Better than life...

A few weeks back Kodak made the tragic, inevitable announcement that they are to cease production of Kodachrome. This is the first, the oldest, and the most wonderful colour film on the planet because in one sense it is not colour at all. Three layers of black and white film simulate the primary colours and filter light accordingly. It will last for centuries without fading. In the very very complex and toxic processing (done in just one lab in the world), which is also ending next year, colour is added. It is just like the wonderful Technicolor process of old Hollywood which produces ‘better than life’ eye popping colour of a kind seen in Robin Hood et al.

Kodak had a point of course – it is expensive and complex to produce and is responsible for less than 1% of Kodak’s film sales. With the development of several new emulsions in the last few years, Kodak’s commitment to film photography looks strong for now.  The film is 74 years old so one wonders why they could not wait just a year and end production on more of a high? 75^th Anniversary collectors packs, maybe bring back 120 format and the lost ASA 25 and 200 versions for a limited time before saying goodbye?
That said, Kodak’s efforts were pretty impressive. They positioned the whole thing as a celebration, have made enough to satiate demand for a good while, and are letting it trickle out of the channel.

Too many iconic, tried and tested or just cult products are just dropped without notice, without fanfare and without consideration for those that rely on them.  Cases like this are when marcomms should shout loudest – that product worth 1% of revenue might be a positive symbol that puts a halo on the rest and thus be worth keeping on life support. Or if it just has to go give it a proper send off like the old friend it is.

Sigh...

Mind the hose, please

Much like an electric snake that has consumed several goats I’ve been gestating too many posts for too long and have been far too busy to boot.  Normal service now looks to be resumed…

It’s long since calmed down now of course but a post on the ever wonderful Jack of Kent’s blog and a namecheck of the dreaded Dolly Draper in Metro reminded me of the whole Damien McBride thing.  Most aspects of the affair have been discussed to destruction. The dislogic of sending such a potentially hot mail from a traceable address to someone as indiscreet as Draper is quite amazing. As are the low grade of the lies themselves – vague and readily deniable trivia.  Quality mud would have been much more darkly creative, impossible to disprove and leave far more questions in voters’ minds then gossip in the papers. Old Damien should have studied the work of the Prince of Lies himself, Lee Atwater, first. He could make people believe some properly absurd yet deeply damaging libels.

In an era where ideas and solid policy discussion are largely absent from mainstream media I fear we can suspect a General Election campaign based on character assassination.  Especially from an enraged yet enfeebled Labour, which is filled with a blinding, Nixon like hatred of and disrespect for the Opposition (or indeed any opposition).  This book has been doing the rounds of the Westminster Village.

Of course, the Web will need to be a part of HMG’s potentially doomed attempt to secure a mandate.  But the pathetic Red Rag attempt at tittle tattle (is Dolly not a kind of Midas of mischance?) combined with the horrific semi-official PC Zombie forum that is LabourList – which has less spirit and purpose than a discarded, rain sodden Foxton’s brochure from 2002 – suggests they have a lot to learn.  The US Democrats might be able to help, if it is not far too late already.

Why has HMG and Labour generally used social media so poorly? I think partly because it is a tool of insurgency. Social media at its best tunnels around and through a bland mainstream media, which is usually based on some stultifying consensus of right or left.  Those in power create much of that consensus so there is nothing to tunnel around nor real conversations they feel are worth starting.  All that is seen is a binary world of the consensus and an equally distorted polar opposite.  The rough and tumble (along with the depressingly frequent genuine radical weirdness) of online debate is handled much better by the British right as it is happy to shout back at what offends it, rather than just try to deny it any ‘platform’.

The very nature of the British left in 2009 would preclude anything or anyone like Guido Fawkes emerging. Ironically it could not work for the same reason a Daily Mail sponsored conference into reproductive health would collapse into an orgy of recrimination – there would be far, far too many ways to give and receive offence.  The only way out of the potential strife is to impose a kind of soft corporate blandness that speaks only to itself and within a very tight ideological straightjacket.  Which just makes all its bustle and fuss a silly, muffled kind of noise that passersby will scarcely notice and most certainly not respect.

A masterclass in Fail

While marcomms at its best is a kind of alchemy, sometimes there really is no way to mask the cynical reality of a product.

Lots of premium brands are little more than well dressed, youthfully aspirational riffs on common mutton, but the key is not to make the illusion (in which consumers are implicit collaborators) insultingly obvious. Chasing a handful of fools with gilded versions of commodity products can cost years of credibility with a brand’s core customers and advocates, who may not come back at all. The auto industry is especially guilty of this self destructive caprice.

American auto firms (and the Rover of the 1980s) have often made the mistake of assuming some faux woodgrain and a wink to the snobby side in all of us represents some kind of alchemical process which can turn a painfully ordinary car into an object of desire.

As a petrolhead, I’ve always paid special attention to the automotive sector and have been sad to see the self-inflicted wounds of the industry get septic and deadly with the aid of the global economic thing.

In Europe, GM’s indifferent stewardship of Saab drained it of any brand value before ejecting it out into the cold night like an unwanted zombie offspring. Allegedly, up to 20 vultures have some interest in picking over the corpse.

Opel is too big to fail, but GM is desperately seeking some kind of ‘outside investor’ to take even a majority stake in what along with Holden represents the brains and future of the whole firm. This is a horrific act of corporate self harm that few other automakers understand because GM Europe is where all the IP needed to turn things around Stateside comes from.

GM’s public ‘proposal’ for Opel’s future literally is like going down some backstreet to sell a kidney. The main issue is that the US government can’t be seen to bail out the foreign bits, even if that’s where the exciting cars and potential are coming from.  Thus the reckless desperation of trying to flog off the best bit of the whole firm. Maybe the EU will want to avoid the blame for letting the most recently profitable part of GM die and will step in to help.  Saab looks too far gone and small for such a reprive, though.

Saab was the quirky, Californian, tech led and somewhat organic cereals based alternative to Audi et al before The General turned it into just another home for mass market Opel platforms. Saab became to Vauxhall what Rover was to late 1980s Hondas – a slight luxo gloss on a decidedly blah mass-market repmobile. Consumers can smell this kind of gold leaf wrapping on a Big Mac thing a mile off. It is a con more insulting than placing biroed Franglais Post It notes on bottles of Gallo swill and adding £4 on to the price tag.

I’m not sure what kind of future Saab has – it will need to raid the parts and platform bins of some big carmakers given the low volumes involved (but then so does Aston Martin) while somehow creating vehicles that are unique. A tall order indeed. Especially as there are still too many brands out there and far too much capacity in the industry as a whole.  Perhaps it can take advantage of the situation and cut deals to get ‘best of breed’ parts from all over the place and somehow blend this with Nordic engineering excellence and flair.  I doubt it will work well, though. The slow motion Rover debacle proved that being a small, upmarket volume car maker can be a paradox too far.

Ironically, it was GM itself that had the first big, nasty experience of lazily forcing a priceless brand to commit suicide. The ‘Cadillac’ Cimarron was an attempt to obscenely increase the amount of chrome and profit margin of the J-body (GM’s cheapest, nastiest front wheel drive platform of the 80s) while distracting yuppies from BMW et al. It was such a disaster that the current head of Caddy has a picture of one on his wall inscribed ‘Lest we forget’. Ford (Mondeo based Jags?) and GM itself surely have done and will do, over and over again. If you must dress mutton as lamb at least have the common courtesy to make sure that the zips don’t show.

This is the future - if you suck

Creative destruction can be a nice aspect of a downturn. Duff retailers are going.  Shops that looked squatted anyway in my area and sold the same bootleg dross and gone off veg as all the others are now shuttered.  They had no reason to exist except for the usuals of easy money and lack of imagination.

Many papers and media outlets have had little reason to exist for a long time. A friend showed me an Indy last Friday and it seemed like an Evening Standard for the shrivelling Soft Left. Maybe the rumours of going online only or selling out are correct because otherwise it makes as much sense to produce as a dinner plate made of organic, ethical and wholly sustainable butter.

It is not an original idea on my part, but I sense that the muddled middle of the media and redundant, poorly defined and funded titles will hit the wall. This could leave a world of nourishing news and thought alongside the delicious trash.  Junkets and voyeurism vs. real seriousness. There can be little room in such a world for broadsheets in particular who put out transparently biased, tabloid grade churnalism without the simple honesty of the real thing.

Pick up a Forty Quid Bloke targeted music supplement on a Sunday and you’ll soon realise it is far more fanboyish and PR-driven than even the Sun’s Bizzare pages.  It just would never admit to using the Sun to clean up after its vegetarian dog.  If you want to learn about music, go online or read something relevant and critic run rather than PR led like Wire.

Sadly, the curtain twitching petit bourgouis stereotype baiting papers that used to be called the ‘midmarket’ will continue to set political and cultural agendas.  This is a scared, superstitious and monochromatic world where facebook causes death, cannabis leads to cannibalism, immigrants eat swans and cervical cancer jabs lead to underage orgies. They are geniunely dangerous to civil society in a way the much maligned, simple and fun Red Tops could never aspire to be. I fear their shrill blare can only get louder as horizons darken.

In better news, Pearson’s stable and the heavyweight monthlies such as Prospect and Standpoint are doing well. Maybe when everything has gone wrong serious people look for real anchors to guide the way.  In fact, I noticed a banner for the FT’s heavily trailed China Confidential premium service which further hinted at a future where organisations with the resources and contacts to conduct serious newsgathering and analysis will give away a lot of their stuff but charge you more to know more about what you know you really need to know.  Like provincial politics in China if you are an investor or insurer, etc.  Trade media could slim down and go the same free for the basics, pay to get the need to know stuff direction. This new clarity could be a boon for many…

I’ve not mentioned it because I wanted to be sure it was legitimate – but something wonderful is happening in the Netherlands.  The hollowed out shell of Polaroid ended production of its traditional film products in June of last year.  Harman Technology (Ilford) and others apparently tried to do a deal with them, but it was not to be.

After the dust has settled, it now has emerged that the same components and methods of making Polaroid’s ‘Integral’ film (ie the sort you don’t have to peel apart that consumers used) have been utterly unchanged since 1972.  You just cannot get away with that kind of stagnation.  Component availabilty and cost was cutting into margins at the end, though I am of the view that had Polaroid bothered to make some simple changes, they could have kept their magical, beloved product going and made it price competitive per print with digital.  Before the announcement of the end of production affected prices, Polaroids were about £1.60 an exposure – much too much to compete.  Those film packs are ridiculously complex, containing a battery, springs and all sorts.  Most of it probably is unnecessary. Kodak’s legally stopped but innovative late 70s riff on it all (which lives on outside the US as Fuji Instax) is battery free, much simpler and much cheaper at 50p or less per shot.  This shows that had Polaroid made some easy changes, the fate of its iconic product could have been different. The company sure was full of talent. In fact, its had to licence some back that it carelessly let go to make the interesting but poorly marketed Pogo instant digital cameras.

One of the geniuses behind the whole Lomography thing has gotten together with Harman and the cream of the crop of the old Polaroid operation to launch the ‘Impossible Project’.  This gorgeous site has just been put up but invites user comment on the seven biggest challenges to making new kinds of film for the millions upon millions of inexpensive, lovely Polaroid cameras out there. The old factory and production line have been bought and saved, experts from Polaroid rehired.  The same outfit seems to have got a hold of the remainder of Polaroid UK’s stock and have given the presentation of the same a brain transplant into a world of beauty and relevance. Harman’s been helping too, intelligently engaging with the photographic community via social media.

If all goes well, just as the last of the ‘real’ Polaroid stock is out of the channel, something wonderful will reemerge as a great example of how a brand community orphaned and ignored by its creator can take over and replace the original. I just hope that unlike ‘Lomography’, which was based originally on taking one of the worst cameras ever made, glamming up its context and selling it for 100x its worth, Impossible BV makes a competitively priced product.  If Polaroid had done that well, it would still be the company it was today.  I have been amazed to witness the suicide of one of the most iconic brands in the world – songs, art galleries and whole  artistic subcultures have been based on Polaroid but it never seemed to notice or care.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – 50p per weekday is not necessarily a bad investment in a still OK paper.  The Evening Standard sure has more fluff than an angora rabbit sanctuary and has so many PollyFillas future generations may see it as some kind of deep, cutting satire on chickfic and soft chattering class prejudices.  My old favourite Nick Cohen seems now to have been squeezed into a dental floss sized strip, which is depressing.

Pick through the guff and moralism though and there is always a nice nugget of journalistic goodness to be found, usually in the business section.  The other week, the always wonderful Anthony Hilton wrote one of the most perceptiveaccounts of the economic crisis I’ve yet read.  He reminds his readers that most commentators have some interest in their prognostication (or shouting) and that when it comes to economics we can only understand things long after they’ve happened or have been happening. Qui bono indeed.

Today it was the turn of Simon English to offer some wisdom. I’ve noticed a lot of billboards for Norwich Union (with whom I just renewed my car insurance because it had the best quote and a very trusted brand) listing famous name changes before announcing its becoming ‘Aviva’. Given that the bus company responsible for daily transport atrocities in my neighbourhood is called Arriva things already seemed a bit confusing. A name that is older than most standing buildings, conveying trust and depth seems discarded as casually as a Halloween mask. Why? Especially when all the messages now in consumer finance are about trustworthiness and value?  Global firms often try to make some marginal savings by rationalising their brands, but it can be a mistake.  GM has debated whether to dump Vauxhall in favour of Opel for years but each time has realised that avoiding a few plastic badge and letterhead logo differences is not worth trashing decades of brand equity.

I never noticed the slebfest Aviva adverts as I have Sky+, thus all above the line on TV is just a surreal blur for me. They are trying their best.  Simon’s analysis is hard to fault. When you consider that the whole exercise of Norwich Union becoming Aviva costs just 25% less than a recent deal to media buy all the surfaces on the New York subway for a year you have to wonder again: Qui bono?

The Revolution never ends...

Been dead quiet here for a very good reason. Changing gigs takes some doing, especially these days. But all the blood, sweat, tears and sacrificed chickens look to have paid off…

In the meantime I could not help noticing the modern day Millie Tants of ‘Plane Stupid’ et al getting up to more mischief. However, on a PR level these techniques have jumped the shark more times than a blocky 1980s video game character.

A little while back there was a pathetic, Mitford-esque attempt to hijack the anniversary of the Suffragettes ‘Rush’ into the Houses of Parliament. In terms of historical association obscenties this was like naming a municipal sewage works after Nelson Mandela. Leading the charge for justice was the fruity Boden catalogue ready baronet’s daughter Tamsin Omond. A media darling, she bragged about being a modern day Rosa Parks who was ready to break her bail conditions in order to save the world from naughty planes via ‘direct action’ stunts. Unfortunately, exposure to a police cell proved a less than optimum lifestyle choice, despite the champagne radical bluster spewed beforehand, so she has disappeared sheepishly back to Belsize Park.

Picture the scene: you’ve got far enough out of the bottom of your overdraft to sneak off to Barcelona for a few days to pretend everything is OK, the economy will recover, a life of debt, stress, cramped housing, third world infrastructure and big bills is tolerable etc. You get in a taxi costing the GDP of many tropical nations to slide into Stanstead for a 6am cattle car flight and lo and behold, a load of chanting, novelty haired poshos have profaned the tarmac – meaning your pathetic little break is a no-go. If I was the protagonist in this story, the next chapter would involve a hijacked chemical toilet servicing rig, an improvised flamethrower and a trip to Broadmoor.

Whatever the politics of the matter (the idea that a load of carbon emissions were ‘prevented’ is more childish than taking a battery farmed egg home and sitting on it to save the chickens of the earth) and the futility of UK self flagellation on climate change in a big big scary world where global limits and cap/trade is the only way, the tactic backfired as badly as the consumption of tinned chilli in a gas cooker showroom. Yes, there was a tonne of coverage of the plucky, joyous crew, but the organisers seemed to have taken the false adage that ‘all publicity is good publicity’ literally.

For almost all the coverage focused on BAA’s rubbish security, angry holidaymakers and the fact that most of the ‘protesters’ come from privileged backgrounds. Some so much so that Daddy’s South Bucks back garden is large enough to get lost in anyway, so who needs Ryanair? This will have done untold damage to the anti-aviation cause. A better case could be made around resident’s rights, lack of need in a recession, BAA is evil, etc etc in the old patient, reasonable way that actually gets things done. Like the anti-Heathrow folk.

Which brings me to a strange PR absence that I’ve only seen noted in an FT leader and an Evening Standard profile with BA’s Willie Walsh. Why has this industry let loud, often inaccurate opponents have all the running for years? The UK’s airports are full to bursting and new runways can actually mean LESS carbon as there is less circling and time on the tarmac, planes get quieter and more efficient every year etc etc. Air travel is a small and growing source of carbon, but will remain a marginal problem compared to electricity generation and other sources for many decades.  No-one has even begun to make this case, leaving green dreamers and a shamefully opportunistic Conservative Party to dance on the grave of much needed infrastructure upgrades and, yes, the right of ordinary people to travel.  In the end, many climate experts say that loft insulation is more important than aviation in emissions terms, but of course that would be a rather diffuse target for world changing fun days out.

Meditate on this

Well in this time of crisis it takes some seriously hard work to understand what is going on and why.  Of course the nature of economic figures means that things have already happened or have been happening long before they are reported anyway.  The man who runs my local cornershop noticed penny-pinching nervousness and general moping amongst his mixed clientele many, many months ago.

Picking fact, cause and trend from a whirlpool of mindless fear mongering, gleeful Schadenfreude, unqualified, spectacularly biased pontificating and general guff is tough.  Complex, multicausal events which become entangled with political ideology are not something most media can even begin to report on with alacrity.  As usual, the Pearson stable and thoughful monthlies like Prospect have more to tell us. As does the wonderful LOLfed, which combines meme-y net humour with some interesting news, leaks and analysis.

I’ve been interested to see how brands are reacting. There is a long tradition of emphasising good value, low prices or just trustworthiness in a downturn but left unchecked this can lead to just more vapid, fear inducing and generally crap marcomms. The first to react some months ago that I noticed was ‘your credit card number is safe with us really’ discount retailer TK Maxx. Awful studio stock photos of gurning models were acompanied by copy reminding punters that you can still get a cheap coat in a ‘chilly economic climate’. Presumably one with knives sewn in that goes well with a sword walking stick, two lovely product lines that snuck into the retailer’s chaotic supply chain this month. Dumbness cubed.

More clever noises seem to be coming from Lloyds TSB – with a consistent and new message that it is Britain’s most trusted bank. Nationalised it may be along with the rest (except those chosing to infect themselves with petrodollars) but by getting a message of trustworthiness out there quickly it subtly depositions rivals while claiming a crucial space before any others get a look in.

“We’re damn cheap which is great because you’re rather broke” price signal based marcomms are usually suicidal in the long term to both margins and reputations. So look for smarter brands to go with ‘value’, ‘trust’ and all those lovely warm notions instead. Or else just bravely soldier on with other ideas, refusing to join the chorus of self harm that is reminding everyone just how awful everything is these days.

Chin Chin etc

I get rubbed up the wrong way by dumb adverts. First I sort of blank them, but if the media stays there the rubbing continues as if a small sea urchin had been glued into my trainer. The current outdoor and apparently TV campaign for Gordon’s Gin is one such example. I think that before they tried some nonsense about their ‘Distiller’s Cut’ novelty gins and then maybe something about ice chess?

Now they are doing something so gauche and obvious I didn’t even notice the full extent until a mate pointed it out. I wondered why a loud, polarising but admittedly talented chef would associate himself with a gin of mediocre respectability. The sort of gin one cannot look too far down upon but yet can greet with no more enthusiasm than a rubbery cheese sandwich offered gratis at a sales conference. Did he not want to associate himself with excellence? Then it hit me. GORDON’S Gin. As in that’s why Gordon Ramsay was chosen.

This is about as clever as a toothache joke told at a Listerine factory.  He is a very polarising figure, which is risk number one.  Risk number two is he could be caught drink driving again or be involved in some other idiocy, or just instead continue to overexpose himself. Either way, it mingles the Gordon Ramsay brand with that of Gordon’s Gin which seems an expensive, foolish and ephemeral dilution.

My parents drank it when it had the nifty bottle with the boar thing on. I’ve drunk it myself in the Sixth Form when it was readily available and went tediously with squash. It’s aggressively OK.  Plymouth or Tanqueray are better choices. I used to like Bombay Sapphire until I realised that despite the lovely bottle it tasted more of air than gin.

A much better attempt at hijacking the sweary Mr. Ramsay’s brand is this wonderful viral/digital campaign for Caterer.com.  It makes the point about people in the hospitality industry needing a passion for perfection with humour, is technically well done and is a real case study about how small brands can think/act big online.

Better replace this

I always notice what appear to be big, new, media outdoor media buys across London.  So when a coyly nude female on her back on a blah carpet like an unlucky turtle in a Novotel room emerged alongside a suggestive URL (Fun on the floor) appeared I remembered it.  Shot so that the male subconcious wanted to jump into the photo yet not so raunched out as to revolt the more sensible females, it bordered on clever. Of course I knew it had something to do with carpeting, probably some kind of industry association type deal but some squares would have even suspected it was saucy.

Well the site is very….ok. Something 2001 IKEAish about it but if one saw the visual horror that is most carpet oriented retailer sites first it looks like something from a better dimension. These people really do need to pool their resources. However, there is no real scope for social media interaction in its current form. Why? Why pepper it up with plastic, blatantly fake case studies and dodgy copy instead?

Carpets have been out of my life a long long time. Hard to clean. Often smell. Stain. They do not feel to be part of the kind of modernist aesthetic I aspire to. I remember finding dead bugs in the 70s shagpile as a kid. Small rugs and hides do nicely for me on bare floorboards. Many, if not most, homes of family and friends have also gone this way.

But, along with vile 70s style prints and general loudness, carpets could well be due for a mainstream revival. I bet in many less metrocentric quarters they never even went away. I am sure there are plenty of gum, fag ash and bug death compromised examples out there waiting for replacement. If there was no credit crunch, that is…