When we explained that we were interested in their company and their work as an object of research, they were surprised that they themselves might be a valuable subject of academic enquiry. As an established part of their business, they had little need of external academics to undertake such work, and Paul and I had little experience in this area anyway. For Red Bee, research referred specifically to audience research – questionnaires and focus groups used to develop and test new and ongoing projects. The reason for this silence became clear when we finally secured a meeting with three senior staff at Red Bee to discuss a possible research collaboration, where it emerged that we were operating with very different understandings of the term ‘research’. When we approached Red Bee to see if they might be interested in generating ‘shared research’ around their work in promotional media design, Charlie Mawer was uncharacteristically silent. I subsequently interviewed Charlie for Branding Television, and Paul and I began to discuss ways of extending our relationship with Red Bee as part of a broader academic interest in understanding promotion as a creative discipline. PO Box, APO/FPO, Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, American Samoa, Andorra, Angola, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Aruba, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of the, Congo, Republic of the, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Gabon Republic, Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Micronesia, Montserrat, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Reunion, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts-Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Marino, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turks and Caicos Islands, Tuvalu, US Protectorates, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Virgin Islands (U.S.I first encountered Charlie Mawer, the Executive Creative Director of Red Bee, at the AHRC-funded ephemeral media workshop organised by Paul Grainge at the University of Nottingham.

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