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Our boy at his pre-school graduation in Hawaii -- they had the kids dress as something they want to be when they grow up.
Last week I started as scientist in residence (SiR - the acronym is worth the title!) with DDB. According to the people who have done the research, this is apparently the first time an advertising agency has ever appointed a scientist to work with planners and account managers in-house. So, this is certainly as new to DDB as it is to the advertising world in general (and honestly, it is quite new to me as well).
I'll be around roughly a day per week at the DDB UK office in Paddington, working with their staff in very different ways, from scientific consultancy for specific campaigns and TV ads to training workshops for their staff and clients. From the few days I have spent with DDB, I can already feel that there is a huge interest and demand for understanding how our minds work and how this understanding can be used to create more effective campaigns.
In my main job I'm still a lecturer in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, and like every good academic I'm usually busy with teaching, running research projects, giving talks, and writing scientific papers. I'm also a co-director of the Masters programme in Music, Mind and Brain, a very international and quite ambitious programme that covers the cognition and neuroscience of music perception.
Actually, my background has mainly been in music-related research so far. I obtained my PhD in systematic musicology (= the scientific study of music including acoustics, informatics, psychology, neuroscience etc.) but subsequently I worked on a large research project in Goldsmiths' computing department before I finally became a lecturer in psychology. And as you might guess from this short vita, my interests regarding how the mind works as well as the scientific methods and techniques I use are pretty broad. How music works in advertising, e.g. as kind of a soundtrack, as an audio logo or generally in sonic branding, is naturally one questions I have a heightened interest in.
But apart from the use of music in ads there are a zillion other issues in modern advertising that make for highly interesting academic research questions, not at least the methods of pre-testing and measuring ad effectiveness that seem to have been in practice for ages and have never really been challenged.
I'd like to get some of my brilliant Masters students of this year involved in that research, for example exploring implicit methods of assessing attitudes and behaviour towards ads and brands and comparing them to conventional explicit methods such as surveys and focus groups. What can we learn about what people think and do by asking them and by not asking them (but measure their behaviour)? It’s not hard to see that neuroscience and looking at brain activity is currently one of the hottest topics in advertising research and, over the next couple of months, I’m certainly going to look into whether it is worth the present hype and how it can inform advertising in practice. (You might have noticed the cautious undertone that the co-director of the Music Mind and Brain programme has carefully chosen to apply here.)
Anyway, pre-testing techniques, behavioural economics and neuro-marketing (how many buzzwords can you fit into one sentence?) are not all I’m interested in. Given my background in computing and machine learning I would love to explore how ideas (and ads) spread virally across communities and networks and how we can describe and predict emergent behaviour in social groups, be it on social networks sites or even in the real world. DDB seems to be pretty keen to explore that route which is related to the idea of ‘6° advertising’ as opposed to ‘360° advertising’ (you can probably tell by now that I’m working really hard towards getting my marketing lingo right).
Up to now I’ve talked to enthusiastic account mangers and planners working with very different brands, ranging from German cars to cat food, and everyone seems really keen to involve the new SiR in their upcoming campaign. The demand to talk to someone with a scientific perspective is huge and I will need to figure out how I can give everyone the best of my knowledge and support. (Maybe there is an internal competition that I haven’t been told about: Who can make most use of the SiR to maximally impress their client?)
Really, I’m looking forward to the next months and I’m not sure who will learn more, the DDB staff about the scientific understanding of the human mind or me about the crazy world of advertising in general and cat food in particular.
This is me in my scene at the Trail of Terror. I'm basically a mad scientist, though my scene specifically was "Frankenstein".
The labcoat was made by our costume maker: Dead Threads Costumes. Contact me if you want to commission a costume from Dead Threads. The goggles are WWII era welder's goggles with the dark glass removed. I bought them on E-bay. The neon wire was bought online and is attached to the goggles. It runs to a battery pack on my sleeve.
The costume is based on Professor Membrane from Invader Zim. The photo is by Ricky, another awesome Trail actor.
This is me in my scene at the Trail of Terror. I'm basically a mad scientist, though my scene specifically was "Frankenstein".
The labcoat was made by our costume maker: Dead Threads Costumes. Contact me if you want to commission a costume from Dead Threads. The goggles are WWII era welder's goggles with the dark glass removed. I bought them on E-bay. The neon wire was bought online and is attached to the goggles. It runs to a battery pack that is on my sleeve.
The costume is based on Professor Membrane from Invader Zim. The photo is by Ricky, another awesome Trail actor.
Cute I may snag her during a sale to get those goggles and the microscope. I wish she came with some awesome vials, oh well
National Institutes of Health scientists developing a rapid, practical test for the early diagnosis of prion diseases have modified the assay to offer the possibility of improving early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
In tihs image: NIAID’s Bradley Groveman, foreground, and Christina Orru using the RT-QuIC diagnostic assay, which they helped adapt to detect Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.
More information: www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-scientists-adap...
Credit: National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH
This is a view of the mad scientist's laboratory at Grimm Manor, a popular Halloween haunted attraction in Eastern, Ohio.
This photo is a stack of 9 seperate images, each exposed differently and merged together to bring out more color and detail. Exposures ranged from 5 to 31 seconds (on bulb) at f/11, ISO100 and 17mm (full frame). Other than the base exposure which utilized the moody ambient lighting, the remaining eight were lit with a 2D LED MagLite from different angles. Happy Halloween!
Looks best on black, click image or press "L".
File name: 08_02_000023
Box label: Churches: C-E
Title: The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Christian Science Center, Boston, MA
Alternative title:
Creator/Contributor:
Date issued:
Date created:
Physical description: 1 photographic print : gelatin silver ; 8 x 10 in.
Genre: Gelatin silver prints
Subjects: Christian Science Center (Boston, Mass.); First Church of Christ, Scientist (Boston, Mass.); Churches
Notes: Additional information on item: The small, Romanesque building at the right (completed in 1894) was the first permanent home of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass. It is also called The Mother Church. When the congregation outgrew the original edifice, a large domed building was constructed beside it. Completed in 1906, it became known as The Mother Church Extension. Today, the side-by-side edifices are in the midst of the Christian Science Church Center. The original edifice is used for special church meetings and regular Sunday morning services in Spanish. English services are held in The Mother Church Extension. Christian Science was discovered by Mary Baker Eddy in 1866. The Church of Christ, Scientist, was founded in 1879.; Stamped on item verso: Christian Science Church, Committee on Publication
Provenance: Gift of the Christian Science Church, May 19, 1976
Statement of responsibility:
Location: Boston Public Library, Print Department
Rights: Rights status not evaluated.