Diverticular Disease and Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease...

The human body is a complex system that often malfunctions. Many people believe that numerous diseases are a natural reflection of the body aging and cannot be avoided. The goal of my paper is to change this perception and demonstrate that healthy eating and active lifestyle can result in a healthy body at any age. Many diseases that occur in the digestive system or as a cause of complications in the digestive system are not preventable. There are a small amount of diseases that can be not only prevented, but also corrected by eating the proper nutrition or maintaining a healthy lifestyle such as Diverticular Disease and Gastro esophageal Reflux Disease. Diverticular disease consists of the involvement of two conditions that are†¦show more content†¦The symptoms include tenderness, cramps and pain in the lower abdomen, fever that are accompanied with chills, gas, a bloated feeling or stomach swelling, diarrhea or constipation, nausea, loss of appetite and rectum bleedin g which is usually painless. It is evident that many people who are diagnosed with diverticular disease have little or no symptoms at all but those who do are recommended high-fiber diet plans or fiber supplements as treatment. Most individuals get well by arranging a better diet and the results of this treatment also prevent constipation and the formation of more diverticula. The components of the healthy diet includes fruit, vegetables and grains such as raw apples, peaches, pears, and tangerines, broccoli squash carrots and brussels sprouts, potatoes, baked beans, kidney beans, and lima beans, whole-wheat bread, brown rice, bran flake cereal, and oatmeal (Longstreth). Doctors often advise individuals with diverticulitis to bypass any food that is hard to digest such as: popcorn, corn and seeds, however there is no evidence to coincide with this statement (WebMD). In some cases, surgery is needed in order to correct or treat diverticulitis because the diet does not have the ca pability of curing it. Subsequently, surgery is the last option and the process involves cleaning the abdomen of bleeding hernias and the removal of infection. If the disease reoccurs a

Health Literacy Is Defined As The “The Capacity To Obtain,

Health literacy is defined as the â€Å"the capacity to obtain, communicate, process, and understand basic health information and services to make appropriate health decisions† (Koh et al., 2012, p. 1). When a patient has poor health literacy, they are more likely to have a poor outcome in regards to their health. There are bills and initiatives that address the need for patients to increase their health literacy as well as the healthcare providers’ responsibilities to provide the information in a way that is understandable and actionable. As future nurses, we must also understand how health literacy will impact our practice and how we can help those with low health literacy. In 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was†¦show more content†¦Understandable is how easy the information is understood and actionable means the healthcare consumer can identify what actions they need to take. This test is valid for both printed and audiovisual materials. By using this test, a healthcare professional can identify material that is appropriate to use based on the understandability and actionability of the material (Shoemaker, Wolf, Brach, 2014) In 2010 the ACA was passed, it established a Hospital Readmission Reduction Program. What this program did was to penalize hospitals if a patient gets readmitted for the same condition within 30 days of being discharged. Readmissions are significant because they account for approximately one-third of the nation’s health costs. When hospitals use a patient-centered discharge process, the patients are then able to reconcile their medications, follow-up with community-based providers, and self-manage their diseases and treatments. The patient-centered discharge process helps to reduce hospital readmissions. (Cloonan, Wood, Riley, 2013) By properly educating the patient before discharge it reduces the risk of the patient getting readmitted. 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In the report the IOM defined health literacy as ‘‘the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions’’ (Logan). The IOM reported that health literacy is major problem facing the nation and that even well-educatedRead MoreHealth Literacy1207 Words   |  5 PagesHealth literacy is a term not widely understood by the general population. It is defined as â€Å"the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information needed to make appropriate health decisions and services needed to prevent or treat illness,† (About health literacy, 2014). A person’s lev el of health literacy is based on their age, education level, socioeconomic standing, and cultural background. 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CERA International Pty Limited

Question: Discuss about the CERA International Pty Limited. Answer: Introduction: In the first segment, the passage identifies and assesses four workplace hazards that took place in the CERA International Pty limited. The organization is situated in New South Wales, Australia. In the passage, four glaring health hazards are taken into account. The first hazard is excessive alcoholism and corporate conflict that are highly detrimental to the health of the employees. The corporate functions entail drinking bout and gala dinner parties. In this passage, the female colleague, Miriam drank excessively in a success party. In an inebriating tone, Miriam showed her wrath towards another colleague. Due to a serious corporate conflict, the male colleague (Israel) got hurt. The female colleague, Miriam was having a serious tussle with the male colleague, Israel. Out of frustration and rage, she thrust the broken glass in the hand of male colleague, Israel. Consequently, the male colleague started to bleed excruciatingly (Australia, 2016). The second hazard is misconception about the organizational structure. The female colleague, Miriam misconceived that something heinous was planned against the employees. She apprehended such risks. Therefore, the corporate conflict took ground. Truly speaking, the authority was thinking about expansion and not anything else (Constantine, 2014). The third hazard is disturbance of physical and mental balance of the construction labour. It is related with the employees of the construction sites. The employees at the construction sites have to deal with the perilous things that entail huge physical risk. At the same time, the employees at the construction sites have to stay until late nights. The strenuous workload can jeopardize their physical and mental health (Constantine, 2014). The fourth hazard mentions about lighting and poor office infrastructure. If the office remains too cramped, then it is a problem for the employees to rove about with ease. The poor office infrastructure can lead to difficult movement. At the same time, the office employees need a proper space for their movement. As far as the first hazard is concerned, the management should look into the problems made by the corporate people. The management should strive for the improvement of safety and security management. It is indispensable for the authorities to see that alcoholism does not result in perilous incidents (as is showed in the text). In an intoxicating way, the female colleague lunged at the male colleague (Israel) with a broken glass. It culminated in the corporate conflict and major health hazard (Martinez-Lopez, 2016). Therefore, the management should underscore this issue and lessen the aggressiveness in the office premise. The second hazard i.e. misconception surrounding office work should also be lessened. The third hazard i.e. the breakdown of the mental and physical balance should be ameliorated. The authorities should be responsible towards the labours and give them work concessions. At the same time, they should keep a flexible time schedule for the workers. The fourth hazard i.e. lighting and penurious office infrastructure. This is a trivial issue and the authorities keep an eye on it. However, the authorities should be more oriented towards the safety and welfare of the employees. The goal of profit maximization should not overwhelm the authorities completely (Blewett, 2014) In the second segment, the writer has to delve into some effective suggestions. If one has to prioritize the WHS (World Health and Safety Information) for the CERA Company, then the authorities should follow certain suggestions. As an advisor, one can suggest the crucial factors that Mark French has to follow while charting out a blueprint for the CERA Company (Blewett, 2014) The CERA Company should follow certain rules and regulations regarding the safety and security of the employees. The CERA Company is a big shot in Australia. However, the advisor thinks that the CERA Company should work on the efficiency of the management. It should look into certain matters in detail (Teague, 2014). The management should comprehend the graveness of the work culture. The office authorities have to maintain proper infrastructure, so that the employees could work with ease. The management has to lessen the aggressiveness of the office employees. It should understand that the office is not a nightclub, where the partygoers create ruckus. The office employee should maintain etiquette and discipline in the campus (Teague, 2014). At the same time, the authorities should scan their behavioural problems and scrutinize them accordingly. The office authorities have to maintain a flexible time schedule for the employees. The employees should not work like a robot for any projects. The political manoeuvrings and wrong conception should be lessened. The office authority should have a cognizance of the employee safety related matters (Cooper, 2014). The employees should know that the office is not a playground or wrestling stadium. Therefore, the corporate conflict should be mitigated and the authorities have to be responsible toward this issue. Reference Australia, S. W. (2016). National Safe Work Month is held in October each year and aims to improve the awareness of work health and safety in the workplace and to encourage discussion about safety at work by sharing positive workplace stories from across Australia.LAMP, 39. Blewett, V., Rainbird, S., Clarkson, L., Etherton, H., Paterson, J. (2014). Strategic engagement hearing the voice of young workers in the development of the Youth Work Health and Safety Strategy for South Australia. Constantine, L. (2014). Doing business in NZ? Be aware of reforms to WHS system.Government News,34(4), 574. Cooper, R. A., Briggs, T., Tooma, M., Garlapati, A. (2014, September). International Leadership Forum: An Insight into Most Recent International SHE Regulations. InASSE Professional Development Conference and Exposition. American Society of Safety Engineers. Martnez-Lpez, J., Bertzky, B., Bonet-Garca, F. J., Bastin, L., Dubois, G. (2016). Biophysical characterization of protected areas globally through optimized image segmentation and classification.Remote Sensing,8(9), 780. Teague, P., Conomos, J., Alexandrou, V., Jennings, M. (2014, October). Development of an occupational noise exposure reduction project for defence in Australia. InINTER-NOISE and NOISE-CON Congress and Conference Proceedings(Vol. 249, No. 6, pp. 1604-1613). Institute of Noise Control Engineering.

Star Trek Essays - Star Trek, Star Trek Fandom, Bajoran,

Star Trek INTRODUCTION: Television programs provide one of the most popular forms of entertainment today. From The Simpsons to The X-Files, television shows amuse, shock, sadden, and excite us by turns. Television does more, however, than simply entertain. Television shows are cultural products, and as such, they reflect, reinforce, and challenge cultural ideas. It acts as a mirror and a model for society. In examining and understanding those cultural messages and popular appeal of certain television shows, we should understand something about the society that has created and sustained them. Arguably, Star Trek is one of the most popular television shows ever produced. Today Star Trek includes four television series and nine motion pictures . Like some of the other television shows, Star Trek has been subject to the vagaries of producers and writers so it is difficult to generalize about the intent of the authors of Star Trek or the viewpoint of the readers. Yet, it is also clear that Star Trek has at various times been reflective, informative, and critical about the culture -American culture- that produced it. Star Trek has addressed a wide variety of issues, including war, capitalism, individualism, technology, race, gender, prejudice, religion, etc. The list can be extended to many other issues but here I will focus on race, gender, prejudice and religion only. As portrayed on television such issues are representations of socio-cultural perspectives on broad human concerns. For taking a closer look to those issues, in the continuing parts I will give some examples fro m a number of Star Trek episodes that had written in different times. RELIGION: The portrayal and treatment of religion in the Star Trek television series and films provides an important cultural commentary on the place of religion in society. Although no single coherent approach to religion appears in Star Trek, the series is nevertheless variously reflective of, informed by, and critical of societal attitudes toward religion. The portrayal and treatment of religion in much of the Star Trek franchise is negative: religion is often presented as superstitious, outdated, and irrational. An underlying and consistent theme of the Star Trek series is the presentation of rational scientific humanism as an alternative to religious faith. A newer theme, notably found in episodes from the Deep Space Nine and the Voyager series, explores the potentially positive value of religion. Since the viability and popularity of Star Trek have spanned such a long period of time, it is inevitable that the series would begin to diverge from original assumptions in response to changing cultural attitudes. The recent potentially positive portrayal of religion within Star Trek both reflects and reinforces a particular cultural change. Gene Roddenberry was Star Trek's creator and executive producer. While he was alive and continued to have a direct hand in the production of the show, religion as a theme was rarely treated. When it was -I believe- the portrayal of religion reflected Roddenberry's own distrust of an antipathy toward organized religion. In Star Trek, organized religion tends to be portrayed as the product of a pre-rational age, antithetical to science and reason, and God is depicted as a category mistake -an advanced alien form- from mistaken for a god. However after his death, and particularly evident in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, religion as a theme far more often tends to be treated in a more sophisticated and sympathetic manner2. The setting of Deep Space Nine is a Federation space station situated next to the planet Bajor. The people of Bajor are united by their common religious faith guided by a religious oligarchy. Invisible spiritual guides called ?the Prophets? directed them. The two hour premiere episode of Deep Space Nine: Emissary featured than -Commander Sisko's encounter with the Prophets, one that led both to his emotional healing and to his identification as a Bajoran's long-awaited spiritual Emissary. This introductory episode so explicitly involving a spiritual motif set a compelling tone for the exploration of religious themes in this series. On Deep Space Nine religious faith is treated as more than simply the product of superstition and the suspension of rationality depicted in the earlier series. On the other hand, certain episodes, like Shakaar, deal with the Bajoran

Cult Branding Essays

Cult Branding Essays Cult Branding Essay Cult Branding Essay 1993). After all, if the personality of human beings can boil down to seven measures, a similar construct should suffice to analyze and write up a rich-enough character statement for a brand. The author’s tool is named the HBCQ or Hepta-dimensional Brand Character Questionnaire in reference to Professor Cloninger’s early investigative tool, the Tri-dimensional Personality Questionnaire or TPQ (Cloninger, 1987). The HBCQ consists of a battery of approximately 100 self-administered questions or statements which the respondent must answer as if the brand were a person. It is complemented by a one-hour face-to-face interview. (Chevron, 1998) Typical interviewees People to be interviewed typically include: The corporation’s top managers including only those who influence how the brand behaves (e. g. board members, chairman of the board, president, etc. The senior vice-president or vice-president of marketing International managers who get to choose and adapt advertising and packaging for their region, or who forge marketing alliances with other companies New product strategists and top RD personnel, since product formulation and new product introductions are an important part of the brand’s spe ech Senior advertising agency personnel (unless a change is contemplated) And any other person who is a long-term influencer of the brand’s communication Between five and 25 interviews are conducted and the results are analyzed by a team: a clinical psychologist, a conceptual copywriter and the author. A brand character statement is then drafted and refined with the participation of the brand’s management. Typical statements in the questionnaire include: Brand X prefers the old â€Å"tried and true† ways of doing things to trying â€Å"new and improved† ways, or, The brand can laugh at itself, which the respondent must answer with: Yes/ No/ Doesn’t apply (Chevron, 1998) Rating brand strengths and weaknesses Those answers allow us to rate the brand strengths and weaknesses along the following axes: High novelty v/s low novelty; Security v/s risk taking; Seeks reward v/s does not depend on reward; Persistence v/s irresoluteness; Self-sufficiency/maturity v/s immaturity; Cooperativeness/pro-social v/s self-centred/anti-social; and Integrity/conscience v/s lack of integrity. (Chevron, 1998) The Brand Character Statement (or BCS) Following is a hypothetical example of a Brand Character Statement: Ben Jerry’s Homemade Inc. The firm wrote the document after taking the HBCQ themselves and trying to impersonate Ben Jerry’s management while answering the questions. To verify the accuracy of this BCS, they submitted it to a Ben Jerry’s PR person who found it accurate and requested only one word change. In spite of this, they did not assume that their assessment of the Ben Jerry’s brand character is as complete as if they had been able to administer the HBCQ. Please note that this BCS contains a number of constraints or commitments which may not always be easy to live with. So it should: a character statement that does not commit much is not worth much either. ? Ben Jerry’s Ice Cream: Brand Character Statement Ben Jerry’s Homemade ice cream is ice cream as it should be, made with fresh and natural ingredients blended with something unexpected and original. It combines the tradition of Vermont where the company is, and the creative iconoclasm of hippies which Ben and Jerry were in the 1960s. Ben Jerry’s ice cream brand begins with the best ingredients, like real fresh cream and fresh fruits, which are processed according to traditional methods of ice cream making. Everything that goes into Ben Jerry’s ice cream – ingredients, preparation, packaging, distribution, and service – bears the mark of its Vermont origins: friendly farmers with solid down-home values and humour, attached to traditions that extol nature and good food. Ben Jerry’s ice cream makes ice cream fun to eat with unexpected mixes; it seems as if it had been made by two imaginative guys working in the farmhouse kitchen. Ben Jerry’s ice cream as a corporation is traditional, but not conservative: no starched shirts here, but flannel ones with funny and unexpected patterns. Everything Ben Jerry’s ice cream does reflects the strong values of Vermont tradition without compromising the creativity and progressive 1960s values of its two original entrepreneurs. It was started by friends, with an idea and no means, not by food technicians blessed with financial backing. It represents entrepreneurship and the victory of the little guy against the big corporations (which it has contempt for). It is generous as only a small artisan without a large accounting system to control cost can be: There are lots of real chunks of brownies in the Chocolate Fudge Brownie Ice Cream and large amounts of dough in the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. Ben Jerry’s ice cream is committed to the environment in which we all live. The brand is very active in several â€Å"green† political causes. While this may have its origins in the founders’ hippie past, it is nevertheless a very current and very strong corporate commitment. Ben Jerry’s ice cream is corny as if corniness were an article of faith. It believes that seriousness only serves to protect the dim-witted. Ben Jerry’s ice cream product names often wink at its consumer: Cherry Garcia winks at its hippie past. They do not aim to be taken seriously. They are just a way to foster a bond with like-minded people. Ben Jerry’s ice cream doesn’t seek novelty for novelty’s sake: it is open to new ideas and doesn’t have hidden preconceptions or prejudices. While it is creative, it doesn’t hold creativity as an essential virtue. Nor does it hold â€Å"incongruity† as a vice either. (Chevron, 1998) Applying the Brand Character Statement From the time when a BCS is developed and agreed to, it must be used with absolute consistency and no exceptions. It is important to understand that not all of the points it makes have to be included in the brand’s communication all the time. What is essential, however, is to ensure that no point of the BCS is ever violated by any communication whatsoever. In the Ben Jerry’s ice cream example it says that: â€Å"Ben Jerry’s ice cream brand begins with the best ingredients, like real fresh cream and fresh fruits†. This means that, wherever BJ uses cream or fruit, it must use fresh cream and fresh fruit. But it also allows BJ to market sorbets (which do not contain cream) and vanilla or coffee ice creams (which do not contain fruits). Ben Jerry could not, however, market a simple vanilla or coffee ice cream which would violate another mandate from the BCS which requires it to blend tradition with the unexpected. In practice, all its vanilla ice cream is mixed with fruit, and the â€Å"Coffee, Coffee! BuzzBuzzBuzz† is sure packed with unexpected ingredients and textures. (Chevron, 1998) The Brand Parent As detailed as a brand character statement may be in writing, it is still open to interpretation. Some of those inferences may be quite contradictory, particularly when they are made by managers who are under the threat of an immediate danger, or by the sophists of a far-away advertising agency. It is best to appoint one person as â€Å"brand parent† with the responsibility of applying the BCS and of warding off threats to its integrity. Once installed, the brand parent must be the mandatory gate for all of the brand communication, including PR, packaging, promotion, etc. The parent’s authority should be exercised worldwide. (Chevron, 1998) Attributes of a Brand Parent It is important to observe the following rules for the brand parent: The person must have excellent teaching skills and have enough seniority in the organization to command respect. The brand parent is not a marketing manager and does not interfere with local marketing plans other than those plans that run against the BCS. The brand parent reports directly to the top of the corporation (president or CEO) and receives frequent public demonstrations of support from his bosses: The assignment will be made very difficult by many, particularly international managers who may see the brand parent as enc roaching on their authority, and advertising agencies who may see the BCS as hindering their creative freedom. The brand parent disposes of a research budget which serves to measure progress made in each country towards linking in the consumer’s mind the values of the BCS with the brand. The results of this research should have some impact on the compensation of local marketing staff. In addition to creating a â€Å"brand parent† function, a successful branding strategy must carefully create buy-in within an organization. This is made all the more necessary by the â€Å"top-down† approach used in the Delphi Process. The author and his team recommend that one of the first tasks of the brand parent be to implement local research with the HBCQ so as to find the brand’s â€Å"character gaps† or the brand’s character traits which local communication needs to reinforce. The brand parent should then challenge the local marketing staff to develop an action plan to bridge those gaps and, if at all possible, tie a reward to the achievement of these greed-to objectives. In addition to furthering the goal of communicating the values of the BCS, these actions will help develop a sense of ownership for the project among the local marketing staff. We cannot over-stress the importance, from the outset of the execution of a branding strategy, of establishing the organization which will direct its execution. The concept underlying the creation of a brand character statement is a powerful one and most managers will readily agree to use it. Yet, experience shows, once the pressures of running the day-to-day business resume, those good intentions can vanish quickly. (Chevron, 1998) Measuring progress Progress made in establishing brand character must be measured. If no measurements are made, the BCS exercise is likely to remain just that – an exercise. The basic principle for this monitoring consists in comparing the brand profile as it is expected to be, based on interviews conducted among the brand owners, with a brand profile based on consumer interviews. An initial measurement will permit determination of the initial â€Å"brand character gap† while subsequent research will (hopefully) show how this gap has been reduced. Brand profile measurements among consumers can be accomplished rapidly and at a relatively low cost with a shortened version of the HBCQ. This research tool has the advantage of being self-administered, and, because of the internal redundancy of its questions, of providing reliable test-retest data on the seven scales it measures. In addition, it allows measurement of the remaining â€Å"character gap† along its seven scales, thereby providing invaluable direction to those in charge of its communication. Some had warned that the questionnaire would be hard to use if people had difficulty â€Å"anthropomorphising† the brand. For some reason, qualitative researchers use these anthropomorphic analogies for research in most European countries (except Germany), but the same techniques are strongly criticized and seldom used in the USA. Our experience using HBCQ research in the USA, as well as abroad, has been very positive and has shown no problem of understanding, even in pilot tests of consumer perceptions of an ice cream brand conducted among rural Midwest respondents. The monitoring effort should be biennial and sponsored and closely supervised by the brand parent. We strongly recommend that the results be used to allocate special rewards within the company and its advertising agency. (Chevron, 1998) Yearly Review Suggested Note that while progress in establishing brand character should be measured once every other year, the brand parent would be well advised to conduct a yearly review of the process used to implement the BCS. (Chevron, 1998) ? The Brand Building Process Contd. Brand Architecture Process Brand Architecture is an organizing structure if the brand portfolio that specifies brand roles and the nature of relationships between brands. The brand architecture schemes have been referred to brand equity charter, leverages and brand profitability and the new rules of brand management leading to the efficacy of the attributes, derived advantages and brand system emerging in relation to the buying power of the customers. The first step in establishing a brand equity management system may be focussed towards finalizing brand equity into a document, the brand charter that provides relevant guidelines to the marketing managers. Such documentation strategy requires defining the firm’s view on the significance of the equity concept, describing key brands in terms of associated products or names and the manner by which they have been branded and marketed the second step in establishing a successful brand equity management is to integrate the results of the brand track survey performed periodically. While architecting the brand strategy, it is important to understand the preliminary definition of brand equity is not the same for the firm named brands that have their own names. In case of firm owned brands, ? Case Studies – Case Study 1 Marlboro Marlboro. You get a lot to like, filter, flavor, flip-top box. Where theres a man theres a Marlboro-with a filter that delivers a smoke of surprising mildness. Better makins. Marlboro More flavor More filter More cigarette. If you think flavor went out when filters came in-Try Marlboro. Make yourself comfortable-Have a Marlboro Marlboro. Why dont you set tle back and have a full flavored smoke Settle Back. You get a lot to like here in Marlboro Country. Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country Come to where the flavor is. Come to Marlboro Country. Marlboro. A Western landscape, a rugged cowboy and the colour red have come to embody years of advertising tag lines for Philip Morris Marlboro cigarettes. These three elements, combined or separate, are recognizable as the American call to Marlboro Country even without the brand name, sales pitch or slogan. The brilliantly designed campaign, the strong image of the mythical American hero, the cowboy, and a successful series of responses to market challenges by the Marlboro team has created an immediately and universally recognized icon representing an idealized and appealing American lifestyle out of possibly the only product on the market (aside from weapons) that kill and injure when they are used as they are intended to be used. (08Ja) Background In the 1920s, Marlboro was first advertised as a premium cigarette for women, a milder version of the smokes well dressed men might puff on after dinner. But the brand never took hold, and by the 1950s concerns over the connection between smoking and cancer drove many smokers to filtered brands. Philip Morris didnt have a filtered cigarette, so it scrapped the old campaign in favour of re-launching Marlboro as the companys filtered alternative. After deciding to introduce filters to the brand, Marlboro executives still had the brands feminine image to deal with. It didnt help that filtered cigarettes were considered softer versions of the real thing, cigarettes for sissies. For help, Marlboro turned to Leo Burnetts advertising company. In a 1972 documentary, Burnett recalled the brainstorming session in which they stumbled upon their icon. I said, Whats the most masculine symbol you can think of? And right off the top of his head one of these writers spoke up and said a cowboy. And I said, Thats for sure. (08Fe) Burnett remembered a cover of Life magazine (Aug. 22, 1949) of C. H. Long, a range boss for the JA Ranch near Amarillo, Texas. A model was posed like Long, some cowboy-sounding words were added, and the ad was slapped into print in a Dallas newspaper. It was the birth of the most successful advertising campaign in history, the icon of the century, according to Advertising Age. (08Fe1) The first Marlboro men werent limited to cowboys. They were all sorts of rugged individuals who smoked their cigarettes while performing equally manly tasks, from fixing their cars to fishing or hunting. (08Fe) The rather abrupt advertising about-face sparked a similar turn in sales. By 1957, Marlboros sales were skyrocketing. Unfortunately for Philip Morris, however, 1957 also brought with it one of the first rounds of negative publicity. A study published in Readers Digest linked smoking with cancer. (08Fe) In response, Marlboro once again turned to show its softer side. But this time it made sure to do so in a way that might retain the masculine appeal the company had worked so hard to cultivate, while calming the nerves of anxious smokers. Instead of focusing on the mysterious tattooed Marlboro Man, it turned the camera to sultry singer Julie London, who would share a smoke with her lucky male companion in between verses of the dreamy new Settle Back with a Marlboro theme. 08Fe) These commercials, paired with print ads that showed apparently wealthy men relaxing for a smoke, lasted for a while. But as American politics became more complicated in the 1960s, Jack Landry, the Marlboro brand manager at Philip Morris, saw an opening into which the cowboy fit like a glove. (08Fe) In a world that was becoming increasingly complex and frustrating for the ordinary man, Landry explained, the cowboy represented an antithesis a man whose environment was simplistic and relatively pressure free. He was his own man in a world he owned. (08Fe) Marlboros television advertisements in the 60s reflected the idea of freedom in wide-open spaces, especially once he theme from the movie The Magnificent Seven was added to the scenes of cowboys leading their herds through dusty canyons of Marlboro Country or charging off to rein in a stray colt. (08Fe) Part of the success of the campaign might be attributable to the fact that Marlboro forged some credibility by using real cowboys in some of the ads instead of actors just playing the part. (08Fe) The image took hold with enough force that even through a ban on televised tobacco advertisements that began in 1971, the Marlboro Man survived unharmed. Instead of riding off into the sunset, the image turned up in print ads and on billboards all over the count ry. (08Fe) Today, Marlboros are smoked by 40 percent of U. S. mokers over 11, some 25 million people, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. They consume 154 billion Marlboros a year. (08Fe1) Analysis Marlboro is not only an iconic brand in United States of America, but in other countries too. But this is contrary to the common perception that a cult brand needs to be in line with culture of the consumers. So ideally a brand icon such as ‘Marlboro Man’ should not be an icon in other countries of the world except United States because he took birth because cowboy is a symbol of masculinity in USA. The reason behind this is ambiguity. This is further discussed by taking examples of different countries and perception of the people over there. The American cowboy The Marlboro man which was initially identified with recognizable personalities later became an anonymous icon representing a way of life associated with the wilderness, not a specific individual. The setting for the ads is the untamed frontier, the American hinterland. The Marlboro man is portrayed as both a product of the frontier and as a role model representing the idealized American spirit. As such, he stands for a sloughing off or a rejection of the trappings of the modern civilized world and an embrace of the frontier spirit. He chooses to live as a â€Å"true American† and, thereby, emerges as superior to the bureaucrats and organization men of the civilized world who pervert or ignore the heritage and birthright of all Americans. Through the Marlboro man, Americans are able to participate vicariously in the myth of America and its greatness. By using the brand, people can link themselves to that tradition; conforming â€Å"yes men† may triumph when climbing the corporate ladder, but during a smoking break the true American prevails. (A. H. Walle, 1997) When analysing the response of American audiences, therefore, the Marlboro man is best explained as a brand image which taps and replicates a basic paradigm by which Americans view and judge themselves. It is niched in the American self-image and it is clearly linked to the supposed beneficial influences of the frontier on both national character and personal worth. (A. H. Walle, 1997) The Westerner goes East A. H. Walle, a professor at University of Buffalo, USA, in his research paper â€Å"Global behaviour, unique responses: consumption within cultural frameworks† recites an incident during one of his visit to Germany. Back in the 1980s when the cold war was still frigid and the Iron Curtain was still a bastion, I drove to Berlin and in the process had to cross through a section of what was then East Germany. During the trip, my companion wanted to stop at one of the East German â€Å"duty free shops† along the way in order to get some luxury goods at low prices. (A. H. Walle, 1997) Walking into the store, I was met with a life-sized picture of the Marlboro man, which was carefully positioned so it would exert a visual impact on all entering customers. I told my companion that I found all this to be quite ironic; here I was, beginning my first interaction in an Iron Curtain country and I find myself being greeted by a classic icon of American capitalism, not by German communists. (A. H. Walle, 1997) Fairly quickly, a young female clerk at the store came over to us and urged us not to draw attention to the poster; she then confided that she was planning to steal it as soon as an opportunity presented itself. The woman went on to say that she intended to put the poster in her bathroom so she could see it every morning when she got out of the shower. She observed, â€Å"look at the picture, there’s not a fence anywhere†. (A. H. Walle, 1997) To this East German woman, the Marlboro man was a seductive icon, but to her it did not represent the heritage of the American frontier. Juxtaposing the image of a man who lived without fences to the realities of her own life and the shadow of the Berlin Wall, she viewed the Marlboro man as an alternative to the oppressive dictatorship in which she lived. We both saw the same ad; I interpreted it as an American while she processed it in ways which fit into her life. The product and its promotion were homogeneous; the meaning and response were not. (A. H. Walle, 1997) A Return to the Hinterland It is well known that the tobacco companies are increasingly marketing their products in Third World countries. It is also well known that many of the advertising symbols used in the Western world are also employed in Third World advertising and promotion of tobacco products. The Marlboro Man is an example of that tendency. (A. H. Walle, 1997) This fact, however, does not necessarily indicate that those who live in Third World countries respond to these images in ways which parallel the response of Western consumers. Consider the following observation of David Sokal who worked for the Medical Care Development Inc. in West Africa in the 1980s: While working in West Africa†¦I encountered many cigarette advertisements†¦During one [conversation with a young man] he remarked that the Marlboro man was really impressive†¦Consider the picture of a sun-bronzed cowboy on a handsome horse rounding up fat, healthy cattle. To a rural African child this is wealth and prosperity. In many villages if there is a horse at all it belongs to the village chief. Most herdsmen go on foot, and most cattle are very thin (Sokal, 1985, pp. 467-8). The key point Sokal makes is that in the African cultural milieu of which he spoke, the Marlboro man represents high social class, economic success, and the mainstream establishment. In North America, in contrast, the Marlboro man is a marginal individualist who accepts a working-class status in order to reject the confines of an â€Å"organization man† existence. By doing so, he can live as a real man and he achieves personal fulfilment as a result of his sacrifice. To the East German, in contrast, the Marlboro man represents a generalized freedom evaluated against a backdrop of political repression at home. To the African, the same image represents status, wealth, and material success. It is obvious that the same advertisement can trigger completely different responses among various audiences. Although the Marlboro advertising strategists may have thought that they were marketing a product in global ways, they merely provide various markets with what amounts to a Rorchach â€Å"ink blot test† in which people project their own personal hopes, dreams, and fears on to a neutral image which can suggest several things; it means nothing until interpreted by the viewer. (A. H. Walle, 1997) Ambiguity/Transformation Theory Certain messages possess a degree of ambiguity (intended or unintended) which facilitate multiple interpretations. To whatever degree ambiguity exists, specific groups and individuals will be free to use the message as a blank canvas on which to paint their own vision. To whatever degree a communication is concrete and unambiguous, in contrast, the greater the propensity for the receiver to interpret the message according to the â€Å"meaning† which is intended by the communicator. Actually, of course, there is always a degree of both concreteness and ambiguity in all communications; it is possible, however, to place a communication on a continuum with concreteness and ambiguity as polar opposites and the specific communication lying somewhere on that continuum. Such a model is useful in considering the Marlboro man. (A. H. Walle, 1997) The Cowboy as Ambiguous Icon As has been shown, the cowboy (as represented here by the Marlboro Man) is an ambiguous character which is subject to multiple interpretations. Its image does not possess a universal and concrete meaning. As a result, individual people and groups are able to invest the icon with interpretations which are meaningful to them. This ambiguity allows a universal and homogeneous icon, the Marlboro man, to address different markets in a uniform manner even though each group interprets this familiar icon according to its own needs and orientations. No doubt, this ambiguity was not intended by those who created the Marlboro man; these promotional specialists were obviously seeking to link the American vision of the cowboy (and its mythic links to the American psyche) with the Marlboro brand. Nonetheless, an ambiguity did creep into the icon, which allowed various audiences to transform its meaning in ways which were uniquely relevant and appropriate. Indeed, the cowboy is a multi-dimensional character. From the perspective of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the concept of the â€Å"noble savage†, the cowboy represents a superiority which results from living close to nature. As an opposite vision, the â€Å"natural man† can also be viewed as someone who sloughs the benefits of civilization and devolves down the rungs of cultural development to barbarism or worse. Both visions have been thrust on to the image of the cowboy in heroic depictions, on the one hand, and antiheroic portrayals, on the other. In addition, the cowboy can be viewed from a distinctively American perspective or as a generalized icon dealing with human universals. Both orientations have been embraced by different groups at different times. And finally, the cowboy can be viewed in hyper-specific manners as was the case in East Germany and Africa. This flexibility was not foreseen or intended by the strategic planners of Marlboro; yet it ultimately served the brand’s purpose very well. This flexibility can be viewed as a windfall which allows and facilitates effective international promotion. Ambiguity/transformation theory provides a way to deal with this phenomenon. By recognizing that the ability for an image to be transformed lies in the degree of ambiguity which exists within it, the analyst and strategic planner will have a way to predict the degree to which an advertisement can be transformed by specific groups. By so evaluating the communication, it is possible to develop tactics which mesh with the overall goals of the organization. (A. H. Walle, 1997) Discussion Although the ambiguity inherent in the Marlboro man was an accident, the example points to the strategic value of ambiguity under certain controlled conditions. Having observed Marlboro’s accidental success with ambiguity, it is possible to discuss the option of engineering promotional messages which consciously embody an ambiguity. By doing so, a homogeneous brand image can be merged with specific responses by distinct target markets. As argued above, some communications are fragile and ambiguous. The Marlboro Man is an ambiguous icon which can be interpreted in multiple ways. It lacks an inherent, concrete meaning; as a result, different groups are able to interpret it in ways which mesh with their needs and world views. Although the ambiguity in this example was accidental, it demonstrates the strategic potential which can exist in forging images which are imprecise; by presenting homogeneous campaigns based on ambiguous images, uniform corporate communications can be mated with unique local response. Marketing managers need to appreciate the potential value of such ambiguous campaigns. Juxtaposed, the polar opposites of the continuum of ambiguity and concreteness can be discussed as shown in Table. ? Table 1 Ambiguous V/s Concrete communication compared (A. H. Walle, 1997) AmbiguousConcrete CharacteristicsThe communication can be interpreted in a no. of ways. The way in which a communication is interpreted is a function of needs, wants, feelings, etc. of those who receive the message. The communication is explicit and will generally be interpreted in a specific way which is inherent in the communication itself. The meaning is largely determined by the communicator, not the receiver of the message. ValueOrganizations often want to choose a uniform means of communicating with consumers and potential consumers because of the efficiencies involved in doing so. By choosing ambiguous, yet uniform, tactic of communication, the organization can gain homogeneous recognition in the market place, on the one hand, and allow the individual markets to respond to the product in their own way, on the other On some occasions the organization wants to express a precise and explicit message that all consumers and possible consumers will interpret in identical ways. By choosing a concrete strategy, the organization will achieve the goal of explicit and unambiguous communication at the trade-off cost of preventing individual target markets from responding to the product in unique ways. DiscussionAs indicated, ambiguity and concreteness are polar opposites on a continuum. As such, many points exist between the poles. Nonetheless, it is possible to envisage a communication as embracing on orientation more than the other and to conceptualize a strategic value of having a communication which lies on some particular point of that continuum. ? Implications It is possible for homogeneous communications to be interpreted in diverse ways by various target markets. In view of the fact that this option can result in effective organizational communications, it deserves strategic consideration. Although ambiguity/transformation theory can be used to explain unintended results of organizational communications, it can also be used by those who seek to engineer ambiguity into homogeneous advertising campaigns. In the case of the Marlboro man, the ambiguity which exists was unintended. Nonetheless, Marlboro benefited from the ambiguity. Some communications are more ambiguous than others. To what extent does the organization want specific target markets to forge unique interpretations of homogeneous commercial messages? In view of the fact that the degree of ambiguity in promotional campaigns can be viewed as a matter of strategic choice, the question is more than merely academic. (A. H. Walle, 1997) ? Case Studies – Case Study 2 Mountain Dew People have always needed myths. Simple stories with compelling characters and resonant plots, myths help us make sense of the world. They provide ideals to live by, and they work to resolve lifes most vexing questions. Icons are encapsulated myths. They are powerful because they deliver myths to us in a tangible form, thereby making them more accessible. Icons are not just brands, of course. More often, they are people. We find icons among the most successful politicians- think of Ronald Reagan-artists and entertainers like Marilyn Monroe, activists like Martin Luther King, and other celebrity figures, such as Princess Di. People feel compelled to make these icons part of their lives because, through them, theyre able to experience powerful myths continually. Iconic brands operate similarly. When a brand creates a myth, most often through advertisements, consumers come to perceive the myth as embodied in the product. So they buy the product to consume the myth and to forge a relationship with the author: the brand. Anthropologists call this ritual action. When Nikes core customers laced up their Air Jordans in the early 1990s, they tapped into Nikes myth of individual achievement through perseverance. As Apples customers typed away on their keyboards in the late 1990s, they communed with the companys myth of rebellious, creative, libertarian values at work in a new economy. Holt, 2003) As these examples suggest, iconic brands embody not just any myth but myths that attempt to resolve acute tensions people feel between their own lives and societys prevailing ideology. Such tensions are widespread. An i deology, by its nature, presents challenging moral imperatives; it lays out the vision to which a community aspires. But, inevitably, many people live at a considerable remove from that vision. A national ideology may, for example, promote the ideal of a family with two parents, even though many citizens contend with broken homes. The contradictions between ideology and individual experience produce intense desires and anxieties, fueling the demand for myths. That demand, in turn, gives rise to myth markets. Its in these markets, not in product markets, that brands compete to become icons. Think of a myth market as an implicit national conversation in which a wide variety of cultural products compete to provide the most compelling myth. The topic of the conversation is the national ideology, and it is taken up by many contenders. (Holt, 2003) The winners in these markets become icons; they are the greatest performers of the greatest myths, and they bask in the kind of glory bestowed on those who have the prophetic and charismatic power to provide cultural leadership in times of great need. More often than not, in America at least, those who win in myth markets are performing a myth of rebellion. No matter the era or the ideological climate, Americans are resolutely pragmatic and populist in spirit, deeply distrustful of political dogma and concentrated authority. For guidance and solace, Americans turn to those who stand up for their personal values instead of pursuing wealth and power. The countrys myths draw on its stockpile of rebels, people who are often a threat to the prevailing ideology. The most successful icons rely on an intimate and credible relationship with a rebel world: Nike with the African- American ghetto, Harley with outlaw bikers, Volkswagen with bohemian artists, Apple with cyberpunks. And even before these, there was the soft drink Mountain Dew. Lets take a look at how, back in the 1950s, a small bottler in Tennessee succeeded with a rebel myth that addressed one of the most potent ideological contradictions of the day. (Holt, 2003) The Case of Mountain Dew To understand the early iconic power of Mountain Dew, we must hark back to the American ideology of the 1950s and 1960s, which was deeply influenced by World War II and the Cold War. The success of American military operations executed according to a rationalized, hierarchical model and the nations ability to out-science the Nazis in the race to develop the atomic bomb announced the beginning of a new era. Ideology lauded scientific expertise, the power of which would be unleashed by professionally managed bureaucracies. Popular culture was filled with visions of technology used to create fantastic futures and to help the country conquer new markets and beat back the Soviet bloc. Ideas about rugged individualism had become anachronistic; manhood was now to be earned in a corporate environment. The man who was mature enough to subsume his individuality under the umbrella of corporate wisdom was praised. Outside of work, these ideals found expression in the new modern living practiced by nuclear families in planned suburbs. These values produced a litany of contradictions. For men, these ideals felt coercive and emasculating when measured against Americas historical populism. Books like William Whytes The Organization Man and David Riesmans The Lonely Crowd, which damned the new conformity of corporate America, became best-sellers. Myth markets soon sprang up-using the Western frontier, the Beats bohemia, and the hillbilly backwater to provide salves for these tensions. The hillbilly first caught the publics attention in the 1930s in Lil Abner, a comic strip in which Al Capp exaggerated the hillbillys lack of civility to create biting social satire. As the 1950s unfolded, the hillbilly- a figure who was in touch with his innate animal qualities- seemed powerful and dangerous, the exact opposite of the corporate man. Elvis Presley, the poor Mississippi hillbilly who brought primitive black music to a white audience, oozed a titillating sexuality and sent young people in search of rock-and-roll records. CBSs The Beverly Hillbillies, a populist allegory that championed pragmatic knowledge over book learning, character over self-presentation, and traditional hospitality over proper etiquette, became one of the most popular television shows of the 1960s. Mountain Dews inventors named their product after an old-time Appalachian folk song that told of the pleasures of mountain dew – moonshine liquor. They filled the beverage with caffeine and sugar so that it would deliver a heart-pumping rush and gave it fewer bubbles than most sodas so that it could be chugged. They then created a comic hillbilly character-Willy-who drank Mountain Dew to get high. Invoking Appalachian stereotypes like the blood-feuding Hatfields and McCoys, the bottles label featured a barefoot Willy pointing his cocked rifle at a neighbour running away in the distance. Tied to Willys hip was a stoneware jug, the type usually associated with homemade booze. When PepsiCo bought the brand in 1964, the company kept the hillbilly character, renamed him Clem, and put him in animated television ads. One ad, called Beautiful Sal, features a cast of barefoot country folk. Two bumpkins court Sal, a buxom redhead in a brief, tattered dress. Sal refuses flowers from both men and tugs their hats down over their faces before she struts away. Enter Clem. Half Sals height, Clem seems like an unlikely mate. But from under his ten-gallon hat, Clem reveals a tall bottle of Mountain Dew. Sal swipes the bottle and takes a few gulps. As Clem gazes lustily, Sal lifts a leg and hollers. Yahoo, Mountain Dew! Her long hair snaps into curls beside her head. If the audience failed to understand that Dew has the power to change attitudes in a heartbeat, the muzzle flash that explodes from Sals ears seals the deal. She growls like a panther in heat, embraces Clem passionately, and smothers him with a kiss. The spot then cuts to a single-toothed old man who reaches behind his head, wiggles his finger lasciviously through a bullet hole in his hat, and says, Mountain Dewll tickle yore innards, cuz thars a bang in everbottle. Sales took off like a shot in eastern rural areas. Mountain Dew had succeeded in creating a kind of manhood that rivalled the buttoned-up emotions and routines of the organization men. Its hillbilly was a devilish prankster who called on male viewers to let loose their own wild man. Traversing Cultural Disruptions Mountain Dews success as an icon becomes all the more impressive when one considers how it outlived the ideological tension it was initially positioned to address. National ideology works something like Stephen Jay Goulds idea of punctuated equilibrium or Clay Christensens and Michael Tushmans descriptions of innovation cycles in technology markets, which have extended periods of incremental innovation disrupted occasionally by radical technological changes. As an ideology loses its relevance, people lose faith in its tenets. Experimentation ensues, historical ingredients are reworked, and society finally arrives at a new consensus. When such a shift in ideology occurs, people are forced to adjust their aspirations and their views of themselves. Myths provide a powerful sense of structure at these junctures, and they grow up spontaneously around the emerging ideology, forming new myth markets. These are the moments when we see new icons take off and incumbents struggle to remain relevant. Mountain Dew, which has enjoyed dramatic growth since the 1960s, is one of only a few iconic brands that have been able to increase their market power across disruptions in national ideology, cross cultural chasms instead of being dismantled by them. In 1978, a new television serial ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’, quickly became a huge hit outside major metropolitan markets. And Mountain Dew took the cue as well, retooling its wild man to deliver a redneck rebuttal to Wall Streets incarnation of the frontier myth. A look at Mountain Dews 1981 television ad Rope Swing shows how the brand moved into this new mythic territory without betraying its constituents understanding of what the brand stood for. The ad depicts an informal teen outing in lush, hilly terrain. A sinewy young man dressed only in shorts and running shoes stands with his buddies on a ledge high above a river. He waits for the perfect moment to swing out, Tarzan-style, over the water on aknotted rope. On the opposite bank, four teenage girls swing an empty rope out to meet him halfway. Filmed in slow motion, he executes the switcheroo perfectly, his body taut and rippling as he releases the first rope to grab the second, after which he swings safely to the other side. The girls cheer his crossing a clear rite of passage and greet him, bouncing excitedly. Intercut with the action, the hero appears in close-ups chugging a bottle of cold Mountain Dew. By the spots end, hes polished off the entire bottle without coming up for air. Shaking water from his hair, he faces the camera, eyes shut but mouth wide open. The film freezes with him seemingly shouting, Ah! As corporate executives donned cowboy gear in the mid-1980s, Mountain Dew responded even more assertively with a campaign called Doin It Country Cool. A dozen vignettes show our redneck studs, this time decked out in cowboy regalia, once again showing off their athletic talents and buff bodies to cheering young women. Mountain Dew argued, through myth that virile guys live to play dangerously, not to sweat it out at the office. The brand retained its iconic power by reinterpreting the wild man to fit the new ideological reality. Again, Mountain Dew championed the wild man against the emasculation of corporate work, but this time by asserting physical toughness and derring-do over the flaccid cowboys of Wall Street. From Redneck to Slacker By 1987, Mountain Dew was again an endangered icon as the nations ideology underwent another shift. The country became disenchanted with the ideals of the Wall Street frontier in a matter of months as Reagan left office, scandals rocked the financial world, and the stock market crashed. A deluge of popular books and films excoriating arbitrageurs for their greed and indulgence marked the end of this era. Before long, it became clear that the very nature of the economy was changing: Companies had to be more agile and aggressive to compete globally, and workers faced an increasingly Hobbesian, winner-take-all labour market. In the new era of the free agent, in which seniority systems were thrown out in favour of performance driven meritocracies, every job was up for grabs to the most talented and most tenacious worker. During this period of cultural disruption, a new, turbocharged version of Reagans frontier myth took hold, this one lauding heroic individual achievement. Now manhood was defined by the ability to tackle extremely difficult and sometimes dangerous challenges that demanded both mental and physical toughness. Myths of the day defined heroes as those who competed most ferociously, such as rebel athlete Michael Jordan with his brand of in your face basketball. Professionals no longer savoured expensive dining and Rolexes. Now they headed into the wilderness for tests of will against whitewater and mountains, and the must-have item was an SUV-if not a ranch in Montana. This new version of the frontier myth galvanized both male and female professionals and those who competed in the labour market to join their ranks. But most people ended up in a secondary labour market with depressed wages and no job security, or in service work that promised only stifling, micromanaged employment. Contradictions between the free-agent frontier and the realities of work were extraordinary: While many young people were moving into jobs as telemarketers and retail clerks, popular culture was lauding executives who in an average week conquered markets, technology, Whitewater, and rock walls. To make matters worse, in households across America parents pushed their kids ever harder to make it in this fiercely competitive environment The myth market that sprang up to feed these anxieties centred on a new rebel figure, the slacker. As glorified by Richard Linkletters film of that name and by Douglas Coupland in his quasi-novel Generation X, the slacker is a character who would rather pursue quixotic activities than grow up and get serious about a career. Channels such as Fox, MTV, and ESPN2 immediately picked up on the slacker ethos and delivered programming that emphasized its do -it- yourself sensibility, extreme version of manhood, and iconoclastic tastes. Slacker heroes excelled not at rule-bound professional sports but at improvisational sports like skateboarding, which they pursued on their own without rules and without corporate interference. In the music industry, rap, techno, and alternative rock all emphasized the do-it-yourself ethos: Anyone can and should make music, with a turntable and some old records, a computer, or a beat-up guitar. So-called extreme sports, in which guys fearlessly risk bodily harm to perform never-before-attempted stunts, became the rage. The professional wrestling program Smack-Down! , featuring enormous costumed men spilling fake blood on each other, was the entertainment choice of the day. Ultraviolent video games enticed guys to spend hour after hour revelling in over-the-top conquests- without getting off the couch. The slacker myth market had taken the masculine expressions of the free-agent frontier myth and turned up the adrenaline to an extreme. Slackers made fun not only of the ideals of the free-agent nation (particularly in the comic strip Dilbert) but also of the people who tried to dictate their lives: marketers. The rock band Nirvana came on the scene with its jab at youth branding Smells like Teen Spirit, and the hit film Waynes World proposed an ironic kind of one-upmanship over corporate marketing. Instead of buying what corporations sold, slackers reclaimed old stuff-TV programs, music, clothes that industry had given up on. Professionals may have had the power and money, but they couldnt force slackers to buy their wares. Instead, slackers could use their own creativity to make the refuse of popular culture valuable. And where did all this leave Mountain Dew? In the face of the new American ideology Mountain Dews redneck was reduced to irrelevance just like the hillbilly before him. So Mountain Dews wild-man ethos was reformulated once again, this time within the new world of the slacker. A TV ad called Done That, part of Mountain Dews Do the Dew campaign, was the companys breakthrough into this new mythic territory. The ad opens with a hair-raising shot of a guy jumping off a cliff and free-falling toward a narrow canyons river bottom. Accompanied by a thumping thrash-metal soundtrack, a stomach-tightening shot trails behind the jumpers feet as he falls away from the cliff. The music stops abruptly, and the camera zooms in on four young men, dressed like low-rent gym rats, standing in the Mojave Desert. The guys hang on one another in a kind of casual street camaraderie. In rapid succession, each mugs for the camera and comments on the skydiving the viewers have just seen: Done that Did that, Been there,Tried that The camera cuts back to live action, showing an athlete diving off a 20-foot waterfall on a boogie board and surfing the rapids. The four dudes return, still among Mojave cacti, and quickly announce their boredom with that high-risk activity as well. But the dudes dismissive statements paint only half the picture. Their cocky body language betrays no fear of the camera, as each leans toward it to make his feelings absolutely clear. The guys, parodying the jockeying of young bucks in business, play at being cocksure daredevils. The soundtrack resumes as abruptly as it had stopped, and we cut to a Mountain Dew dispensing machine in a jungle setting. Whoa! Never did it, Never guzzled it. Cans blast like cannon shells from the machines opening. Each dude snatches a can from midair and chugs it down under the desert sun. Sated, they say in rapid succession: Did it,Done it,Liked it,Loved it In the three sequels to Done That, the stunts become increasingly fantastic and absurd: waterskiing behind a helicopter past icebergs in the Arctic, rollerblading off the Sphinx in Egypt, wrestling a crocodile in the Amazon, taking a platform jump off Londons Big Ben clock tower. And the dudes become harder and harder to impress. After a skier shoots off a cliff and falls with no landing in sight, he somersaults and opens a parachute. The dudes appear in front of a sand dune to dismiss him: Blase, Pass^, Okay, Cliche. A rock climber rappels headfirst, a mountain biker leaps in front of a wall of flames, a surfer launches off a sand dune, a scuba diver feeds a voracious shark by hand, and a snowboarder tumbles head over heels down a steep slope, but the dudes posturing grows only more indifferent: Obvious, Frivolous, Tedious, Whatawuss! Wi th the Do the Dew campaign. Mountain Dew reinvented the wild man as a slacker. In these spoofs of extreme sports, all presented as do-it-yourself quests, the brand asserted that the real men of Americas free-agent frontier werent the most buff or competitive athletes but the creative guys who pursued their stunts as whimsical art. Slackers didnt just face down dangerous situations that came their way. They sought out insane life-threatening risks. The Dew guys upped the ante on masculine risk taking to absurd levels, which, in the end, made fun of the idea that manhood has anything to do with such feats. The people with real power, in Mountain Dews worldview, were people with extreme-and very particular tastes. Slackers had no power as workers, but they could assert their will in the corporate world by asserting their opinions. Companies and their managers would have to take notice. How to Build an Icon Today Mountain Dew is a $5 billion brand, surpassed in size only by Coke and Pepsi. During the past two decades, its sales have risen faster than those of any other carbonated soft drink. Key to this phenomenal growth has been the ability of managers at PepsiCo and its ad agency BBDO to reinvent the Mountain Dew myth each time American ideology ruptures and is remade. But Mountain Dews experience is not unique: The same principles apply to the other iconic brands Ive studied. In brief, a brand becomes an icon when it is able to do the following five things. Icons dont target consumer segments or psychographic types. They go after veins of intense anxieties and desires running through society, the psychological consequence of the national ideology. While market fragmentation is the rule in many sectors of the economy, icons necessarily speak to a mass audience. Unlike conventional branding, icons dont mimic pop culture; they lead it. They create charismatic visions of the world to make sense of confusing societal changes in much the same way as have Marilyn and Elvis, JFK and Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and Rambo, Steve Jobs and Bart Simpson. Icons earn extraordinary market power because they deliver myths that repair the culture when its particularly in need of mending. They put existing cultural materials to new purposes in order to provoke audiences to think differently about themselves. Mountain Dew was a breakthrough success in the 1990s because, in the midst of a labour market shake-up, the brand provided a symbolic solution to young men who werent stars of the new free-agent nation. Icons dont seek to mirror the thoughts and emotions of their customers. They speak as rebels. To assemble a credible populist challenge to the national ideology, iconic brands draw on people who actually live according to alternative ideals. And icons dont simply borrow the trappings of rebel lifestyles, mimicking their clothing or language. Rather, they understand the rebels point of view so well that they can speak with the rebels voice. Mountain Dew didnt simply offer up extreme sports or retro clothing. Instead, by creatively mixing and matching slacker elements, the campaign evoked the slacker Zeitgeist. Unlike conventional brands, icons dont behave as if they have a certain DNA, an essential truth that must be maintained. Icons must be reincarnated when ideology ruptures because the value of their myth is erased. What remains intact as an artefact of the original brand, however, is its political authority. When an icons myth loses value, its constituency still looks to the brand to shed light on the kinds of contradictions it has addressed in the past. Because the brand has been a trustworthy and committed advocate, consumers believe that it will speak for them again. Mountain Dews Do the Dew campaign, for instance, appears to be worlds apart from the hillbilly and watering-hole ads. Yet the brands remake was welcomed because it drew on a deep reservoir of political authority. Mountain Dew was, once again, championing the id over the ego for young men who felt excluded from manhood as defined by the nations ideology. Icons own an imaginative politics that can be reclaimed virtually at will, even if the brand has fumbled or abandoned this commitment for years. Cultural knowledge is critical for building icons yet is sorely lacking in most managers arsenals. The Do the Dew campaign worked because its creators understood the angst of low-wage earners looking up at the new heroes of the marketplace, a tension that was invisible to managers who understood Generation X simply as a psychographic jumble of attitudes and emotions. And the campaign worked because its creators were so immersed in the slacker subculture that they could use it to express the slacker ethos in a new way rather than just parade slacker gear in their ads, as many other brands did at the time. Getting Close to Culture When the nati

Australian Gold Rush Immigrants

Australian Gold Rush Immigrants Prior to Edward Hargraves 1851 discovery of gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, Great Britain regarded the distant colony of Australia as little more than a penal settlement. The promise of gold, however, attracted thousands of voluntary settlers in search of their fortunes- and ultimately ended the practice of transporting British convicts to the colonies. The Dawn of the Australian Gold Rush Within weeks of Hargraves discovery, thousands of laborers were already frantically digging at Bathurst, with hundreds more arriving daily. This prompted the Governor of Victoria, Charles J. La Trobe, to offer a  £200 reward to anyone who found gold within 200 miles of Melbourne. Diggers immediately took up the challenge and gold was quickly found in abundance by James Dunlop at Ballarat, by Thomas Hiscock at Buninyong, and by Henry Frenchman at Bendigo Creek. By the end of 1851, the Australian gold rush was in full force. Hundreds of thousands of new settlers descended on Australia during the 1850s. Many of the immigrants whod originally come to try their hand at gold-digging, chose to stay on and settle in the colonies, ultimately quadrupling the population of Australia between 1851 (430,000) and 1871 (1.7 million). Did Your Ancestors Arrive During the Gold Rush? If you suspect that your Australian ancestor might have originally been a digger, begin your search in traditional records from that time period, such as census, marriage,  and death records that generally list an individuals occupation. If you find something that indicates your ancestor was likely- or even possibly- a digger, passenger lists can help pinpoint the date of their arrival in the Australian colonies. Outbound passenger lists from the United Kingdom arent available prior to 1890, nor are they readily available for America or Canada (the Australia gold rush attracted people from all over the world), so your best bet is to search arrival manifests in Australia. Unassisted Immigrants to NSW, 1842-1855: This is an index of unassisted (or free) passengers who came to Australia at their own expense, including ships crewmembers.Unassisted Passenger and Crew Arrivals, 1854-1900: The Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters website has transcribed passenger listings and links to digital scans of original Shipping Inward lists from the Shipping Masters Office.Victoria Passenger Lists: Immigration records for Victoria 1852–1899 are online from the Public Record Office Victoria, including the Index to Unassisted Inward Passenger Lists to Victoria 1852- 1923 and the Index to Assisted British Immigration 1839- 1871. Researching Ancestors Who Predate the Gold Rush Of course, your Australian gold rush ancestors may have actually arrived in Australia in the years preceding the gold rush- as an assisted or unassisted immigrant, or even as a convict. So, if you dont find them in the passenger arrivals from 1851 on, keep looking. There was also a second sizeable gold rush in Western Australia during the 1890s. Start by checking the outbound passenger lists from that time period. Once youve determined that your ancestors were likely involved in the gold rush in some way, you may be able to locate them in a gold-digger database or learn more from newspapers, diaries, memoirs, photos, or other records. Gold Diggers from South Australia: This free searchable database includes gold diggers from South Australia (1852- 1853) who brought or sent their gold home from the Victorian goldfields, including those who deposited gold at the SA Gold Assay Office in February 1852; the consignors and consignees associated with the first three mounted police escorts; and those who lost their receipts or failed to claim their gold by 29 October 1853.SBS Gold!: Explore the impact of the Australian gold rushes and uncover stories of the diggers through newspaper accounts, diaries,  and memoirs.The Goldminers Database: Search information on some 34,000 gold miners who participated in the gold rushes of New Zealand between 1861 and 1872, many of whom were Australians who went to New Zealand for only a short period of time.Fortune Hunters in Australia: This online database, available to members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, includes names and other information extracted from the pub lished CD titled American Fever Australian Gold, American and Canadian involvement in Australia’s Gold Rush by Australian authors Denise McMahon and Christine Wild. In addition to data compiled from official records, archives, contemporary newspapers, and diaries, there is also material from correspondence written to or from fortune seekers, both from the goldfields of Australia, as well as communications penned during ocean crossings. The National Library of Australia: Search the digital collections database for the term gold photos, maps, and manuscripts related to the Australian gold rushes and those who participated in them.

Accounting - Dissertation Proposal - Corporate Social Responsibility; Research - 1

Accounting - Dissertation - Corporate Social Responsibility; Growth of CSR Reporting in Compliance with IFRS, Case of Kuwait - Research Proposal Example Looking significantly at what has been noted about corporate non-financial reporting, it becomes evident that there is substantial variability on how scholars and organizations perceive this process. The number of experiential studies on the corporate social responsibility reporting is significantly increasing and more and more thorough content analysis of the corporate reports that are published has been implemented with the views that originate from the stakeholders, economic theories with an economic nature, information economics and also risk management. The universal position that has been documented in most books is that corporate social responsibility reporting enhances accountability.3 Many writers are of the opinion that legitimacy theory provides and a frame that is descriptive in terms of social and environmental disclosure. In terms of the number of corporate social reports, there is increasing agreement that a variety of features are linked with larger revelation of environmental information via corporate communications. These factors basically include: the size of the firm, the financial performance, media exposure and also being subject to regulatory proceedings. The main purpose of this study is to appreciate the growth corporate social responsibility reporting that is in compliance with IFRS across Kuwait and to expose the differences and similarities that may exist in the ways that corporate social responsibility information is revealed as well as the activities that are related to corporate social responsibility. Within this aim that had been identified, there are some objectives that will be addressed which will include identifying the variations in form and the main features of corporate social responsibility reports, distinguishing the issues that are divulged when the report comes out and disclosing and analyzing the differences in corporate social responsibility reporting and propose their possible underlying

Terrorism and Poverty Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Terrorism and Poverty - Essay Example Finally, the phrase was again used in 2001 and still is being used. An operative definition in US foreign policy under the Federal Criminal code and stated by Bush as, "today's war on terror is like the Cold War. It is an ideological struggle with an enemy that despises freedom and pursues totalitarian aims....I vowed then that I would use all assets of our power of Shock and Awe to win the war on terror. And so I said we were going to stay on the offense two ways: one, hunts down the enemy and brings them to justice, and takes threats seriously; and two, spread freedom." The British have some objections to the phrase 'War on Terror.' The Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service in the UK, Ken McDonald has stated that the places where these attacks are carried out are not battlefields and the people who die are not victims of war. Also, the people who carry out such terrorist activities are not soldiers, they are criminals. The war on poverty was first introduced by Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States. The legislation was a reaction to the high economic poverty rate. This led to the development of Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) which helped in targeting funds towards the poor and managing the poverty level that existed in the country at that time. The concept of war on poverty waned around the 1960's. The budget towards the impoverished people diminished and there was some de-regulation which led to this. There are many view points which are very subjective to every individual. Many leaders, economists and politicians have commented on this. To some, the war on poverty is important to be victorious in the war on terror; to others finishing terrorism is more important while still to some finishing poverty is more important. One very important factor to not is that to fight such wars, institutional structures need to be created which can help fight the war, this is as important as the conflict itself. The world has failed to win the war on poverty. This can be blamed to the political system and the judiciary. In my opinion, the upper class of society needs to be blamed more; they should make more contributions towards the poor to help diminish the huge gap that exists between the different classes of society. The power that the government has is limited, they can not make all people rich or provide them with the money they need. They can only make a few changes in the policy to help these people get a job, get better pays or start a business. The government can not ban legitimate products and not raise wages across the nation; they have other things to consider such as inflation. On the brighter side of the picture, many new policies and legislations were made which opened new doors for the lower class of society, labour laws were introduced, minimum wages were set and there is strict control over these policies. Thus in the US much improvement has taken place and we can easily say that they have achieved some yards in this war. According to Hilary Benn (2007), by giving a name to the war on terror, we are not only giving all such groups an identity, a common identity but also it leads to using one uniform approach towards fighting them. All such groups need to be handled individually, with policies and strategies

University Students Do Not Spend Their Free

University Students Do Not Spend Their Free Time Wisely Essay University students do not spend their free time wisely. Students role are known as the next generations who will lead the country later. Everything related to them are important for us to put a highlight on. One of the issues that could be a problem is university students do not use their free time wisely. In my opinion, this statement could be best described as true based on a few reasons such as no vision, lack of maturity and discipline and also entertainments influence available. One of the most definite reason is that the students himself does not used to determine their specific vision. In this situation, they do not have a clear target due to the lack of career information exposed to them. Regardless to this, they may take programs of study that does not suit them well instead of not being accepted in any opportunities of studies. Thus for most people who further in wrong major, their minds set to not to struggle for the fullest in grabbing superb future undertakings. For every precious second left, they never regret and even appreciate the moment in having quality time for studying. And yet when the results in the hand, they are trying to be in the past to fix back firstly the vision. Another reason why university students do no spend their free time wisely is they lack of maturity and discipline. Although they aware that time management are based on the level of maturity, yet they often fall under the pressure of peers. Supposedly, with their level of maturity, they should know what the best is for them. But in contrast, they used to follow the others when they really should be attending to their studies. Going to university is a major life change and many students fail to adapt to their studying environment successfully due to lack of maturity and discipline. This, in turn has negative effects in their studies. University years are the most exciting in lots of people’s lives but there are new challenges to face. Furthermore in the technological era nowadays, university students tend to be influenced by the entertainments available. They used to sit in front of computers to online for hours rather than studying. Jump to the worst state, lots of free entertainment exist these days and just needed to sign up with self-identification to access into. Absolutely the students will snatch the opportunities and involved themselves in distraction of obsession. This problem cannot be vanished completely as this behavior is nature to men in handling the pressure. However, entertainments should not be addicted by the students and distract studies. To sum up, as a student we should realize a very deep meaning of a students’ role which we have to follow in order to gain success in future. We should bear in mind that we are suppose to generate a great future position to make our country more sophisticated. To do so we have to determine our own vision and mission in life. For the beginning, do manage the time precisely because time is gold.

My Online Community Essay -- Essays Papers

My Online Community I aimlessly wondered the Internet trying to find a community suitable for me. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I have many interests, but I really don’t have a strong passion for something. So I decided to join a community in which I could express myself as a teen and talk about general issues. I joined the mtv.com community. There I expressed my thoughts on everything, ranging from music to daily events that shape our world. There I had a chance to share my opinions and beliefs, as others posted their thoughts and perspectives on certain subjects. Online communities are rather congruent to offline ones. They are both appealing yet displeasing at the same time. An online community means different things to different people. For some, it conjures fuzzy, warm images of people chatting and helping each other. For others, it produces dark images of conspiracy, dissident and criminal behavior, sick perverts and invasion of privacy. At first, I was a little sketchy about joining a community. I wasn’t too fond of talking to strangers and posting my thoughts on certain subjects so hundreds of people can read them. I could be talking to someone, and everything they say could be a lie. I wouldn’t feel like I was having a real conversation, because someone can say he or she is something, when in reality he/she is a twisted and demented human being, who takes pleasure in harassing people online. Each day on the community was different. Some I enjoyed, and others made me despise the idea of ever having to return to the same site the next day. I was in no hurry to join a community. So on day one, I browsed the Internet, looking for a community I would feel comfortable in. After I f... ...find fascinating and form a close bond, and then there are those who you find disagreeable and find pleasure in â€Å"raping† you. Communicating via the Internet is no substitute for actual human interaction. But online communities do enable meaningful communication among people separated by distance and time. Many people in today’s society look to online communities for comfort. They visit it daily, and spend many hours talking to people they have never met in person. I have no interest in going back to my community. I didn’t feel the warm, fuzzy feeling of people chatting online. Some people can be rude and annoying, and that is something I just don’t want to deal with if I don’t have to. I enjoyed posting my thoughts on certain subjects on the message boards, but I didn’t enjoy reading some rude responses just because I didn’t agree with the person’s view.

The Contrast Between Machiavelli’s Writings and Lao-Tzu’s Opinion

Martin Martinez Eng 151-1856 2/19/08 The Contrast between Machiavelli’s writings and Lao-Tzu’s opinion Lao-Tzu’s writings offered a basis for Taoism, a religion officially founded by Chang Tao-ling in about 150 A. D. However, the Tao-te Ching is an ethical document as much as about good government as it is about moral behavior. Niccolo Machiavelli was an aristocrat who had his ups and downs according the shifts in power in Florence. His writings encourage a prince to secure power by almost any means necessary.Lao-Tzu’s Thoughts from the Tao-te Ching and Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Qualities of the Prince both have main goals of how to mold a better prince. Their views on government and the ways they attain their goals each differ in method. Machiavelli and Lao-Tzu have very different aspects about how a prince should govern his people. Machiavelli dwells over the fact, whether it is better to be loved or feared. He believes that the best way to mainta in control over the people is by fear. Machiavelli says man is a sorry lot and are untrustworthy.In order to gain control over his people he uses fear. †[M]en are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved then who makes himself feared†¦. † (44) Since man is so hesitant to betray someone who they fear, the prince remains in control of his people. The terror of punishment keeps the people in order, which enables a smooth running government. According to Machiavelli this fear is the only way for a prince to govern his people and avoid harm. Lao-Tzu’s thoughts are completely different from Machiavelli’s.Tzu believes in a smaller government, where the people actual govern themselves. He believes that the people should feel equal to the ruler and that the ruler must place himself below the people. Tzu stresses self control throughout the reading. Unlike Machiavelli he believes it is better to be loved than feared and he states that â€Å"i f you want to lead the people, / you must learn how to follow them† (Section 66). Although Machiavelli and Lao-Tzu share a passion for how a prince should reach his goals, their ideas are completely opposed to one nother. Machiavelli believes that a prince should be deceitful in accomplishing his goals. By breaking promises and being able to manipulate the minds of men are the keys to attaining a prince’s goals. According to Machiavelli princes who have accomplished the most are the ones who do not care for keeping their promises. Tzu’s opinion on the matter is simply do nothing. â€Å"The Tao never does anything,/ yet through it all things are done†(Section 31). The prince is to just let things happen and soon enough what he wants to achieve will happen.Lao-Tzu believes that once men and women are content with the idea of doing nothing, they can finally center themselves and the whole world will be transformed by itself. The peaceful attitude of Lao-Tzu a nd Machiavelli’s defensive ideas towards home military defense are far from the same. â€Å"Humility means trusting the Tao, / thus never needing to be defensive† (Section 61). Tzu’s ideas are simple, he doesn’t believe in violence. The prince should never need to be in a defensive position and that he should avoid violence at all times. According to Lao-Tzu, peace is the highest value and should always be the alternative instead of war.Tzu doesn’t believe in harm to other men, he goes into battle with great sympathy. Lao-Tzu believes that there is no victory in war and peace is the highest virtue. Tzu’s belief is as long as all follow the Tao war is never necessary. Machiavelli’s attitude towards war and military defense is more conservative than Lao-Tzu’s. He believes that a prince’s profession must be to know the art of war. According to Machiavelli a prince â€Å"must, therefore, never raise his thought from this ex ercise of war, and in peacetime must train himself more than in time of war†¦. (38) Machiavelli believes that a prince must learn about his country in order to better defend it. Once a prince has study the geography of his own land he can now explore or take over foreign land. And according to Machiavelli a prince who lacks this ability lacks the most important quality in a leader. A prince must never be at rest and always be ready for any ambush or battle ready to take place. Machiavelli’s approach is less poetic and more realistic than Lao-Tzu’s. Both have the ultimate goal of making better leaders.Lao- Tzu is all about following the Tao to achieve peace in the world. As long as one follows the Tao everything will fall into place. Machiavelli’s more controversial approach of the art of war is more of a believable concept than Lao Tzu’s ideas. Machiavelli’s do what ever it takes philosophy to become a successful prince is one of his main foca l points in running a smooth government. In conclusion Machiavelli and Lao-Tzu’s ideas are very different but are both useful guidelines to create a successful prince.