychological Association 43.4 (2012): 50.Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. Ideas in Progress. London: Boyars, 1978.

IntroductionThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. Research shows that the creative economy is far from self-organising, and that an appropriate institutional landscape is important to its development (Andersson and Henrekson). In Scotland, there is a proliferation of support mechanisms – from those designed to help creative entrepreneurs improve their business, management, or technical expertise, to infrastructure projects, to collective capacity-building. In rural Scotland, this support landscape is particularly cluttered. This article tackles the question: How do rural creative entrepreneurs negotiate this complex funding and support landscape, and how do they aid the development of the rural creative economy ‘from below’? From Creative Industries to the Creative EconomyThe creative industries have been central to the UK’s economic growth strategy since the 1990s. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research the creative industries contributed £5.9bn to the economy in 2013 (CEBR 17). In the last five years there have been significant improvements in ICTs, leading to growth in digital creative production, distribution, and consumption. The established creative industries, along with the nascent ‘digital industries’ are often grouped together as a separate economic sector – the ‘creative economy’ (Nesta A Manifesto for the Creative Economy).Given its close association with creative city discourses (see Florida 2002), research on the creative economy remains overwhelmingly urban-focused. As a result of this urban bias, the rural creative economy is under-researched. Bell and Jayne (209) note that in the last decade a small body of academic work on the rural creative economy has emerged (Harvey et al.; White). In particular, the Australian context has generated a wealth of discussion as regards national and regional attempts to develop the rural creative economy, the contribution of ‘creativity’ to rural economic and social development, sustainability and resilience, and the role that individual creative practitioners play in developing the rural creative economy (see Argent et al.; Gibson, Gibson and Connell; Waitt and Gibson).In the absence of suitable infrastructure, such as: adequate transport infrastructure, broadband and mobile phone connectivity, workspaces and business support, it often falls to rural creative practitioners themselves to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure. This paper is concerned with the ways in which rural creative practitioners attempt to contribute to the development of the creative economy ‘from below’. ICTs have great potential to benefit rural areas in this respect, by “connecting people and places, businesses and services” (Townsend et al. Enhanced Broadband Access 581).The Scottish InfrastructureSince 1998, cultural policy has been devolved to Scotland, and has fallen under the control of the Scottish Government and Parliament. In an earlier examination of a Scottish creative business support agency, I noted that the Scottish Government has adopted a creative industries development strategy broadly in line with that coming out of Westminster, and subsequently taken up worldwide, and that the Scottish institutional infrastructure is extremely complex (Schlesinger et al.). Crucially, the idea of ‘intervention’, or, the availability of a draw-down programme of funding and support that will help creative practitioners develop a business from their talent, is key (Schlesinger).The main funder for Scottish artists and creative practitioners is Creative Scotland, who distribute money from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) also offer funding and support for creative practitioners working in the Highlands and Islands region. Further general business support may be drawn down from Business Gateway (who work Scotland-wide but are not creative-industries specific), or Scottish Enterprise (who work Scotland-wide, are not creative-industries specific, and are concerned with businesses turning over more than £250,000 p.a.). Additionally, creative-sector specific advice and support may be sought from Cultural Enterprise Office (based in Glasgow and primarily serving the Central Belt), Creative Edinburgh, Dundee or Stirling (creative networks that serve their respective cities), the Creative Arts and Business Network (based in Dumfries, serving the Borders), and Emergents (based in Inverness, dealing with rural craftspeople and authors).MethodologyThe article draws on material gathered as part of three research projects, all concerned with the current support landscape for creative practitioners in Scotland. The first, ‘Supporting Creative Business’ was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the second, ‘Towards a model of support for the rural creative industries’ was funded by the University of Glasgow and the third, ‘The effects of improved communications technology of rural creative entrepreneurs’ funded by CREATe, the Research Council's UK Centre for the Study of Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.In all three cases, the research was theoretically and practically informed by the multi-sited ethnographies of cultural, creative and media work conducted by Moeran (Ethnography at Work, The Business of Ethnography) and Mould et al. Whilst the methodology for all three of my projects was ethnography, the methods utilised included interviews (n=23) – with interviewees drawn from across rural Scotland – participant and non-participant observation, and media and document analysis. Interviewees and study sites were accessed via snowball sampling, which was enabled by the measure of continuity between the three projects. This paper draws primarily on interview material and ethnographic ‘vignettes’. All individuals cited in the paper are anonymised in line with the University of Glasgow’s ethics guidelines.Cities, Creativity, and ‘Buzz’As noted earlier, cities are seen as the driving force behind the creative industries; and accordingly, much of the institutional infrastructure that supports the rural creative industries is modelled on urban systems of intervention. Cities are seen as breeding grounds for creativity by virtue of what Storper and Venables call their ‘buzz’ – consider, for example, the sheer numbers of creative practitioners that congregate in cities, the presence of art schools, work spaces and so on. Several of the creative practitioners I spoke to identified the lack of ‘buzz’ as one key difference between working in cities and working from rural places:It can be isolating out here. There are days when I miss art school, and my peers. I really valued their support and just the general chit chat and news. […] And having everything on your doorstep. (Visual artist, Argyll)Of course, rural creatives didn’t equate the ‘buzz’ of activity in cities with personal or professional creative success. Rather, they felt that developing a creative business was made easier by the fact that most funders and support agencies were based in Scotland’s Central Belt. The creatives resident there were able to take advantage of that proximity and the relationships that it enabled them to build, but also, the institutional landscape was supplemented by the creative ‘buzz’, which was difficult to quantify and impossible to replicate in rural areas.Negotiating the Funding and Support LandscapeI spoke to rural creative practitioners about whether the institutional infrastructure – in this case, relevant policy at national and UK level, funding and support agencies, membership bodies etcetera – was adequate. A common perspective was that the institutional infrastructure was extremely complex, which acted as a barrier for creatives seeking funding and support:Everything works ok, the problem is that there’s so many different places to go to for advice, and so many different criteria that you have to meet if you wanted funding, and what’s your first port of call, and it’s just too complicated. I feel that as a rural artist I fall between the cracks […] am I a creative business, a rural creative business, or just a rural business? (Craftsperson, Shetland) Interviewees suggested that there were ‘gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure, caused not by the lack of appropriate policy, funders, or support agencies but rather by their proliferation and a sense of confusion about who to approach. Furthermore, funding agencies such as Creative Scotland have, in recent years, come under fire for the complexity of their funding and support systems:They have simplified their application process, but I just can’t be bothered trying to get anything out of Creative Scotland at the moment. I don’t find their support that useful and they directed me to Cultural Enterprise Office when I asked for advice on filling in the form and tailoring the application, and CEO were just so pushed for time, I couldn’t get a Skype with them. The issue with getting funding from anywhere is the teeny tiny likelihood of getting money, coupled with how time-consuming the application process is. So for now, I’m just trying to be self-sufficient without asking for any development funds. But I am not sure how sustainable that is. (Craftsperson, Skye, interview) There was a sense that ‘what works’ to enable urban creative practitioners to develop their practice is not necessarily sufficient to help rural creatives. Because most policymakers, funders and support bodies are based in the Central Belt, rural creatives feel that the challenges they face are poorly understood. One arts administrator summed up why, statingthe problem is that people in the Central Belt don’t get what we’re dealing with up here, unless they’ve actually lived here. The remoteness, poor transport links, internet and mobile access […] it impacts on your ability to develop your business. If I want to attend a course, some organisations will pay travel and accommodation. But they don’t account for the fact that if I travel from Eigg, I’ll need to work around the ferry times, which might mean two extra nights’ accommodation plus the cost of travel … we’re excluded from opportunities because of our location. (Arts administrator, the Small Isles) A further issue identified by several participants in this research is that funding and support agencies Scotland-wide tend to work to standardised definitions of the creative industries that privilege high-growth sectors (see Luckman). This led to many heritage and craft businesses feeling excluded. One local authority stakeholder told me,exactly what the creative industries are, well that might be obvious on paper but real life is a bit more complicated. Where do we put a craftsperson whose craft work is done in her spare time but pays just enough to stop her needing a second job? How do we tell people like this, who say they are in the creative industries, that they aren’t actually according to this criteria or that criteria? (Local authority stakeholder, Shetland, interview)Creating Virtual ‘Buzz’? The Potential of ICTsAccording to 2015 OFCOM figures (10-12), in rural Scotland 85.9% of households can receive broadband, and 6.3% can receive superfast. The Scottish Government’s ambition is to deliver superfast broadband to up to 90 per cent of premises in Scotland by March 2016, and to extend this to 95 per cent by 2017. Whilst the current landscape as regards broadband provision is far from ideal, there are signs that improved provision is profoundly affecting the way that rural creatives develop their practice, and the way they engage with the institutional infrastructure set up to support them.At an industry event run by HIE in July 2015, a diverse panel of rural creatives spoke of how they exploited the possibilities associated with improved ICTs in order to offset some of the aforementioned problems of working from rural and remote areas. As the event was conducted under Chatham House rules, the following is adapted from field notes,It was clear from the panel and the Q&A that followed that improved ICTs meant that creatives could access training and support in new ways–online courses and training materials, webinars, and one-on-one Skype coaching, training and mentoring. Whilst of course most people would prefer face-to-face contact in this respect, the willingness of training providers to offer online solutions was appreciated, and most of the creatives on the panel (and many in the audience) had taken advantage of these partial solutions. The rural creatives on the panel also detailed the tactics that they used in order to ‘patch the gaps’ in the institutional infrastructure:There were four things that emerged from the panel discussion, Q&A and subsequent conversations I had on how technology benefited rural creatives: peer support, proximity to decision-makers, marketing and sales, and heritage and provenance.In terms of peer support, the panel felt that improved connectivity allowed them to access ‘virtual’ peer support through the internet. This was particularly important in terms of seeking advice regarding funding, business support and training, generating new creative ideas, and seeking emotional support from others who were familiar with the strains of running a creative business.Rural creatives found that social media (in particular) meant that they had a closer relationship with ‘distant’ decision-makers. They felt able to join events via livestreaming, and took advantage of hash tagging to take part in events, ‘policy hacks’ and consultations. Attendees I spoke to also mentioned that prominent Government ministers and other decision-makers had a strong Twitter presence and made it clear that they were at times ‘open’ to direct communication. In this way, rural creatives felt that they could ‘make their voices heard’ in new ways.In terms of marketing and sales, panel members found social media invaluable in terms of building online ‘presence’. All of the panel members sold services and products through dedicated websites (and noted that improved broadband speeds and 3G meant that these websites were increasingly sophisticated, allowing them to upload photographs and video clips, or act as client ‘portals’), however they also sought out other local creatives, or creatives working in the same sector in order to build visible networks on social media such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. This echoes an interview I conducted with a designer from Orkney, who suggested that these online networks allowed designers to build a rapport with customers, but also to showcase their products and build virtual ‘buzz’ around their work (and the work of others) in the hope their designs would be picked up by bloggers, the fashion press and stylists.The designer on the panel also noted that social media allowed her to showcase the provenance of her products. As she spoke I checked her Twitter and Instagram feeds, as well as the feeds of other designers she was linked to; a large part of their ‘advertising’ through these channels entailed giving followers an insight into life on the islands. The visual nature of these media also allowed them to document how local histories of making had influenced their practice, and how their rural location had influenced their work. It struck me that this was a really effective way to capture consumers’ imaginations. As we can see, improved ICTs had a substantial impact on rural creatives’ practice. Not only did several of the panel members suggest that improved ICTs changed the nature of the products that they could produce (by enabling them to buy in different materials and tools, and cultivate longer and more complex supply chains), they also noted that improved ICTs enabled them to cultivate new markets, to build stronger networks and to participate more fully in discussions with ‘distant’ policymakers and decision makers. Furthermore, ICTs were seen as acting as a proxy for ‘buzz’ for rural creatives, that is, face-to-face communication was still preferred, but savvy use of ICTs went some way to mitigating the problems of a rural location. This extends Storper and Venables’s conceptualisation of the idea, which understands ‘buzz’ as the often-intangible benefits of face-to-face contact.Problematically however, as Townsend et al. state, “rural isolation is amplified by the technological landscape, with rural communities facing problems both in terms of broadband access technologies and willingness or ability of residents to adopt these” (Enhanced Broadband Access 5). As such, the development activities of rural creatives are hampered by poor provision and a slow ‘roll out’ of broadband and mobile coverage. ConclusionsThis paper is concerned with recent attempts to develop the rural creative economy in Scotland. The paper can be read in relation to a small but expanding body of work that seeks to understand the distinctive formation of the rural creative industries across Europe and elsewhere (Bell and Jayne), and how these can best be developed and supported (White). Recent, targeted intervention in the rural creative industries speaks to concerns about the emergence of a ‘two tier’ Europe, with remote and sparsely-populated rural regions with narrow economic bases falling behind more resilient cities and city-regions (Markusen and Gadwa; Wiggering et al.), yet exactly how the rural creative industries function and can be further developed is an underdeveloped research area.In order to contribute to this body of work, this paper has sketched out some of the problems associated with recent attempts to develop the creative economy in rural Scotland. On a Scotland-wide scale, there is a proliferation of policies, funding bodies, and support agencies designed to organise and regulate the creative economy. In rural areas, there is also an ‘overlap’ between Scotland-wide bodies and rural-specific bodies, meaning that many rural creatives feel as if they ‘fall through the cracks’ in terms of funding and support. Additionally, rural creatives noted that Central Belt-based funders and support agencies struggled to fully understand the difficulties associated with making a living from a rural location.The sense of being distant from decision makers and isolated in terms of practice meant that many rural creatives took it upon themselves to develop the creative economy ‘from below’. The creatives that I spoke to had an array of ‘tactics’ that they used, some of which I have detailed here. In this short paper I have focused on one issue articulated within interviews – the idea of exploiting ICTs in order to build stronger networks between creatives and between creatives and decision makers within funding bodies and support agencies. Problematically, however, it was recognised that these creative-led initiatives could only do so much to mitigate the effects of a cluttered, piecemeal funding and support landscape.My research suggests that as it stands, ‘importing’ models from urban contexts is alienating and frustrating for rural creatives and targeted, rural-specific intervention is required. Research demonstrates that creative practitioners often seek to bring about social and cultural impact through their work, rather than engaging in creative activities merely for economic gain (McRobbie Be Creative, Rethinking Creative Economies; Waitt and Gibson). Whilst this is true of creatives in both urban and rural areas, my research suggests that this is particularly important to rural creatives, who see themselves as contributing economically, social and culturally to the development of the communities within which they are embedded (see Duxbury and Campbell; Harvey et al.). ‘Joined up’ support for this broad-based set of aims would greatly benefit rural creatives and maximise the potential of the rural creative industries.ReferencesAndersson, Martin, and Magnus Henrekson. "Local Competiveness Fostered through Local Institutions for Entrepreneurship." Research Institute on Industrial Economics Work Paper Series (2014), 0-57. Argent, Neil, Matthew Tonts, Roy Jones and John Holmes. “A Creativity-Led Rural Renaissance? Amenity-Led Migration, the Creative Turn and the Uneven Development of Rural Australia.” Applied Geography 44 (2013): 88-98.Bell, David, and Mark Jayne. 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