MIT Prof: Religion Is Good for Economy
"Jonathan Gruber (MIT, Department of Economics) has posted "Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?" on the NBER web site. Gruber concludes that being in an area with more co-religionists leads to better economic outcomes through the channel of increased religious participation. Although this paper does not investigate the mechanism through which religiosity creates these results, Gruber suggests four possibilities: that religious attendance increases the number of social interactions in a way peculiar to religious settings; that religious institutions provide financial and emotional "insurance" that help people mitigate their losses when setbacks occur; that attendance at religious schools may be an advantage; and, finally, that religious faith may simply improve well-being directly by enabling the faithful to be "less stressed out" by the problems of every day life."
-- Tax Prof

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Thursday, October 27, 2005
permalink: MIT Prof: Religion Is Good for Economy


Branding Through Architecture
"When companies like Apple, JetBlue, and Toyota want to build structures that articulate who they are, they turn to Gensler, an architecture and design firm with 28 offices, 2,000 employees, and 2004 revenues of $264 million. Done Gensler's way, buildings become a subtle expression of corporate personality. 'We design everything to fit the message of the brand,' says Dian Duvall, principal in the firm's San Francisco headquarters. So how do you translate the ephemeral qualities of a corporate image into tangible structures of concrete, steel, and glass?"
-- Business 2.0 via AdPulp

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
permalink: Branding Through Architecture

Site Sells Products That Appear On TV Shows and Movies
Visure is working on a website that will sell stuff that appears as product placement in TV shows and movies (intended or not), a kind of reverse product placement business. From Times Dispatch: "For consumers, Visure will be a Web site that features a catalog of products found in movies and television shows. Users will be able to click on pictures of different movies or shows on the Visure Web site and pull up most of the items that are placed in the background of a screenshot or purposefully -- if not craftily -- put near the camera."
-- via AdJab

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Friday, October 21, 2005
permalink: Site Sells Products That Appear On TV Shows and Movies



Study: Concurrent Media Exposure
Ball State Uni's Center for Media Design is selling a "consumer-centric, data-driven look at patterns of Concurrent Media Exposure (CME) -- including how common it is, how much of the media day it occupies, and what media are regularly combined in concurrent exposures. Some findings:

- CME is pervasive (involving over 96% of the study's participants) and constitutes a substantial portion of all media exposure (30.7 percent of the media day).

- CME differs across media in incidence and time accrued Ð some media are almost always experienced concurrently with other media (e.g., instant messaging, telephone, newspaper) and some have a low amount of CME (e.g., DVD viewing)."

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Thursday, October 20, 2005
permalink: Study: Concurrent Media Exposure

Kid Nabbing
"Madison Avenue was once known for men in gray flannel suits. Today some of its most credible foot soldiers wear T shirts and sneakers. They are 280,000 strong, ages 13 to 19, all of them enlisted by an arm of Procter & Gamble called Tremor. Their mission is to help companies plant information about their brands in living rooms, schools and other crevices that are difficult for corporate America to infiltrate. These kids deliver endorsements in school cafeterias, at sleepovers, by cell phone and by e-mail. They are being tapped to talk up just about everything, from movies to milk and motor oil--and they do it for free."
-- Commercial Alert

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Wednesday, October 19, 2005
permalink: Kid Nabbing


Vatican on Advertising
"Especially since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has frequently addressed the question of the media and their role and responsibilities. She has sought to do so in a fundamentally positive manner, viewing the media as "gifts of God" which, in accordance with his providential design, bring people together and "help them to cooperate with his plan for their salvation."
-- Pontifical Council for Social Communications

posted by Ilya Vedrashko on Monday, October 17, 200

Publisher: mit labratory
MIT Laboratory for Branding Cultures is a part of The Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT and is made up of companies with a keen interest in deciphering convergence culture and the implications it can have for their business. Companies that partner with this group gain new insights and ideas about a very intractable and urgent set of questions that they are already grappling with in the current business environment.

The consortium is a forum where leading thinkers from the consumer goods and entertainment industries can rub shoulders with cutting-edge academic researchers working on brands and consumer cultures. The goal is to provide informed answers about some urgent and intractable questions confronting the current media marketplace.
Published: October 2005
Region: usa

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