David Rutherford – författare

Co-published with the Institute of Communication Agencies. Every few years, business is galvanized by a new concept. Accountability is the latest idea in the spotlight. It's a huge topic, and in the broadest sense embraces ethics, corporate governance, and all the issues spawned by the recent spate of business scandals. Vulcans, Earthlings and Marketing ROI deals with a more pragmatic aspect: the accountability behind the question ""Are our investments in marketing and advertising sensible and successful, short and long term, from a business point of view?"" In Part 1 the authors establish that finance, marketing, and advertising share common ground in the value of brands. Part 2 reviews the evidence for the business impact of marketing and advertising, summarizing key research and practical experience. Part 3 outlines what it takes to build an accountability culture and profiles some techniques that are useful for framing and measuring the business impact of marketing and advertising investment. The book is intended for anyone with an interest in accountability as it applies to short- and long-term marketing effort.

Antonio da Rho’s Three Dialogues against Lactantius (1445) followed the lead of Jerome and Augustine yet went well beyond patristic concerns. During the Middle Ages Lactantius’ works, while largely neglected, had enjoyed moments of intense interest and study. From the death of Lactantius (325) to his broad Quattrocento recovery, many profound cultural and intellectual shifts had transpired. Consequently, Rho’s dialogues engage topics arising from scholastic and other debates in jurisprudence, cosmology, astrology, geography, philosophy, and theology. He was convinced that insights from these fields would elucidate errors of Lactantius that his readers had overlooked. This reveals much about the cultural and intellectual developments that shaped readers’ efforts to recover, comprehend, and define Lactantius as an author. Significantly, the list of Lactantius’ errors discussed in the dialogues was printed with nearly every edition of Lactantius through the sixteenth century and beyond.