Copyrighting Egyptian antiquities

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the Chinese terracotta warriors on display at the Hamburg Museum of Ethnology in Germany.  Now here’s another interesting case of cultural heritage, authenticity, and profit sharing: the CBC and the BBC are both reporting that the Egyptian government is considering copyrighting pharaonic antiquities, “from the pyramids to scarab beetles, in an attempt to collect royalties from the creation of replicas.”  The money gained from copyright royalties would be used to maintain antiquities sites in Egypt.  In a rare moment of understatement, Hawass said that the Las Vegas Luxor hotel would not be affected by the proposed law “because its interior bears no resemblance to a pyramid. “

“Beer and beaches” hurts the Australian university brand?

The Chronicle of Higher Education posted this little article on the ‘brand image’ of Australian education. When my husband read it, he said, “It’s simply not accurate. I see far more people drinking wine on the beaches here than beer.”

From the issue dated November 30, 2007

‘Beer and Beaches’ Image Said to Hurt Australia’s Higher-Education ‘Brand’

By LUKE SLATTERY

Sydney, Australia

Australia has lost its edge as a leader in higher education as universities in the United States, Canada, and Scandinavia discourage their students from indulging in a “sun, surf, and sex” experience down under, an official representing the nation’s research-intensive universities has warned.

Michael Gallagher, executive director of an eight-university Australian research group, said in a speech that the tourist images “surrounding much of Australia’s international-education marketing send messages other than valuing intellectual achievement” and that a “long tail of mediocrity” threatened the international reputation of Australian higher education. To counter the threat, he said, the country’s universities should concentrate their research money to create a tier of “big league” players in global research.

Mr. Gallagher, who leads the Group of Eight, told the audience at a colloquium at the University of Sydney that an Australian education was associated more with a “beer-and-beaches holiday” than a valuable learning experience.

Anthropologists and the U.S. Army, continued

News outlets continue to pick up the story about anthropologists working with the U.S. army in Afghanistan, but the tenor of the reporting seems to be shifting. Recent articles (such as this 16 October BBC story) are highlighting more prominently the Network of Concerned Anthropologists‘ circulating pledge of non-participation in the U.S. counter-insurgency, and reporting that the majority of anthropologists object to “weaponised anthropology.”

Meanwhile, one of the anthropologist members of the “Human Terrain System,” Marcus Griffin (Ph.D.!) blogs on his own website about his work with the U.S. military. Amidst his (16 October) glowing descriptions of how he got a buzz-cut and was mentored in the weight room by “highly professional soldiers,” I spotted this typo, which gave me a good chuckle:

“I’ll blog soon about an awesome research effort the other team and I brainstormed regarding how to help Internally Displaced People and reduce the damage they are causing water infrastructure and the spread of water-bourne diseases.”

As a savvy commentator over at Savage Minds has observed, Griffin seems to be marketing himself to get a book contract or perhaps a movie deal out of his work for the Pentagon. Perhaps they could call it “The Water-Bourne Conspiracy”?

L.L. Wynn

Rite Marketing Strategies

Advertising Age has reported on a large report done by the BBDO agency which studied daily rituals in a number of national populations in order to detect regularities that might be of use to marketers.  Entitled “The Ritual Masters”, this study was conducted with 5,000 people over nine months and suggests that daily rituals can be broken into five stages.  The reasoning behind the study is explained thus:

By identifying the rituals we perform as we move through the day, the idea is to work out how to fit brands into those rituals and create products, packaging and communication to make it happen.For example, women in Colombia, Brazil and Japan are most likely to apply makeup in the car, and 49% of Chinese eat on the way to work (against a global average of 17%). Such statistics suggest product innovations and marketing strategies that could prove useful.

“The idea here is to look at rituals as an important behavior in consumers’ lives, to understand what they are, how they work and how to work our clients’ brands into them,” said Andrew Robertson, BBDO Worldwide president-CEO. “We usually look at behavior through the lens of a brand or a category. This is an extra lens to look through.”

However set in stone our routines may be, there are always opportunities for clever marketers to infiltrate rituals and seek out moments when they may be disrupted. One Dutch interviewee had used Gillette razors all his life. On holiday at a Club Med, he was given free Wilkinson razors for a fortnight.

Advertising Age - Do You Know Your Rites? BBDO Does

Also commented on here, with the headline that “anthropology is the new selling science”.

Some of the findings are interesting.  For example:

Americans are most likely to meet in a restaurant (27%), while the Spanish and French eat the highest percentage of meals at home (42%). Italians, French and Spanish do not eat at work or in the car, but the car has become a dining venue for Saudis (12%), Chinese (10%) and Americans (10%).

Judging from the article, though, I’m not sure to what extent this kind of study can be considered anthropology.  Perhaps it’s just the recognition that different national groups have statistically significant differences in habits and can therefore serve as predictors for marketing purposes. Is it simply the cross-cultural focus that makes it “anthropology”?  I’m not sure what kind of methodology was employed but it looks like it was mainly survey-style interviews and focus groups judging by the sort of data they’ve collated.  Again, this doesn’t seem to be overly anthropological as it doesn’t seem to provide the sort of qualitative understandings you might expect from an ethnographic study.

Another thing that immediately strikes me is what appears to be the underlying assumption that national groups correspond to cultural groups.  This is hardly an ethnographic move.  For me at least, ethnographic interventions tend to go the other way, by problematising assumptions of these kinds.  Maybe that’s just me, and as Nursel’s recent post suggests, attempts to define “anthropology” are always going to be problematic.

‘The New Halal (And the Non-Muslims Who Love It)’

With the mentality of ‘where there is a need, there is a profit’, companies are always quick to realise cultural needs, and transform them into products without any racial, ethnic or religious discrimination. For example, two McDonald’s restaurants in Melbourne, Australia have been targeting the Muslim consumers and offering halal food products. For the full story http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1910_0_25_0_C

Trendwatching explains virtual anthropology

Trendwatching has produced a trend piece on “virtual anthropology”. Where researchers are using online communities to observe and understand patterns of consumer behaviour before going into the field.

http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/virtual_anthropology.htm

Ethnography in design research

Posted by indsight on flickr.com

The Science of Desire

“The Science Of Desire”

“As more companies refocus squarely on the consumer, ethnography and its proponents have become star players”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_23/b3987083.htm?

Rebadging Volkswagen

How to redefine Volkswagen’s image and make it more ‘culturally relevant’:

“Crispin’s cognitive anthropologists went to work. Two-hour in-home interviews with two dozen GTI buyers, all men 18 to 30, were done in five cities. The researchers sent the subjects an assignment in advance of visits: Make a collage with magazine pictures to illustrate how they felt about Japanese “tuner” cars, like Honda (HMC ) Civics, on which owners tack thousands of dollars in speed-enhancing and cosmetic accessories. Then cut out pictures representing the European tuner cars like GTI and BMW M cars that are accessorized at the German factories. One GTI fan contrasted cutouts of Tweety Bird and a tuner “dude” wearing a chrome dollar-sign necklace to represent the Asian tuner “posers” with images of a black wolf and Ninja warrior depicting the “more authentic and serious” Euro tuner crowd.”

Businessweek