From persuasive messages to tactics : exploring children’s knowledge and judgment of new advertising formats

Despite that contemporary advertising is decreasingly about persuading children through persuasive messages and increasingly about influencing them through implicit tactics, little attention has been given to how children may cope with advertising by understanding and evaluating the new advertising tactics. Drawing on 12 focus groups entailing 60 European children of ages 9-11, this article investigates children’s advertising literacy by exploring their knowledge and judgments (and according reasoning strategies) of the new advertising formats. In particular, insight is provided into children’s critical reflection on the tactics of brand integration, interactivity and personalization in the advertising formats brand placement, advergames and retargeted pre-roll video ads on social media. It is shown that while children not spontaneously do so, they appear to have the ability to understand these tactics and form judgments about their (moral) appropriateness, thereby considering a wide range of societal actors

Agromere: how to integrate urban agriculture in the development of the Dutch city of Almere?

Urban agriculture produces green city areas with as an extra dimension providing food, energy, care, education or recreation for the civilians. And thus it can contribute to a more sustainable and liveable cities. The objective of the project Agromere is to create a process which will lead to a new residential quarter where agriculture is fully integrated in city live. Agromere is situated in the fast growing city of Almere, the Netherlands. In a combined stakeholder and design process a township is designed which integrates living (5,000 inhabitants) with urban agriculture on 250 ha. During this process an enthusiastic network of stakeholders has been established which developed innovating and unique ideas on urban farming. The potential for organic farming in the city is high because of its emphasis on animal welfare and consumer relations

Children's processing of new advertising formats: how to improve children's dispositional and situational advertising literacy?

Compared to traditional advertising formats, contemporary advertising is characterized by a more subtle, less intrusive commercial nature. Commercial messages are now frequently integrated in or merged with highly entertaining and fun media content, which distract the users from systematically and critically processing the content. This makes it difficult for consumers, especially young consumers with limited advertising literacy, to evaluate the persuasion attempt critically. Not only do children have a limited general knowledge of advertising (i.e dispositional advertising literacy), they also have difficulty to actually apply this knowledge when confronted with advertising (i.e. situational advertising literacy). To be able to activate their advertising literacy when confronted with (new forms of) advertising, children need certain coping skills, as well as a number of cognitive, emotion regulation and moral capacities. As studies focusing on strategies to improve the situational advertising literacy of children remain scarce, the current presentation will focus on the interrelationships between dispositional and situational advertising literacy to investigate how children can be assisted in their recognition and critical processing of (new) advertising formats. We hereby refer to Friestad and Wright’s (1994) ‘if-then’ procedure (i.e. “if people are made aware of a persuasion attempt, they then have to figure out how to effectively manage their response to this attempt”) in order to reflect on how we can help children to 1) realize that they are confronted with advertising in order to 2) be able to process it in a critical manner. However, for children, this second step may not follow automatically from the first step when confronted with new advertising formats. Research shows that recognition of advertising does not automatically lead to a critical evaluation. Therefore, we reflect on how these two steps can be linked successfully and automatically. A suggestion proposed by this paper is the use of automatic and implicit tactics such as persuasive intent priming and implementation intentions to improve children’s associative network and learn them to cope with advertising. Besides reflecting on specific strategies that can be used to improve children’s dispositional and situational advertising literacy, this presentation will also reflect on children’s processing of advertising formats and the challenges for their advertising literacy in the contemporary advertising environment

A phase I/II trial of fixed-dose stereotactic body radiotherapy with sequential or concurrent pembrolizumab in metastatic urothelial carcinoma : evaluation of safety and clinical and immunologic response

Background: Current first-line standard of therapy for metastatic urothelial carcinoma is platinum-based combination chemotherapy. Pembrolizumab in phase III has demonstrated a promising overall response rate of 21.1% in patients with progression or recurrence after platinum-based chemotherapy. Preclinical and clinical evidence suggests that radiotherapy has a systemic anti-cancer immune effect and can increase the level of PD-L1 and tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in the tumor microenvironment. These findings gave rise to the hypothesis that the combination of radiotherapy with anti-PD1 treatment could lead to a synergistic effect, hereby enhancing response rates. Methods: The phase I part will assess the dose limiting toxicity of the combination treatment of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) with four cycles of pembrolizumab (200 mg intravenously, every 3 weeks) in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma. The dose of both pembrolizumab and SBRT will be fixed, yet the patients will be randomized to receive SBRT either before the first cycle of pembrolizumab or before the third cycle of pembrolizumab. SBRT will be delivered (24 Gy in 3 fractions every other day) to the largest metastatic lesion. Secondary objectives include response rate according to RECIST v1.1 and immune related response criteria, progression-free survival and overall survival. The systemic immune effect triggered by the combination therapy will be monitored on various time points during the trial. The PD-L1/TIL status of the tumors will be analyzed via immunohistochemistry and response rates in the subgroups will be analyzed separately. A Simon's two-stage optimum design is used to select the treatment arm associated with the best response rate and with acceptable toxicity to proceed to the phase II trial. In this phase, 13 additional patients will be accrued to receive study treatment. Discussion: The progress made in the field of immunotherapy has lead to promising breakthroughs in various solid malignancies. Unfortunately, the majority of patients do not respond. The current trial will shed light on the toxicity and potential anti-tumor activity of the combination of radiotherapy with anti-PD1 treatment and may identify potential new markers for response and resistance to therapy

Kosten en baten van bodemmaatregelen : Grondbewerking, organische stofaanvoer en Tagetes patula als aaltjesvanggewas

Bodemstructuur, organische stof en bodemgezondheid zijn belangrijke aandachtspunten in de akkerbouw. In langjarige systeemproeven op verschillende grondsoorten is onderzoek gedaan naar verschillende grondbewerkingsmethoden, organische stofstrategieën en aaltjesvanggewassen. In deze kosten-batenanalyse zijn de resultaten van de proeven geëvalueerd. De onderzochte maatregelen laten economisch vaak relatief kleine verschillen zien met de referentie. In een aantal gevallen is er wel een groter verschil, vooral als de opbrengst van hoogsalderende gewassen door de maatregel verandert. Dat is soms positief (hogere lelie-opbrengst door Tagetes patula als aaltjesvanggewas), soms negatief (lagere peen-opbrengst door NKG op klei)