Curious Flip

SUBJECTIVE CONTENT TRUMPS OBJECTIVITY

On the 8th October 2008 Liberation's front page read "crisis I write to you...". This was the day when the Financial Crisis looked like it was entering a new uncharted depth and the British Prime Minister announced the UK government was suing the Icelandic one.

In the editorial Laurent Joffrin begins "All crises are also crises of ideas...", he continues "...with the radio station France Info we have decided to take a look at the troubled waters of the world's ideology. In this special issue we have therefore asked 17 artists, writers, intellectuals to give us their first thinking on this financial market crisis...".

On the same day The New York Times, Guardian, Repubblica and other major national daylies were full of  interviews and stories from different actors in in the financial world to chronicle the crisis, Liberation had the point of view of 17 artists and intellectuals. The previous day's fall in shares on the world's stock markets were the only facts reported.

I have just gone back to it a month later - after the crisis has discovered many more new depths.

As I look at it again it makes me think of many ads and other communication by  brands just stating objective facts about themselves - three thoughts spring to mind :

1. Fact based information has become so ubiquitours that alone it's a commodity.
2. It's easier to be interesting and stand out with subjective than objective content ideas
3. One way to make memorable content is to push an aspect of its cultural context to new levels.

In a world as global as today's, I can't help feeling that if I had not lived in France, I might not find the intellectual content interesting but uncomfortable.  i expect that just reading the titles of some the articles of this special "intellectual" edition is likely to make many non-french shudder.  

The professor of intellectual history, François Cusset, declares "that small word 'crisis' has lost the freshness of a new concept"; the writer Dominique Manotti states "It's neither moral or amoral, it is how it is"; the philosopher Jean-Claude Milner states "It's the crisis of a capitalism disconnected from natural resources"; the philosopher Yves Michaud says "The problem is that we lack a revolutionary theory"; the humourist Stephane Guillon writes "I'd love it if every frenchmam supported his bank with a smile"; Naomi Klein's article is titled "The ideology of the market-king will not die by itself"; and finally my favourite, the writer Frederic Beigbeder, sarcastically proclaims "we should canonize all traders".

I can's see any national newspaper in the UK or US would have thought of doing it, as in those culture this is sheer stupidity as it goes against the functional reason why newspapers exist - to report stories on what is happening in the world. Objectivity is the backbone of what they see as integrity.

I can't see this happening in a country like Italy. Forgetting for a second the impact of Berlusconi's media dictatiorship - culturally whilst the arts are close to Italians' hearts, populism is a key driver. Originality in Italy is driven by a desire to gain acceptance within the group. Intentional polarisation is not part of Italy's group culture.

In France this seemed almost normal. The replacement of hard 'objective' facts by subjective intellectuals' essays seems more memorable than another day of news. Originality in France is seen as driven by intellectual ideas; the risk of polarisation is as nothing more than a way of asserting a sense of individuality.

A BAD BRIEF

I saw this at the Hippodrome de Lonchamps at the Prix de l'Arc Triumph - France's biggest horseracing event. It was at the back of the racetrack between a cashpoint and a shop selling merchandise, towards the exit. 

There was no notice accompanying it. A very open brief.

I guessed that if they put it there, they believe they could improve the current event.

I thought I'd be helpful and suggeste:
"Add diversity. Try alternating horseraces with other animals' races - dogs, pidgeons, camels, hampsters."
 
I think I missed the point. I blame the brief.

DESIRED POSITIONING: DON'T SAY IT, SHOW IT

On a recent trip to Hungary, in my hotel room I finally found a magazine that I had never seen before and that I would not be able to buy: Diplomata. 

Most of its content were interviews; either with foreign diplomats in Hungary, or Hungarian diplomats stationed abroad. Many of the articles' titles listed in the Contents page were quotes from some of the people interviewed. Maybe it was the jet lag and lack of sleep, but the statements made by those diplomats reminded me of many of the statements I see brands make in their communication. They seemed designed to fit with what they thought their audience wanted to hear.

On page 14 I came across an interview with the British ambassador's wife. The only picture is the one below. He looks fairly relaxed. She looks tense; a bit too unnaturally straight and does not seem relaxed - it can't be easy being the ambassadors' wife. Above the picture her quote states: "being natural and spontaneous get the best out of people".

I blame her agency.

ANALOG RULES AT THE MUSIC FESTIVAL

In the digital age, analog is alive and well. I spent a day at Rock en Seine - one of France’s main music festivals, held in Parc of St Cloud, a few miles from the centre of Paris - and most of what was communicated was very rooted in analog.

Here’s my TOP 9 things of note, other than the music.

1. ROCK EN SEINE LOOKS GLOBAL
Many of the scenes I came across at Rock en Seine are the same I have seen in most other music festivals I have either seen or been anywhere in Europe and probably the globe. The bands lineup. The stages. The crowds. Art. The bars. Heineken. Plastic cups.

2. ROCK EN SEINE LOOKS VERY LOCAL
Two 20 year old students sipping champagne is a scene that felt very French and it did not seem out of place – as I feel it would have done at Pinkpop, Rock am Ring, Reading or even Glastonbury.

3. COMPETITIONS RULE
The most effective ways to capture attention of ‘youth’ seems to be very analog, interactive and to give the chance of walking away with a freebie.
Howard Luck Gossage lives. The way of doing marketing that was his trademark was being applied by many brands at Rock en Seine. The most popular way to attract 18-25s seemed to be COMPETITIONS. Levis did it, so did Samsung ; so did the drink+driving campaign ; so did SFR ; so did X-Box ; so did at least 3 other organizations that I cannot remember

4. RECORD COMPANIES LOVE LEAFLETS.  FESTIVAL GOERS HATE LEAFLETS.

Leaflet distributors looked to me like people playing catch, as they almost had to run to put the leaflets into festivals goers’ hands as these approached the entrance trying to avoid them. When they accepted them, they threw them almost immediately on the floor. Two clearly frustrated distributors handed me a bundle of the same leaflet to clearly get rid of it and move from brand employees to festival goers as quickly as they could.

5. FAST FOOD HAS DIVERSIFIED AND GONE GLOBAL
A pleasant surprise was the food. It was a fantastic feat for the eyes, the nose and, once I got to the front of the queue, the tastebuds. I was impressed by the variety. Chinese, Japanese, Creole, Grilled anything, pasta, pizza, crepes, tartiflette (fantastic) ; toulouse sausages (even better), baguettes, combinations of fruits smoothies, chips, kebabs, ethiopian, andouilette (for strong stomachs only), sweet fried stuff. Tastebuds heaven

 

6. GUITAR HERO ROCKS
My prize for best placement of any brand at the event goes to XBOX’ Guitar Hero. They had set up a stand with about 20 machines and after having given your details for a competition, you got the chance to unleash your inner rock star, as they say on the tin.

7. PROMO MATERIAL NEEDS POINTLESS CREATIVE USE TO GAIN VALUE
My favourte site of the day was the use of the Virgin Radio inflatable sticks. Someone turned them into a dog and used the free Samsung necklace as a leash to tie it to a tree and leave it there. Priceless.

8. THE MOBILE PHONE CREATES SOUVENIRS
Clearly everybody was texting, talking, and taking picture during the whole day, but when it got dark and Justice (a french electronic act) took to the stage the mobile phones came out in numbers to create souvenirs: personally recorded moments of the concert. If my clip is anything to go by, just like holiday videos, it feels very personal but likely to be near identical to most of everyone else's. Also the experience of taking the film as a souvenir to me was much more exciting than watching it days late

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9. AMIE WINEHOUSE DID NOT DISAPPOINT…SHE CANCELLED
As I walked to the big stage where she was supposed to perform at 22h15 all I saw were the screens that until then had been used to enrich the experience, used like the static boards announcing the competitions.

Like Amie Winehouse, in the digital age, digital had gone analog.

THE MULTIPLE FACETS OF A VILLAGE BRAND

A few weeks ago I went to Lapedona, a small village in the Marche region of Italy.  I got there in the middle" of  july, the height of the summer season. This is the only time of the year when the village can attract attention, crowds and cash. Here's the posters that greeted me on the wall by the village's entrance. They gave me some idea of  Lapedona 's summer strategy and of that of a neighbouring village.

The  anniversary of the patron saint is an italian village's classic. If you are there at on the right day, it's unmissable. Lapedona obliged with its patron saint and martir, San Quirico.

As is the annual 'sagra'; a gastronomic 4 days festival that celebrates one local specialty. At Lapedona it  focused on 'gnocchi'.

I expected this to be joined by a medioeval, but this village did not have one, instead it had added another  religious festival to its calendar - with the obligatory procession carrying the effigy and a band. Rather than a saint, it announced the 'festa' of the Madonna del Carmine.

Looking at the posters next to it, the double religious festival was a clear lighthouse identity strategy. The mayor must have gambled on tradition to fight the nearby village's much less traditional strategy.

Two posters from nearby Marina di Altidona announced first a four day gastronomic festival; but rather than a sagra focused on one food specialty, it had gone northern European.

And a concert......nothing classical. Something more in the Berlusconi tradition of attracting a crowd.

TWO CULTURES, TWO WAYS TO BE OPEN MINDED

Liberation, decided to treat its readers to the subject of 'plaisir feminin'. On the first weekend of august, its summer insert focused on the differences between clitoral and vaginal orgasm. In the third pages it evolves female orgasm to the anal, culinary and literary variety.  The bande dessinée (comic strip) style turns it into tongue in cheek french style. No better reading when relaxing with the family. 

In Amsterdam the media is more public, arguably more original (an old Fiat 500) but a lot more direct (no softening of the message through a comic strip execution). The targeting is also a lot more focused, as the car was parked outside a gay club.

LONDON SHOWS ITS INTERNATIONAL SIDE

A traditional English pub at ease with untraditional Peroni branding. Should it now think about chaging its name?

THE FORCASTING POWER OF COMICS

I found an unlikely source of forecasts by looking into different book stores in the weeks before the first round of the French elections: comics.

In the 5 different bookstores I entered, I noticed 6 comic books on one or more politician. 5 of these were about two of them: Ségolène Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy. Where would the other candidates be today if they had not overlooked comics?

On teh comics' prediction for the final round? Sarkozy has one more comic than Segolene. I guess looking at the numer of comics, their prediction is Sarkozy for president.

One was about an outlier: José Bové. But then again, the title helps understand why comics did not help him:

We must kill Jose Bove

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GREY MICROMARKETING

I went past this cafe near work. There are 8 cafés within 5 minutes walk of my office. I was full of expectations when, from the distance, I noticed that one of these cafés had decided to use its windows to toughen up its competitiveness. Each one of the 3 posters in the windows says:

HERE
HAPPY HOURS
everyday 5pm to 7pm
BEERS ON TAP
COCA COLA
ORANGINA

Not quite a hard sell. Not sure it would work in Manchester or Boston. Too weak in alcoholic content.

I have yet to go in, but I will as soon as the poster microcampaign comes down.

RECONNECTED

STORYTELLING

As I have just come across my notes from my best use of 4 days in 2006, I feel like sharing them.

Last April I enrolled on a four day workshop of STORY – the scriptwriting course that Robert McKee has been teaching all over the world for the last 20 years.

Here’s three thoughts that I found particularly useful when thinking about designing brand stories:

1. All good stories take place in rich but small PERSONAL worlds - if not they end up being clichés/stereotypes. As he says they need to be at the same time CULTURALLY SPECIFIC and UNIVERSALLY HUMAN.

2. Any story of interest is born from a GAP : the moment when the protagonist is at risk of loosing something as his expectations and reality don’t match up.

3. A story can only exist when the protagonist has a clear ‘Object of Desire’ he/she is trying to reach.

FOR SOME IT'S WEB 2.0. FOR OTHERS IT'S THE NEW STILL LIFE

Or maybe I should say 'the new Campbell soup can'.

When I decided to go to SLICK - the new art fair grouping some of the hippest young contemporary art galleries - in the depth of the 20th arrondissement, I was not expecting to find that the most eyecatching artwork there would be a simple acrylic painting of the Google home page.

The artist - Valery Grancher - told me that he finds the icons of the virtual world a more inspiring universe than landscapes, still life or the human form.

The following week I came across a gallery where an anonymous collective had covered the walls with the results of typing 'art' in Google.fr

TRULY EMOTIONAL MICRO-MARKETING

Today a marketing idea added some warmth to my sunday lunch.

I decided to venture to a part of Paris I had heard about but never yet been to: Butte aux Cailles - a picturesque mini-Montmartre in the unlikely setting of the tough 13th arrondissement.

Not dismissing the very tasty 'porcelet or the crème brûlée façon grand-mère', the best thing about the Chez Paul's menu was a little notice on the front of the main menu and on the back page of the dessert menu. Clearly today my planner side won over my foody one. The note was telling me (as you read it, think poetic french, rather than my butchering of a translation)

"we remind you that if you wish to send a postcard to someone you care about that's not here with you sharing this great moment, we will offer you the postcard as well as the stamp"

Forget the impersonal postcards stand by the toilets. This is welcomed interruption.

CULTURAL LINK WIDENS COMICS' INFLUENCE

Out of curiosity - and a conviction that the influence of the comic strip in today’s popular culture is rising - I decided to go and see what the 5th edition of the a festival of BD (‘Band Dessiné’ or comic strip) was all about.

As a roman living in the land of Asterix, I’m very aware that comic strip culture in Paris is not something that’s just for kids or geeks - it's even got its own ‘Oscars’.

The thing that struck me the most in this annual fair is what seems to be a tightening link between Japanese and French culture.

As the French are not well known for their explicit multiculturalism, I was surprised to see how much space was given to manga. Then I saw that the new album of ‘Spirou’, a very French comic strip hero, is set in Tokyo. Finally browsing through the manga section, I found that one of the latest japanese manga titles (translated in french) is entitled ‘Sommelier’ and is a very ‘french’ story of the daily adventures of a wine waiter in France.

As pointed out by Jean Snow - an observer of Japanese popular culture - ‘even more intriguing is the fact that manga artist Hiroyuki Oshima is currently working on an original manga adventure for Spirou’. I love the results of this collaboration and how manga is giving a new energy to the French character.

Also I was surprised to find that many of the comics were not about escapist fictional or fantastical worlds, as I expected, but about an everyday, ordinary world.

Intrigued I bought an issue BANG – a french comic magazine – with a report on Manga. I discovered that the favourite subjects of mangakas (the name given to manga authors in Japan) are family, sex and social alienation. One of the most famous books of the mangaka who is seen as the pioneer of modern manga, Yoshiharu Tsuge, is titled: "The Uselelss Man".

Digging a bit further on this unexpected (to me) cultural influence, I found that, according to Frédéric Boilet – a french comic strip writer based in Tokyo whose l'Épinard de Yukiko was described as 'very French' when launched in Japan and 'very manga' when published simultaneously in France – there is a clear difference between Japanese and franco-belgian comics. In Japan – he says – you become a mangaka because you want to tell stories. In France (and I feel it's true in most of the western world) because you like to draw - I have always seen comic authors as specialist graphic designers.

He then confirms that contrary to franco-belgian BD rather than setting their stories in a SFx, historic or adventure context, manga has always preferred stories of men and women in their everyday lives. I found it interesting that he attributes this as the main reason why in the west (US and UK in particular) comic strip tends to be seen as something for male adolescents, whilst in Japan manga has a broader readership and is not just read by ‘otakus’ (the japanese for geek) but by men and women of all ages.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE USELESS

I was thinking of the paradox of working in communication of how to help generate positive surprise...consistently. So I was interested to read in ‘Daniel Gilber’s Stumbling on Happiness’ is that people are the only creatures capable of imagining what happens next.

In my purposeful procrastination I revisited the catalogue of ‘Le Grand Repertoire: Machines de Spectacle’. It was one of the best events I went to this summer. For most of August, the Grand Palais in Paris was filled with over 120 useless machines. Well, kind of useless, as they were machines made or recycled objects that are/have been used by french street theatre companies over the last 50 years. As each machine is unique, they are catalogued ‘unintellectually’ in four groups : small, medium, large and gigantic.

The machines’ names tend to be very functional : machine to make apples with the bite of Catherine Deneuve ; machine to produce smoke ; catapult to throw a piano ; moving bath; machine to break glasses ; chicken piano ; machine to create six romans for two actors ; machine to walk like an egyptian……and so on.

Unsurprisingly, my vote for the most impressive and prolific company went the ROYAL DU LUXE – they are behind the ‘Sultan’s elephant’ visit to London last year . I liked the philosophy (putting his media strategy at the beginning of the process) of its main machine builder – Jean-Luc Courcoult : use a town as the theatre to tell a story to the whole population – either directly or through word of mouth.

I found the machines of ROYAL DU LUXE the most spectacular. The most famous machine is ‘the Giant’, a machine that is 10 meters high, weighs 40 tons, needs at least 8 people to make him move and is preceded by a parade or similarly enormous creations.

I liked the fact that although they must have been planning this exhibition for a while, this most famous machine was missing from the exhibition and was replaced by a miniature replica. When I googled it, I found him parked on a chair with his feet in a river by the famous Pont du Gard. A fantastic sight. He clearly couldn’t be bothered to show up in Paris. How French !

My favourite machine was the ‘machine to spread nutella on bread slices’. The company that created it – Monique – had a very different philosophy : ‘our machines must be impractical. They exist to tell poetic stories.’ The machine took about 15 minutes to spread – not too efficiently – some nutella on a slice of bread for the delight of a child sitting at the end of the machine covered by two small theatrical curtains. His face at the end of the 15 minute was the best proof I could think of to evaluate the machine’s effectiveness.

I liked three things about these machines :
- their brand is built by what they do, not what they think or say
- they are the tool for telling the story, not the story itself
- they have the capacity to make you dream, but what you dream is up to you

Thinking about the two companies I ended up picking, they seem to fit with the 'stereotype' of the positively suprising ads; those which are either spectacular or very human and funny. Does this make my conclusions unsurprising? Damn.