Consumer Culture Vulture

Drug companies have what they call pipelines. This refers to the future drugs they are developing and which they hope will eventually come to market and make them lots of money (and cure sick people blah blah). There are lots of points in the pipeline that a drug can fail - clinical trials etc. It is an expensive, time consuming, and uncertain journey. So drug companies try to always have some things in the pipeline at any one time, at various stages of development. This way there is always some hope of success. I think academics can apply the same principle. Getting an article published is expensive, time consuming and uncertain. It is better to have a few options on the go so that if one hits a snag - an unresponsive collaborator, reviewers taking ages, a rejection - you still have other things to be working on. So consider your own pipeline. How does it look? Ideally a few mature projects close to completion. Some others which are still at a draft phase but well on the way in term...

An interesting article from the Guardian . Brief review of developments in the sex toy industry and looking at how vibrators have gone mainstream. The role of marketing in this is food for thought. Which came (if you'll pardon the pun hurr hurr) first? Did marketing strategies and tactics contribute to sexual pleasure being increasingly diverse and open, or did it merely follow up and exploit these for commercial purposes? Reading around the topic is fascinating and food for thought for marketers. Sex is of course one of the go-to settings for brand image and promise. And trends in sexuality offer the market researcher a wealth of potential information for interpreting wider societal change. Businesses operating within the sector tend to be particularly focused on their consumer's needs and wants (again innuendo very much intended) and to have innovative marketing strategies ahead of their time. An excellent article from the Economist (Sept 2015) highlights how pornographers...