Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA25830 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 24 May 2000 14:48:35 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D31CEB1D9@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: this little meme went to market... Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 14:46:31 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Thanks for that. An interesting piece.
I'd add a different question here to Robin's comment.
If you won't work for a pro-social anti-smoking campaign, who will you work
for, given that most private corporations are driven by profit motives- even
when they engage in what is known in the trade as corporate social
responsibility, the aim is a PR exercise to improve corporate reputation,
not to be socially responsible. The purposes of advertising and marketing
include attitudinal as well as behavioural change so you can't escape the
intent of trying to change the way people think- and in the pro-social
context of things like anti-smoking campaigns why should you?
There's nothing new in using word association in marketing, it's a basic
element of focus group work (especially in politics). I'd also be
interested to know how you posit this exercise as memetic, and thus distinct
from other uses of word association?
Wouldn't an alternative exercise be to ask people to send in the slogans, or
ads that they particularly remember- whether or not they bought the products
in question, or even necessarily remember the product they were for (the
same could be done for political slogans). Patterns that emerge out of such
a database might be more appropriate to memetics to my mind. Indeed, if one
could demonstrate that slogans were capable of being recalled independently
of product recall or product purchase, I reckon this would be a pretty good
test of memetic theory, because it would indicate that memes can spread
because they have replicable qualities in their own rights, and not just
because they are useful.
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Robin Faichney
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 1:54 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: this little meme went to market...
>
> On Wed, 24 May 2000, Paul marsden wrote:
> >The UK Daily Telegraph has published an article on some of the meme
> related
> >stuff I've been doing - it's available on the online site at
> >
> >http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=002839108100778&rtmo=aqh55dXJ&atmo=99999
> 999&pg=/et/00/4/13/ecnmar13.html
> >
> >If this doesn't let you in and you are prompted to log in; use username
> of
> >memetics and pass memes - it the 13 April 2000 edition - search for
> Marsden
> >if necessary
>
> I got straight to the page using that URL.
>
> In that article, Paul, you say you refused to work on an anti-smoking
> campaign because you don't want to change the way people think. Do you
> see a clear distinction between that and "mere" advertising, PR, etc?
> Or is it a matter of degree? Are your personal feelings about such
> issues necessarily involved, or not?
>
> --
> Robin Faichney
>
> ==============================================================This was
> distributed via the memetics list associated with the
> Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
> For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
> see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
>
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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