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31st Aug 2005 - Good old fashioned endlines

In the same way that dinosaurs once ruled the earth, endlines once ruled advertising. Back in the halcyon days of the 70s and 80s, budgets allowed messages to be hammered home with brutal repetition. So it should come as no surprise that the lines from this era are the ones we still remember, and deem 'classics'…often regardless of the actual quality of the preceding advertising (and when you're so embedded in people's consciousness, I guess the cynical response to this might easily be...who cares, as long as you're cutting through).

Nowadays, it's simply much harder to impose yourself in this way. But it can still happen (and the disconnect with creative quality can still apply!). A case in point: Jo, my wife, was on the phone last night, 'proper' phone voice in place. To which Josh (8) commented: "Oh…mummy's talking all posh". Swiftly followed by…"but you don't have to be posh to be privileged".

Now, he didn't seem to have any awareness of the advertising for Privilege Insurance (another debate entirely on how advertising works). And from a personal perspective, I don't think it's great advertising. But the line is clearly getting through (at least to my son), building a property they can work with in future.

So maybe there's still life in the old endline dog yet.

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30th Aug 2005 - The ethics of water

After fair-trade and organic, ethical water seems to be the coming thing for the socially responsible consumer. Starbucks, following on from their introduction of fair-trade coffee, and possibly in an attempt to get some more capital in the 'right on' bank (are they expecting some more anti-globalisation riots soon?), have just announced the launch of Ethos.

For every bottle sold, a proportion of the money goes towards providing clean water in the third world. Although, look at the small print, and the numbers don't look quite so generous - 5 cents out of $1.80 retail price (that's under 3%). Whilst the optimist might say that 'every little helps', the cynic has to view this as something of a marketing scam.

And this does seem to be something of an issue. Sensing a bit of a consumer sea change when it comes to ethical behaviour, the big manufacturers are trying to get a piece of the action. And whether it's Starbucks or the big FMCG manufacturers (the attempts to establish a (not really very) fair-trade mark spring to mind), the same rule applies: it's all about the bottom line; they're only in it for the money, the antithesis of enlightened corporate behaviour.

Back to water, and an alternative perspective (because they exist): check out Frank, a West Country based, not-for-profit company that sells (rather cool) bottles of water for £1, with 60p going towards clean water projects (that's 60%...20x more than Starbucks).

Which is much more like it. And a strategy replicable across many categories. Currently, I've only seen Frank at festivals, but it is undoubtedly something that would have wider consumer appeal…if the supermarkets could be persuaded not to upset the apple cart by demanding their pound of flesh.

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15th Aug 2005 - Digital memories?

We live in a brave new world (or so we are told) where ever cheaper devices with near limitless memory allow us to store our (whole) lives digitally. Good? Probably, yes. But, if you will allow me turn luddite for a moment, I would just like to offer up some counter arguments.

My nan died this weekend. She was 91. She didn't have a computer, a blog, a digital camera, a mobile phone or, indeed, an iPod. What she did have though were photos. Lots of them. And looking through some of these with my parents at the weekend got me pondering the claimed merits of the digital revolution. Or more importantly, to ask what we have lost (and may still lose) in the digital transition.

1. Clearing out the clutter. Being virtual, digital storage does away with those piles of photo albums, press cuttings, old cigar boxes and unwatchable cine film. Free yourself; live a paperless life. But we're missing (and losing) something here. There is real, often cathartic value in the tangible which the digital steals from us. There are times when it can be necessary and healthy to actually touch things; to hold them in your hand. You can cherish and cry over one solitary faded photo in a way which the disconnect of digital makes impossible, no matter how many gigs your iPod Photo may have.
2. Keeping things perfect. Digital memories will never fade. And this has its advantages. But it does also root your life in the eternal now. It removes any sense of time; of change. Yesterday looks no different to the distant past which, for me, undermines the potency of memories. Call me an old romantic, but there is something emotive about frayed edges and faded images: it speaks of a life lived. The thing itself has a memory value beyond what it actually shows. As does how it's stored (why in that particular box?). All of which adds texture; it reflects that memories mature, develop and change like wine. The overly perfect, antiseptic and unchanging digital world just can't do this.
3. Storing everything. With 'unlimited' memory (as the terabit world dawns) you can pretty much store your whole life. But why? What value is there in the pointless trivia and mundane moments that populate the digi-verse? They're of little interest to the people who record them…let alone anyone else. The fact is that too many 'memories' (if they can be called that) become self defeating. There is no sense of what's important and what's not. Looking through my nan's photos, I wasn't having to relive all her 91 years. How could I. Just those people, places and moments which were important and defining for her, and which she would want people to remember her by.
4. Ensuring there are no gaps. Because you can store everything you have completeness. But, looking back on someone's life, what can be most interesting and thought provoking are the gaps. Why keep somethings and not others? Who are those people? Where is that? What is that?! These are questions we try to answer in the digital world with thorough commentary and copious notes. But gaps force us to think about people and their lives. No matter how ordinary they may have been, gaps and questions bring a sense of interest and intrigue. And they connect us with others in our recollections, as we ask these questions together.
5. Everything in its place. The benefit of digital storage is that everything is indexed, ordered and catalogued. Nothing ever gets lost; everything can be found easily. But half the fun (and sadness) of reliving old memories is their randomness; the fact that things appear out of the blue and out of order, rather than in a boringly linear time line. All of which turns a functional activity, fixed on rails, into a treasure trove of unexpectedness.

So maybe digital memories aren't all they're cracked up to be. They have their place. And I'm sure things will change as technology develops. But at the moment, it does seem that this digital technology robs our memories of the emotion and texture that makes them special in the first place.

And a final thing to ponder: it is interesting that the neurological reality of memory, of how our brains actually work from a biological perspective, reflects far more the random, frayed, incomplete 'old-black-and-white-photo' model than it does the 'perfection' of the digital model.

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15th Aug 2005 - Back on line

It's been radio silence for some while thanks to a combination of pitches, busy accounts and holidays in Spain.

Back now (sadly when it comes to Spain).

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