Cultural Cartography

How times move on

Interesting article on the Brandchannel about the use of Cadillac Plan in the US to describe a luxury health plan with all the bells on. They are basically asking how much longer will it continue to make sense to use the word for Cadillac to describe something extremely luxurious and opulent. Back in the day this might have been appropriate but the Cadillac brand has changed a lot since then. Interestingly for someone living in Germany, they suggest that it might make more sense to call it a Mercedes or BMW plan. 

I can´t help thinking that this shows how little the Americans have really moved on in their thinking about cars and automobiles. Surely the days of such luxury car brands have to be numbered. There is an article in the Economist about it this week, pointing out (which I didn't know) that one of the reasons that small cars are so much cheaper than large cars is because the car manufacturers make less profit on them. Not because they are cheaper to produce. But their main point is that we will be buying fewer and fewer large cars in the decades to come, due to economic, environmental and demographic reasons. 

So maybe the Americans will have to come up with a new name for luxury health plans. How about the Ritz Carlton or the Country Club of health plans. That might make more sense. 

Talking to the people (German Bundestag elections 2009)

In a few weeks Germany is holding its general elections. As I can't vote (or only on things like should there be more lampposts in the neighbourhood), I have been observing the whole thing with a certain amount of distance. What has struck me however, is the prevalence of posters and billboards. Some billboards have even been specially erected for the great day! 

What I have found the most interesting are the way that some but only some of the politicians have steered away from the typical portrait plus specious election slogan which is generally used (in particular by the main parties CDU and SPD).

A very well known politician and green campaigner is carrying on his tradition from the last election and is using a cartoony approach to the whole thing. 

I think this is great. It is fun, it says people working together to change things they don't like. There is a great dirty pile of bad things on the ground that they are all just going to march over and Marx is watching over everything from a cloud. Although I don't know why there is a question mark around that. Wolke? 

Another poster that caused a lot of furore was from the CDU politician who is campaigning against Stroebele. I think she probably decided she didn't have anything to lose by playing the female card. And so she showed what more the CDU has to offer - cleavage. 

I also like this guy, who has obviously decided that he has had enough of bad photos and is also picking up semiotically speaking on the whole tag cloud idea. It shows that a cartoon does not have to be cartoony. In fact this poster almost made me want to vote for the guy - except I can't. Except for the fact that he seems to be going on a bit too much about being child friendly, when I think what he actually means is parent friendly. 

Then of course there are the real outliers. Like this one. 

Literally translated it means "with arse in your pants" or with guts. I think I like. 

And here for the benefit of my "strategic advisor" (sorry, in joke) are the blatantly contradictory posters from the resurgent Left Party. 

1) Wealth for all

2) A tax on wealth 

Well, I guesss you just can't have your cake and eat it too. 

And here you can see both together in their full contradictory glory! 

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