Cultural Cartography

Hallo with one another

We've just come back from a weekend in Switzerland. We were staying in the Alps near Zurich, in an area that they actually call "Heidland". I find that quite sad for some reason. Maybe it is because it suggests that most people come to area with pre-existing ideas of what it will be like and they have got these ideas from "Heidi". But that's another story.

What really struck me was that after almost every greeting or goodbye the Swiss all said the word "mit einander", which mean with each other. So you walk down to breakfast and you hear "Good morning with one another" or " a nice day with one another". It doesn't work quite so well in translation but it has a really nice feel to it in German. It makes it feel really personal and re-establishes the connection between me and my fellow human beings. They aren't just wishing me a nice day, they are also wishing me a nice day with them.

I did wonder if this level of personalisation or inter-connectivity between people had something to do with the political and social attitudes in Switzerland. For such a country that is relatively important despite its size, it is interesting that a lot of things still have to be decided on a very large scale democratic basis via referendums. But that might be going too far.

Maybe they are just friendly people.

A half pint thought

Having a pint back in 1973
Originally uploaded by edowds

Went back to London this weekend and of course I went to the pub. I was with two friends and we all wanted a beer, but one of my friends was driving, so she didn't want a whole pint, just a half. As I was going up to the bar, I thought HEY! how on earth do I phrase this order.

Two and half pints just didn't sound right, even though strictly speaking it was.

So instead I said "Two pints and a half of ..." It felt much better, but why?

Are there some clever linguists out there who can explain why to me. I would be very grateful and would even buy them a pint (or a half)!

Appendix to "What's in a name?"

As if to prove my point, I have now in the last two days received two letter addressed to Mr ... (i.e. me). In both cases I had filled out a form online and in both cases I had put down Mrs ... but the first name Max just seems to override everything. What is the point of having a form which allows you to specify your gender if everyone ignores it anyway. GRRRRRRR!!!!!

On a more serious note, it is an interesting phenomenon that people always revert to the pattern they know best and the one that makes most sense in their world. Max is not a girl's name in Germany and therefore I must have made a mistake.

Eventually at some point they might get over this.

What is in a name?

I have been thinking a lot about names recently. It has struck me due to several conversations that I have had with friends and colleagues. For one Germany has very strict laws about what you can call children and the other thing is the way that people here casually assume that you can tell something about someone from their name. I think there are two things going on here.

1) In Germany people seem to still expect a name to reflect certain characteristics of the person - for example gender or ethnic background. It is almost a case of Adamic naming (after Benjamin): Adam saw the animals and knew them and gave them their names. It seems perfectly normal to most Germans to assume that you should be able to tell someone's gender from their name. I assume that you can't and that's not just because I have a name that you might not expect a woman to have. It is very interesting having conversations with people, because I am finding it very difficult to convince them that it is a bad thing. But surely it must be better to assume nothing about someone until you see them. It is the whole concept of a level playing field.

2) The second thing is unfortunately the classic case of over engineering. Because the German constitution protects the dignity of the individual, the state decided it was necessary to protect the dignity of children from strange or weird names. So they made laws which meant you can't call a child something which is degrading or provoking (like Hitler) . I can't disagree with this, but I do question whether you really need a law for it. I have been looking but I can't seem to find any other country that is quite so restrictive.
(even on this long and detailed page on names, Germany is highlighted as having very strict laws. ) Most parents don't seem to want to make their children into figures of fun.

I can possibly forgive the assumption that because someone is called Methe, they have a Turkish background, because Germany does not have as long a history of immigration as other countries. I find it difficult to forgive the question where someone comes from, because the underlying assumption is that if you have a German name, you are German (probably because you have German blood) but if you don't you are not. I meant at one point do you become German?

(PS. I know that I get a bit aggressive about this. I am sure if you look back, things weren't much better in the UK 50 years ago. But at least you could call your kids what you wanted.)

Open Door Policy or We talk to you

This is something that I have been thinking about for a while. Recently I have heard a couple of stories which have really proved the point to me. And so I wanted to get the start of the thought process down on paper.

Nowadays it is far too easy for a company to have its reputation dented. It only takes one disgruntled consumer to blog about it or put a bad review on a site and already it's out there for everyone to see. What is it that gets people's backs up so much. Generally it's dishonesty or the sense that the company isn't being completely open. So what is the best way to avoid this? Well obviously, it is to be as open as possible.

My years of consumer research have taught me that if people think you are being honest, that they are prepared to listen to quite a lot of arguments and discussion without coming down on you like a ton of bricks.

An example - if consumers complain that a company is moving its workforce to another country where it is cheaper to produce their goods, then the company should publish a simple equation which says what producing the goods in the country would cost the consumer and should openly discuss the pros and cons. Of course there is the possibility that this could also backfire but there is nowadays with everything.

Or another example - which I have seen demonstrated in person - a company involves consumers in its NPD. So much so that they also discuss the pros and cons of a particular type of packaging with them. It is amazing how understanding consumers are when you tell them, yes that is an amazing piece of packaging but it doesn't fit in the standard displays and so we would never be able to get the product listed and so all our hard work would be for nothing.

In fact what I think this all comes down to and this applies to employee - employer relationships as well - is creating a sense of involvement in the process beyond the mere transactional. This in turn engenders a sense of ownership. And that makes people feel like they are part of something. And that can only be good.

Directions

You know you really "live" somewhere when someone asks you for directions and you can give them an answer. Yesterday someone stopped me outside Friedrichstrasse Station and asked me the way to the Pergamon Museum. I was really chuffed (Northern English for pleased and flattered) and gave them a very detailed answer with lots of hand waving and explanations.

I left them, walked into the station and up onto the platform which is high above the ground and realised when I looked out of the windows, that I had sent that young innocent pair in completely the wrong direction!! I was so embarassed and upset that I seriously thought about trying to find them again to send them the right way. Why? Not because I really cared if they found the museum or not, but because I had shown that I didn't know my way around Berlin and that hence I haven't really arrived here yet. It was of course much more about me, than about them. But then don't you find, that it often is?

I just came across something

Richard Huntingdon at Adliterate has written a post after my own heart about the Death of Serendipity. It is something that has been bothering me for a while as I have almost stopped listing to music altogether. I have never been the world's biggest music fan (neither are my family) but I used to listen to more music. Now I seem to have run out of the urge and that is mainly because I know all my music and don't really want to listen to it anymore. I got a new CD for my birthday recently from someone who doesn't know me that well and I was really pleased as it meant new input for my life.

I think there is definitely space for the return of more boutique stores or retailers of any kind, where you are introduced to new things, new brands, new music, new styles, simply based on their recommendation. That is the way it used to be. Maybe there is even a business idea there, recommending new and interesting things to people.

Good products are good products the world over

Been a bit of a break in the posts (I wonder if that is one of the sentences that you will see most on a blog) but now 2008 is here everything is going to be different. Or not, but definitely better.

I have a list of topics on a post it on my desk, which I want to blog about so I am going to start at number 2 and work my way up and down, just to be interesting.

Topic 2) Good products are good products the world over

When I lived in London, it used to really annoy me that in the marketing community there seemed to be only 1 brand that anybody used as an example in presentations and that was Innocent. I could never quite put my finger on why it annoyed me, something to do with lack of imagination probably. But one of things that did strike me was maybe people were only talking about Innocent because Innocent smoothies were the only good new product that they had come across recently. That is why Innocent were so successful and that success gave them the ability to do all the clever brand building things that they did.

Now another drink is supporting my point. Bionade is a great product which comes from a real philosophy and has a great story behind it. I will give you the gist of it (there are links on the website but they are of course all in German).

A small brewery in the South of Germany realised that they needed to branch out of beer brewing as they could no longer compete with the giants. The owner of the brewery wanted to create a non-alcoholic drink which was still brewed using the traditional techniques as that is what his company did best. He worked for years and years on the recipe and production until they finally launched. It wasn't an overnight success as it was originally marketed as a health drink but with the help from a marketing specialist they changed the label and distributed the drink only through small bars and in clubs. What's more the whole thing is organic and yet it comes in a beer bottle. Now things started to happen. Bionade is now really big and they are planning to expand to other countries, even the US.

And what is the moral of the story - keep it real. And make sure that you have a good product.

I wish Bionade all the best and lots of success in 2008.

PS: the line reads "The official drink of a better world"

O Tannenbaum!!

Christmas is a time heavy with symbolism. At work I was recently asked to comment on the rituals associated with Christmas and to what extent marketers can latch on to them. This weekend my husband and I enacted a ritual which is laden with meaning and above all memory: we bought and decorated our first Christmas tree. The tree is lovely, a Nordman fir with wide branches with thick needles and for the first day the entire flat had a lovely scent of pine.

I am not writing about this here in order to show everyone what a happy family we now are, but because of the questions that arose when we started talking about the lights on the tree. For me it was absolutely clear that we would have electric lights and we would turn them on every night (so that we could sit next to the tree coo-ing and aah-ing!!) and for my man, it was equally as obvious that we would have candles which we would only light on Christmas Eve.

What we have here is a clash of Christmas cultures. In England the tree arrives whenever you are organised enough to sort it out and as soon as you have time, you decorate it and put it in the window for all to see. It is a way of saying to everyone "look, it's Christmas and we are celebrating too." When we were little, we would have a game around Christmas time which was to guess how many Christmas trees we would be able to count on a particular car journey. It always gave us the feeling of a community, even if you don't know the people.

In Germany there is much more of a sense of the tree being for the children and the family. The tree is traditionally only brought in and decorated on Christmas Eve and only when it is decorated with the presents underneath and the candles lit are the children allowed in. I know how I felt when we flicked the switch to put on the lights for the first time - imagine the expression when you see a beautiful tree lit up with candles for the first time. I think in Germany the tree says we are all together as a family and Christmas is starting and it is now time to be quiet and spend time together.

So what did we do about our tree? Well, we compromised. We now have candles on the tree but we lit them at the weekend. It was quite difficult for my husband and a friend who came round, I think it almost felt blasphemous but we have now managed our own combination of German and English traditions. No doubt lots of families and couples with different cultural backgrounds will be doing the same all over the world.

One last thing: of course I started thinking about the environmental question. Are we adding to the destruction of the environment by buying a tree. Well there were two arguments which made me feel better. 1) in Germany they will collect the trees and dispose of them so that they can be used usefully. (See here). And secondly - a Christmas tree is truly beautiful in a way that you seldom see otherwise.

Writing in the sky

Recently there was a bit of a kerfuffle on Ads of the World about a campaign using "Urban Typography" by both Mercedes and Renault. As far as I can reconstruct it, this typography originated from a graphic design student.

I don't really want to get into the whole story of whose idea it was and who copied who. What really struck me about the whole thing is the point of reference which is driving through cities with high buildings, so that you only see small sections of sky. This is not something we could have referenced before the 20th century. However statistics show that in 2008 for the first time in the history of the world more than half the world's population will be living in cities. (Reference here). I can't help feeling that this really does mean the end of rural iconography. Even now it's difficult to understand what is going on in some of the friezes on the buildings that I pass on the way to work. And it will be even harder for the next generation. This isn't all bad, I love the idea of "Urban typography" but maybe there should be something that marks the passing of "rural typography" or semiotics.