I am hyper sensitive to smells and realise that I often judge people on the way they smell. The smell of sweat means someone who doesn't notice detail. But brands often don't notice the detail of their brands either. I remember someone once being astonished that I could smell the difference between Fosters and Carlsberg. Does anyone at Carlsberg know that their lager smells different, more hoppy and less sugary.
Technorati Profile09/21/2006
Big Hairy Audacious Goals
On the tube today there was a guy without any hair. He must have had alopecia (sp?). It made everyone around him look very hairy and strikingly, very individual. I realised that hair is one thing of the few things that we can actually change about our physical appearance and have real control over. It's permanent but also temporary at the same time. And as all theoreticians now, any kind of juxtaposition like that is really interesting and fruitful.
I also noticed how hair covers up and hides a lot of the things that make us human, so our eyes and our brain. Often in sci-film films those characters who have extra sensory perception have no hair - almost as if they are super human because they are not covering up their humanity.
09/20/2006
Consumer navigation
I want to use this space to think about how we navigate our world via signs, pictures, codes and things and concepts in general.
One thing I've been thinking a lot about recently is about the consistency and colour of items like shampoo and conditioner. We still think that shampoo is about taking things off your hair i.e. dirt, grease and grime and it is most often clear or transparent. Conditioner by reverse is about adding stuff, providing nurishment and nutrition (although that's strictly speaking not true) and it is most often creamy. What is about the codes associated with transparency and creaminess that makes fits with these modes of action? It's the same for liquid soap and hand cream by the way.
I think it must be to do with water and fats, if you go back to the basics. Water washes stuff away and fats add things, like the original furniture polish and cream in food.
The reason I thought about this is I recently washed my hands with handcream!! The container wasn't see through so I couldn't see what was in it and the labelling wasn't immediately clear. It made me start to wonder about how you could shift the paradigm? By making a really clear conditioner? What claims could you make for it? Or are we fundamentally doomed to always have conditioner that is creamy and shampoo that is clear
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