Cultural Cartography

The colour of food

It's struck me recently how clever restaurants are at making sure you know what they are. And most of it is done semiotically. Italian restaurants are red, white and green and greek restaurants are blue and white and so on.

I wonder what the colour of fusion is: At the moment it often seems to be brown and orange.

I promise more posts soon, once I've got into the groove at my new job.

Insight driven advertising or the world revolves around my d..k!!!

It's long been a source of amusement to me how absolutely phallocentric the male psyche is. Here are two ads from very different cultures which demonstrate that when it comes to put downs, having a small dick is the worst thing that could happen. Worse than killing someone accidentally, worse than injuring innocent bystanders, worse than even killling yourself by driving too fast.

The German poster ad says: "Raser haben so viel Grips" which basically means so much as "speeders are this clever".

I don't know, guys, does it work for you?

A little less perfection

I was walking behind a colleague on the stairs yesterday. She was perfectly dressed, very stylish, but not too styled, well made up and with a hair cut that made me want to ask her who cut her hair? Whilst I was walking behind her, I noticed that there was a sticking plaster hanging off the back of her ankle. Obviously a result of summer shoe syndrome, but also a lovely reminder that she was human, that she also got blisters and her shoes also rubbed. It reminded me of "To the Lighthouse" by Virgina Woolf, which is in some ways all about the impossibility of perfection in life and in human relationships.

"Dear, dear, Mrs Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this
incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her stocking?
How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where the maid was
always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered,
and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the exploits--interesting
perhaps, but limited after all--of that bird?"

So what has that got to do with brands? Well, I think sometimes a little bit of imperfection is a good thing. It makes a brand more human and therefore more personable. There is of course the classic Avis Campaign "We try harder" but other examples include brands like Bradford & Bingley, who still haven't quite worked out what to do with their bowler hat, but which makes them somehow lovable, Sainsburys who messed up their distribution.

Other examples (definitely better ones) are welcome.

What are brands for?

This is a lateral link and might sound at first a bit like I'm that guy who everyone hates who goes on about when he lived in Rio. But I've established my love for certain brands again since I've moved to Germany. I've also personally experienced the truth that brands are more than just a fancy name for a product.

Since I've moved to Germany the brands that I've fallen in love with again are (in no particular order): The BBC, the Guardian (although it is scary how London centric that paper is when you are no longer living in London), NPR, Persil, Aveda, Sebamed (very German brand) and a few more. What they all have in common is their ability to give me the feeling that I know where I am, who I am and what I am doing again. I choose to listen to the BBC, because I understand their perspective on the world and why they say the things they do. I might not agree with it, but the boundaries are clear. I know who it is and I know where I stand in relation to it.

When you move to a new country on the other hand, it's all up for grabs. I don't know Germany (well OK I confess I know it a bit) and so you have to learn to orientate yourself all over again. It feels a bit like swimming in a big lake of floating bits and they are all coming towards you and there is no secure ground under your feet. And yet you have to make decisions about what to buy. I mean if you don't, you'll starve. So you buy your toiletries at Schlecker because they are eveywhere until you find out that they are reputed to treat their personnel badly, but you only find this out when someone says "oh so you shop at Schlecker do you?" It feels a bit like learning a new language and using the wrong type of words to talk to your parents-in-law because you don't know what they really mean.

Bit rambling but what I want to say is that brands help you to negotiate your way round the world. They make the decisions you have to make every day that little bit easier and they make you feel more secure about the person that you are representing to the outside world.

late night Tv: Four Eyed Monsters

It's been a while since I just surfed but today I did and I found this: Four Eyed Monsters, touching, beautiful, real and at the same time surreal and a thousand times better than anything I would have found on network TV. (Be warned, it is a feature film and lasts over an hour.) It gave a whole new feeling to what the web can do, as I could watch this at home and then go and check out the website and the comments online and the blogs and everything. Don't know quite how to explain it but it gave me an amazing sense of possibilities and freedom. That in especially because today I've been trying to work out how I can watch BBC Prime on the web. It made me feel that this is what it's really about. Me at home thinking I want to watch a film, typing in streaming video and finding a link to this film on Google. The reason I ended up watching this film is not because it was right at the top of the list but because there was something about the name and the visuals and the idea which spoke to me. I chose it but it had to be there to be chosen.

I'm excited to see where things go with this project but with this idea of just looking for things randomly, a bit like opening the bible to see which verse jumps out at you.

An ownable big idea?

Can you own a big idea or do you just get there first?

It's a dilemma I've been having recently, maybe also triggered by a move to a place with a slightly different style of planning. There is something about a big idea or a connections platform which means it has to be so large that if you restrict it to the truly ownable, something which I would define as meaning a claim that only this brand can make and no-one else, then you are limited to the very functional. Only a food company can make a claim about making a certain type of food, but that doesn't really inspire you to rethink the way you look at the way you feel about the food they make. It has to be bigger than that.

I've recently been working on the premise that a big idea comes when a brand recognises something that is going on in society and addresses it itself in its own particular way with its own tonality. It is the tonality that makes it ownable. I guess in a way it's like soap operas. East Enders and Coronation Street are both just tales of simple folk but they are done in completely different ways with a different feel and tonality to them.

I would like someone however to give me a cogent way of arguing that with a client. thanks. I'll buy you a German beer.

Decoding the urban environment

Parkhaus (parking garage), Berlin Tempelhof
Originally uploaded by restmodern.de

Or what the city you live in says about the city you live in.

In Berlin the doors on the trains and underground close slowly. People do not walk on escalators, they position themselves left and right and in the middle and then drop their cases or bags next to them, so that getting past them is nigh on impossible without seeming like a complete maniac. People don't sigh in the queue at the supermarket when the person in front of them not only gets out the little receipt which they got when they brought back 2 bottles, which has to be deducted from their total but also asks for a tax receipt which has to be written by hand. People don't actually seem to mind that all these things mean that what could be an activity of 10 minutes suddenly takes half an hour. And why not?

Because they don't mind if it takes longer. The city and its inhabitants conspire together to make things take more time. So what does this say? That everyone in Berlin has endless amounts of time? Well maybe. Or that this city and its enviroment is not driven solely by the need to be somewhere else as in London. There is much more of a street life in Berlin than in most of London. More cafes with tables outside, more people just flaneuring. And so, the urge is not to be in front of your desk, the TV or the bar, but out and about.

The New Start

My promise to myself and to you readers: I will not only complain and compare Berlin to London. Things are different here because people live diffferent lives and it will be my task to try and use my training and background to uncover what lies beneath the differences