Tanya tells her experience of being an aspiring actress in 1998 in Chicago Illinois, a young women who because of the forces around her, helped shape an idea to start a Theatre Company. Her world of work was then controlled by the perceptions of others and their expectations of what she should be and what role she should play as a Latina Actress. Expectations that often judged her culture, her gender, her race and ethnicity. Expectations that didn’t showcase and champion her artistic talents or the life stories she felt were not being told. Instead they judged her – casting call after casting call. These experiences led Tanya to the idea of creating a theatre company.

Through a collaboration that started between Coya Paz and Tanya Saracho that grew into an ensemble of 10 women from diverse Latina/Hispana backgrounds, Teatro Luna in 2000 was born. A theatre company formed through on group of women each sharing stories and experiences, an ecological system of collaboration and cocreation based on sharing. The sharing of stories, from which the group learnt. Creating meaning in who they were, what they were doing and in this, created a voice and the power to share with hundreds of people who came to see their productions, the stories of Latina/Hispana women and their communities.

Why was this collaborative group so important to each of these women and the formation of the organisation that is known as Teatro Luna? Tanya states it very eloquently: “In the group there were no outside forces telling us women could not be funny.” It became a supportive and dynamic collaboration that evolved from the interactions of a group of artistic women, cocreating a creative process, a process formed from discussion, sharing and learning about the stories of others, stories of Latina/Hispana women with the central idea of telling these stories through the medium of Theatre.

Teatro Luna is Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theatre, organized for the purpose of exploring the varied experiences and cultures of Latina/Hispana women, showcasing their creative talents and telling the often political, social and emotional stories of their communities. This is a wonderful and insightful story on how collaboration through the power of stories when shared both within and outside our organisational communities, shared through communication, shapes us. And as I spoke about in my last blog post everything communicates not just the words we use.

Please share this video and the story of Teatro Luna.

Tanya Saracho from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

Smiles

Kelly

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Have you ever wondered the educational value of academic publishing? Wondered how the research we do filters into the classroom? Maybe not! This is not something often discussed and debated in business academia, where the ethos and culture is driven to publish in top-tier academic peer-review (?) journals. However, for some of us, behind closed doors, in secret we are also engage in another publishing activity. An activity not often discussed with high esteem or value by research-driven colleagues, where the words “I’m writing a textbook” seem like sinister words. However, if we really think about the educational value of academic publishing, it is textbooks and the educational resources we develop where a real contribution to knowledge and wider value in education is most certainly felt, not just through journal articles. Here in this blog post I share part of my experience and the view that “writing of good textbooks should be central – not marginal to our HE mission as researchers and teachers”.

OUP Sales Conference 2010

This week on Wednesday, 25th August 2010, I attended the Sales Conference for my textbook publisher – Oxford University Press (OUP) in Warwick (UK). Not a sales representative, nor a member of the publishing industry, I’m an author and an academic so I attended to reconnect with the sales team I met 2 years ago who are responsible for a book title I’ve coauthored titled, Marketing. In this I participated in a session about how our 1st edition has gone and to discuss the launch of the 2nd edition due out in December 2010.

This experience was invaluable. Sat in the room was the hearts and minds of over 30 people who are in direct contact with lecturers, universities and book stores from across the UK and Europe. They are deeply embedded in the publishing industry and the dynamics with which it is changing, both due to economic constraints, changes in technology and market preferences. In brief, students are not using books like they used to, it’s about differing formats, differing resources from a variety of locations! And these people know their business and are some of the most humble about their value in the publishing process. In awe of their knowledge and commitment to distributing good educational resources and how they could help educators, I most certainly was. One thing I love about Oxford University Press (OUP) as a publisher, and their team … is they also have heart! They care about the books/resources they develop, the people they work with and the people who they are developing for. Yes they have to generate revenue, but maybe this cultural ethos is because they have a charity status and so are not as commercially driven like most publishing houses.

Why Write a Textbook on Marketing

The above is why I really engaged with this project over 2 years ago in 2008, not just because I wanted to write a book, actually at the time I didn’t want to as academic textbooks are not as valued by business academia like a journal article is (a view I am opposed to!). But with OUP’s ethos, and our coauthor and editorial team, not only did we have a vision for what students in marketing today should be learning in and out of the class room, but the team also saw the importance in not just writing a book, but in developing an overall suite of resources for all in marketing education – lecturer and student alike.

So myself and two colleagues, Paul Baines from Cranfield and Chris Fill from Portmouth, came together on this project through differing routes and bringing differing skills, knowledge and experience to the table. I was the publishing novice, and in some ways still am, still trying to juggle personal and professional deadlines with publishing ones. But one thing connects us, our vision on the value of coupling a deep knowledge of learning and education with marketing theory and practice in business management academia. Our focus has been on developing a resource – not just a book – that helps both students and lecturers in learning and educating about marketing in the many differing spaces it occupies, in the many differing formats it comes, in how it is evolving and the differing ways in which we can learn and experience it. Essentially we spent three years prior to 2008, creating an ‘educational resource’ that brings practice into the classroom, brings not just theory, but also critical debate around marketing theory into the class room and most importantly, engages with the many differing ways and styles with which we both learn and can educate about marketing – online, offline and through experience. Marketing is going through not just an evolution given changes in society, but also a digital revolution.

The Value of Textbooks in Academic Publishing

However, along this journey I must say I’ve been saddened by the lack of value academia, especially business academia appears to place on the value of textbooks in academic publishing, an ethos which has filtered throughout our institutions, governance structures and our education system. Spurned by a ‘publish or perish’ ethos around peer-review (?) journal articles and a governance system – the Research Assessment Exercise or Framework (RAE 2008, REF ?), that propagates this view. I’m not saying these are not important, they are, we couldn’t write books, develop educational resources or educate without them. But our myopic focus on the importance of a journal article above everything else and thus their production at cost to everything else (e.g., teaching quality, educational innovation, staff morale) is harming the inherent basis on which university and business academia exist – “to contribute to knowledge through research, education and community engagement” (this is what I signed up for when I joined academia at the completion of my PhD in 2003). I didn’t sign up to an ethos of “to write just journal articles”.

Yesterday I sat and listened. I knew how well our book at done in its first edition,  but I didn’t realise just how well. Our book – Marketing, the first edition released in 2008, is 2nd in the UK academic market for 1st year marketing textbooks with 30% marketshare, 2% behind the leading textbook, and beating Kotler … “the god of marketing” … who is third. Whoop! Whoop! Our title is apparently OUP most successful business title and purchased by thousands of students across the UK and Europe. This was well above our expectations, in the begining we just wanted to challenge the status quo in 1st year marketing education. Challenge what we were teaching and how! So, a celebration yes! But a personal one! We don’t get huge royalty cheques, and these books don’t really count towards promotion as they are not as valued as much as a journal articles (REF/RAE), despite how much time, work and resources goes into their creation and how well regarded they are outside the academy (e.g., in business). So it’s not about the money and nor drive for a tenured track Professoriate position.

Its about an educational ethos, and contributing to the knowledge of tomorrows marketing industry. In this, for our title, we have reached the minds of 100′s of lecturers and thousands of 1st year marketing students in the UK and Europe and contributed to their knowledge of marketing theory, marketing practice and importantly challenged the status quo in marketing education. That is worth more than any promotion or 4* journal article.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing

But this journey over the last 4-5 years has made me really question how business academia, across the UK, Europe and in wider international communities really value the academic textbooks and educational resources in business academia and their contribution to business knowledge, theory and practice. I cam across this great blog post on “The Higher Education Academy” websites about “Writing Textbooks in a Cold But Changing? Climate. This post has some interesting insights about “To Write or Not to Write a Textbook?” In short the author Rob Pop concludes with a Manifesto for Textbook Writing, for all educators, researchers and authors.

A Manifesto for Textbook Writing (Rob Pope, 2003)

• Textbook writing is a central, sensitive and symptomatic indicator of all that we do.
• Textbooks come into being and operate precisely on the cusp of teaching with research, of education with economics, and of a vision of knowledge as personal empowerment and satisfaction with one of knowledge as public commodity and techno-political power.
• Textbooks are the main interface where the notion of the subject in general is embodied in the particular heterogeneity of all the subjects who study it; it is therefore the major tool whereby subjects in every sense have lasting effects.
• Textbooks are also the main site where the fundamental structure and significance of the discipline is communicated and debated. It is therefore not only the place where the existing territories are consolidated and boundaries reinforced; but where the work of inter- and cross-disciplinary re-definition and re-negotiation goes on — publicly and accountably, amongst ones peers as well as students and, sometimes, a more general public.
• Textbooks are thus where specialist knowledge and skills are accumulated and made generally accountable as well as accessible. Thats why a good textbook is precious — and a bad one pernicious.
• In sum, the writing of good textbooks should be central — not marginal — to our higher educational mission as teachers and researchers.

So with this Manifesto in mind, I have continued with my co-author team to develop our title, Marketing, with the launch of our 2nd edition in December, 2010. Why? Because like Pope (2003), I too believe that writing good textbooks and developing good educational resources should be central, not marginal to our HE mission as teachers and researchers, and our governance structures.

Smiles

Kelly

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Martin Evans

“A contributor to knowledge”; “a creator of impact”;  ”a giving citizen in the academic research community”: all are most certainly terms that describe Martin Evans. Martin Evans was not just a teacher, or a lecturer. He was also an inspiring research scholar whose research interest and research integrity was grounded first and foremost in making a contribution to knowledge in the fields of Direct and Interactive Marketing, Consumer Behaviour and Marketing Research.

He published over 180 publications, in national and international journals, case studies and reports and 8 books. Many of his works are nationally recognised for their contribution, and their author was a multiple academic prize winner from the Academy of Marketing (AM), the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) and the International Conference of Marketing Communications.

Martin also served on the editorial board of some of the UK’s leading national marketing journals: Journal of Marketing Management, Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Strategic Marketing, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing and Journal of Database Marketing and was full editor of the Journal of Consumer Behaviour: An International Review.

His expertise, support and years of research experience contributed to the knowledge and learning of numerous colleagues, co-authors and doctoral students, hundreds of masters students and thousands of undergraduate students, both in and outside the class room, the office and traditional publication channels.

Martin’s research contribution though was not just limited to the academic community. He also engaged actively with the wider business and social community to share and co-create knowledge through research partnerships, committees and informing industry policy and regulation, especially in Direct and Interactive Marketing. He was a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) and Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM) and full members of the Marketing Research Society (MRS), the Federation of Direct and Electronic Marketing (FEDMA) and the Academy of Marketing (AM).

He was an inspiring research scholar, mentor, colleague, teacher and friend.

Dr. Kelly Page
Lecturer in Marketing & Strategy
Cardiff Business School.

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I thought very hard about this question, and reflected on the last 5-8 years of my academic career. I looked at who has inspired me in exploring knowledge, adoption and use of electronic technologies. The works I’ve read and reviewed range from the work of Charles Darwin on Evolutionary Science, the writings of Plato and Sir Francis Bacon on Form and Knowledge, Marshall McLuhan in his media philosophy of the 1960′s,  to more recent work of Innovation Theory by Everett Rogers and Technology Adoption by Fred Davis.

But if I think back to the early days of my research career, as an Honours research student in the mid 1990′s embarking on research about the impact of technology on Marketing philosophy, it would be the work of Prof. Donna Hoffman that really inspired and changed the way I viewed at not just technology, but also the socio-cultural implications/influences of technological developments.

Prof. Donna Hoffman

In the early stages of the research component of my honours degree at Griffith University Australia, I was given a article to read by my Professor of Internet Marketing, Prof. Ed Forrest. Ed was a visiting Academic in Australia from Florida, and established a programme on our schools graduate programme on Internet Marketing and Internet Marketing Research. A programme that for the mid-1990′s was cutting in edge in the critical discussions we had in the classroom about the role of technology in business and wider society. As a research student on the undergraduate programme, I took part in these discussions of Toffler, Media Determinism and Network Complexity.

However the article from these discussions that has remained integral to both my academic and commerical work since that day was an article published by Prof. Donna Hoffman in the highest ranked marketing journal – Journal of Marketing. It was co-authored with Prof. Thomas Novak and was entitled: Marketing in Hypermedia Computer Mediated Environments (HCME’s): Conceptual Foundations. It was this article that raised the critical enquiry in marketing about technology-mediated communications and for me, the acqusition and creation of knowledge about technology – given their complexity in technical design, and situational context of application and use.

Prof. Donna Hoffman award winning and Internationally recognised research set the tone for marketing enquiry into internet marketing and digital media management and as the founder of eLab, an online laboratory for consumer behavior research and the Co-Director of the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing, her work not only informs academic enquiry through publication in top marketing and management journals, but informs policy for commercialization and use of the Internet.

So my pledge for Ada Lovelace Day, is the work and approach to technology science of Prof. Donna Hoffman.

Twitter: @profhoff
Web: Sloan Centre of Internet Retailing

Smiles

Kelly

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Imagine if we found answers for everything, could explain anything … we should therefore know how to market to you, to everyone? But perhaps more importantly, it is the imagination, the creativity of marketing that we would lose, not just the mystery of our markets!

A sense of mystery is intrinsic to the human condition. In the article, Les Lancaster, a professor in transpersonal psychology from Liverpool John Moores University indicates that ‘it is intrinsic for us to seek answers.

It is our evolutionary heritage, moving us forward by motivating us to find out more and use our imagination’. The author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest!) writes ‘the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer’.

So perhaps in a time where the focus in marketing is on measurement, proof, evidence, answers, outcomes and the use of electronic resources to assist us in finding the answers, the information for more informed marketing decisions … perhaps we also need to enjoy some of the mystery.

By this I mean some of the mysteries of new technologies, of market trends, of unexplainable phenomena, these might remind us to enjoy the ‘process’ of what we do in marketing more and focus on the outcomes less.

Perhaps we should just play with marketing, be creative … play with social media and see what happens? I know I can hear your thoughts from here … ‘that costs money’!!!

Let’s look at this another way. In the article the author provided a list of 12 things to help maintain the mystery in one’s life … so with a little creative thought, I edited this list of items to help keep the mystery (and creativity) of marketing alive in a time of rising electronic resources … so we don’t become too explainable!

A manifesto for Mystery in Electronic Marketing!

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

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The above quote from Plato provides a good foundation from which to begin this entry. The introduction of any written works, the start of any piece of performance – be it theatre, cinema, or even the birth of a new life is often championed to be a very important part of any life work.

It is from this from which we draw cues by which to define or classify the entity. From the cover of a book we determine if it is a fiction novel or biography. From the opening scenes of a performance, we infer if it is a comedy or musical? From the birth of a child we ask is it a boy or a girl?

I sometimes wonder, however if there really is such a thing as a beginning? Or does life and our experiences just continue to coevolve from one experience to the next in one long journey.

This post I hope is the first of many conversations about exploring and documenting marketing’s evolution through technology, however I am hesistant to call it the beginning.

Over the last 10 years (or maybe more), myself and colleagues in both industry and academe have been researching and documenting the adoption and use of electronic technology in marketing.

Observing, interviewing and writing about the impact electronic resources are having on marketing activities. So although this might be the first post on this blog for CASE Insights, it isn’t the beginning, but perhaps part of the journey.

CASE Insights is a research initiative that explores marketing’s evolution through technology and documents this journey through insights. This initiative is inspired not just by marketing and technologies themselves (although pretty cool!), it is inspired by a naturalist, a media philosopher and a group of artists!

• Charles Darwin, the naturalist and his studies about the diversity of life and his work the Origin of the Species
• Marshall McLuhan, the media philosopher and his work the Medium is the Massage about technology and societal meaning
• The Impressionists, the artists who used an innovative style to record contemporary life with new methods and techniques.

Each has provided an inspiration, although it is the love of technology and marketing practice that lies at the heart of CASE Insights.

The aim of this website www.caseinsights.com, is to share these insights and contribute to a wider dialogue about marketing’s evolution. Some writings here are current, some recent, while others are historical. The idea is to document marketing’s evolution through technology, be it to inform practice (or be informed), contribute to knowledge or educate tomorrow’s marketing professionals today.

« CASE Insights: Exploring Marketing’s Evolution Through Technology »

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