Cultural Cartography

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

Call back later please

 

Off to the party

pink hat red bus
Originally uploaded by lomokev.

I'm getting married next Saturday and then I'm on my honeymoon and then I'm moving to Berlin so there is a lot going on. And not much time to blog. So ta ta for now and see you in Berlin in June.

Getting your bearings

IMG_9437
Originally uploaded by René_Berlin.

I recently registered in Berlin, something that is as a freedom loving Brit who basically believes that the state has as little right to know what's going on in my life as the man on the moon was very hard. However in celebration of officially now being a Berliner, I decided to go up the TV Tower at the Alexander Platz. I can highly recommend it and it felt like just the right symbolic action: To be standing over the town I'm going to be moving to, perusing the axes and generally getting a feel for the lay of the land. It also struck me once again how different Berlin is from London. It is a much grander city in one way but at the same time a lot poorer in architectural interest. In London round every corner there is a fascinating left over from the Middle Ages, the Victorians etc. Berlin feels a lot more purist and cleaner but thus also less quirky.

rational vs emotional

"I must be in touch with my feminine side" - translates to a man being emotional and looking for a way to say it. And thereby, as Shakespeare almost says, lies the rub. Men don't want to be women, any more than women want to be men. So associating emotions with being feminine makes them less appealing to men. But there seems to be this understanding in society that the emotional is the feminine is the right hand side of the brain. And whilst there is a lot of talk about how it's important to utilise emotions in business and for brands to appeal to consumers' emotions, so long as they are associated with the feminine and the non-rational, this will not happen. We have had too many centuries of the feminine being weaker and non-effective for it suddenly to be appealing.

I'm reading lots of stuff about how the brain works at the moment and I also went to a series of talks last week organised by Ipsos-Mori at the London Zoo, where this was also talked about. And one of the most interesting things was a terminology that was introduced about System 1 thinking and System 2 thinking. A new way of talking about intuition versus post-rationalisation.

A lot of the stuff that I've been reading seems to pretty decisively say that you can't make a decision without emotions. And that actually emotions are everything that helps you distinguish between things that you want versus things you dont'. So even seemingly "rational" decisions like buying an expensive Volvo are based on emotions, such as fear for your family and the need to look to good to your friends.

So my challenge to myself and to anyone out there who cares to help is to find a new terminology for "rational vs emotional", "masculine  vs. feminine" or any of these other basically "positive vs negative". 

Wedding bells and moving boxes

Thought I should put up a quick post about why I've been so remiss recently in my blogging. Not only am I getting married in under 5 weeks, I'm also moving to Berlin (from London) and so am in the process of selling my flat and sorting out my life in general. It takes up a lot of time. No real excuse but still an excuse. So apologies.

It does of course mean that I'll have lots of exciting news on the way that Germans live their lives and the signs they use to do it.

But I'm not the only one who is talking about "moving to Berlin": check this out

Pull a veil over it

up
Originally uploaded by Perpetually.

As my wedding is getting closer (only 4 weeks away), I am naturally starting to think more about the various cultural associations and semiotic aspects of a wedding. We are getting married in church so there are numerous codes and symbols as you can expect. Interestingly our vicar told us that the reason the CofE service has the declaration which sounds very much like the vows and then the vows was that traditionally after the declaration the couple would go away betrothed and see if things worked out. Then they would come back and finish things off.

One of the most interesting things for me has been considering whether to wear a veil or not. My feeling is that the veil is the one thing which really makes a bride into a bride. It's bizarre given who I am and the world we live in. The one thing which least fit, in that it originates in order to preserve the bride's modesty is the thing that makes you into a bride. Actually on thinking about it, it's not bizarre at all given that brides are somewhat out of fashion at the moment.

Flocks of starlings

In keeping with the current interest about swarms, herds and thinking en masse in general driven largely I think by Mark Earls getting  his book out on the market about herds, I started thinking about my favorite exhibit of that swarm thinking: Starlings flying. Where I live there is a flock that sometimes fly in such a beautiful pattern that I have to stop and watch them (and then miss the bus). It is for me one of the wonders of the natural world. Not much to do with semiotics though. More to follow on Mark's really interesting thinking.

There are some great films on Youtube like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HB42cYu0Agk

Wanted to also point out here, that I am away for the next week. Back on March 19th hopefully not having eaten too much Utah snow. Have a great week while I'm away.