Question: It is said in this article that "the brand name, rather than the product, is now the primary basis for choosing one product over another". Do you agree?

Answer: Yes, and I have a splendid example to point that out. We all know the commercials made for sanitary napkins and pantyliners etc, which are most of the time extremely annoying. Nevertheless, it doesn’t really seem to matter. They sell their products anyway. A market survey pointed out (and I should have known which one it was but I can’t look it up right now) that it doesn’t really matter if people like the commercial or not. If it’s extremely annoying, people will talk to each other about how annoying the commercial was but what they’re not aware of on a conscious level is that they remembered the name of the product! That’s where it’s all about. Brand recognition. When those people are in the supermarket and they have to choose which brand of sanitary napkin they have to buy they will choose the one they remembered, whether the commercial is annoying or not. So with this argument I think I contributed something to this article and the statement that it’s all about the brand.

A Critical Question to the Article of George N. Dafermos

Question: This article states that weblogs are huge because "they don’t take technical savvy" and that "they take the power out of the hands of the IT-department and the webmaster’s hegemony and hand it over to where knowledge really resides – the individual workers who are knowledgeable enough and know how to speak with a human voice". Do you agree?

Answer: I agree on one hand. It is true that it’s very easy to start a weblog and to sustain it but I wouldn’t state that it is the main reason why people start a weblog. The writer should make an distinction. I think that the reason why people start a weblog has more to do with making themselves heard in a very easy way. They can put themselves on a stage somehow, without being really vulnerable because they still remain a sort of anonymous. They can give their opinion and people can react on those opinions. The fact that it is very easy to start a weblog will contribute a lot to the fact that they start it anyway but the MAIN reason would be more in the sociological sector, I think.

A Critical Question to the Article of Sean Nixon

Question: What are the two dimensions Nixons states to the constitutive role that cultural representations play and play out in the commercial relations between clients and agencies?

Answer: The first dimension is that you have on the one hand, the current moves to redefine the identity of agencies that reveals the contingent nature of the commercial relations which prevailed for much of the post-war period. The second dimension is on the other hand, the current moves by agencies to protect their status that also exposes the cultural work necessary to maintain and develop favourable commercial relations with clients.