curious flip

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

.

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.

I saw my target audience on a nightbus

Late last night, on my way home, I suddenly felt surrounded by my client's description of its target audience. Each of the 40 people that were sharing my nightbus, looked like people who had just finished to "maximize life", who believe that "life is about having fun" and "have a passion for life" - being on a nightbus seems a good proxy. I feel pretty confident they would have agreed that they "like to set their own standards", "like to experience something new and exciting", "have a sense of style", etc.

Ironically, when I recently challenged a client on how broad their definition of their target was, he pointed me to an academic research that says that competitive brands are bought by very similar people and that therefore brand level segmentation is a myth.http://members.byronsharp.com/7229.pdf#search=%22Kennedy%2C%20Ehrenberg%2C%20and%20Long%202000%22

The researches concluded that:

...the obsession with targeting distinct segments is often misplaced. Being competitive means selling to ‘the market’, not a special segment.

. So it seems that most brand audiences definitions are more of a reflection of how your client wants to see their audience.

Does this mean that bringing a broad brand target audience to life is a waste of time? I don't think so. Client and agency people need this definition to give them greater focus.

Thinking back at my nightbus fellow passengers, it didn't change my feeling that looking at real people remains a great stimulus for original ideas - however ubiquitous the marketing world defines their "segment".

Closed Paris reveals its service culture

This year I decided to listen to them. Like most people, I tend to ignore the annual notices that shopkeepers leave on their shops' door to inform them of their businesses' holiday plans every August.

I was surprised by how these little ignored pieces of communication on closed shops are such a rich window into Paris' service culture.

These notices often stay up for up to a month and are the main communication between a shop and its potential customers, but with a few exceptions, they all feel homemade - including those in branches of national banks. They even often have corrected mistakes on them. Why not reprint/rewrite them? It's as if whoever was in charge of the little note, did it 5 minutes before having to leave to catch a train.

They are often verbal and use very formal language. Why don't more of them use pictures? I blame it on René Descartes who has a lot of responsibility for the rational side of  French culture.

They are complex. Often telling you a whole bunch of stuff you don't need and occasionally not telling you the only information that you need: when if the shop reopening?  My favourite is one outside an antiquarian in Rue de Richelieu which has added a number "in case of urgency".  It made me start thinkig about what kind of urgency could you use the number for?  The Louis XIV chairs have hurt themselves in a waterskiing accident?

But when they are original, they are unbeatable - like the one outside the Tour d'Argent restaurant which begins with a "sorry to have wasted your time"

And amongst all the white noise, here's the three that talked to me the loudest - even if not necessarily in a good way.

 

The first one, becaused it sounded like someone phoning in sick on a monday morning after a long weekend - you are closed for works?...when everybody else is closed for holidays? that's a likely story...but the drawing on the side added the wink I needed

The second is the only one amongst dozens that I saw that used an image with few words and humour to say a very simple message: re-opening 22nd of August.

The third one is my favourite. It sums up French service culture when the shrug of shoulders is executed in a painfully slow, slow motion.  It's a message written on the back of a closed envelope - probably an unopened complaint -  and it just says : "reopening beginning of september".  Short, sharp and vague.

Price, price, price

Whilst all its neighbours are trying to make their 'dish of the day' sound as mouthwatering as possible, this restaurant goes against the grain with incredible clarity. It will be hard to resist for anybody with a sensitive wallet.

Why does modernity need to be so homogeneous?

I did not take long to become "caféd-out". Soon after moving to Paris I began missing the modernity of lunchtime places. I had found it in London, Amsterdam, and even Portland. The Parisian café is unbeatable if you want a place where to think and discuss; but it quickly becomes too predictable for lunch. So I was ecstatic when 'modern lunch places' started to appear across Paris. Spending one lunchtime jumping from one to the other, made me think of how modernity skindeep can quicly become a stereotype.

French cafés are more about context than content. My theory is that they were designed for conversations and intellectual arguments and not as places to eat - there's restaurants and bistros for that. As a result, whilst the best cafés are hard to beat, the offer of the vast majority is very dull. The Italian bar is the opposite - often dull places but - generally - offer an incredible range of stuff.....but I digress.

Sadly modernity in these places seems to be packaged a bit too homogeneously for my liking.There seems to be three main signs of modernity: names, information and promotions.

Modernity sounds exotic
The new lunchtime places that are appearing in Paris can be spotted for their names - like Cojean, (Paris' pioneer), Sandwich Market, Fin's Herb, Delicabar and even Ching'ling - all which could easily be chains - and design. Usually relatively minimalist, clean cut with a sharp use of colour which feels either purposedly too loud or too sedate.

Modernity comes with hyper-information

I found the most noticeable - and annoying - trait of modernity to be their need to aggressively deliver me information. They tell me they have lots of choice. They tell me they serve quality product - it's fresh, it's natural. The one I found funniest is where they give me instructions on how to use them - just in case I had walked in with a 'café mindset'.

This is France; it's supposed to be about seduction, not rationality.

Modernity allows you to play with innovation
Luckily it seems that modernity does not need to be superficial and some of them are doing more than offering packaged sandwiches and smoothies. Delicabar - the snack bar inside the Le Bon Marché department store - for example, makes food beautifully complex as only the french and possibly the Japanese can where.

Whilst cafés' marketing limits itself to the menu du jour, the new places go a bit further and are introducing 'themed promotions'. My favourite is Cojean's summer promotion which offers: a summer of "muesli paradise".

With the exception of places like the delicabar, most of these new modern lunchtime places have applied the internationally bland model of modernity to Paris. Just as I was getting pessimistic believing true change had arrived too brutally, I noticed that Frenchness remained. Most of the new places are closed for the whole month of August.

Drunk crossing

3 ways to be part of CELEBRATIONS : #3 the brands

Sadly the brands were the least inspiring. I looked at the celebrations/commiseration ads in L'Equipe and in the Corriere dello Sport - unfortunately the Gazzetta dello Sport was like goldust on the day after the World Cup. It sold out by 9am and I missed out.

The ads in L'Equipe

The ads in the Corriere dello Sport

All of them say "I was there" without offending anybody.

None of them adds anything new to the celebrations.

None of them sounds like a true fan - none show any deep knowledge of the world cup, the team or the event.

Puma in Italy should have done something much more interesting. This was their first year of the sponsorship and they won. They could have made their investment work much harder, helping to build a much stronger relationship with the Italian fans. In France Playstation was a bit passive.Why, they are an insider into the virtual side of the game - with most of the players using the console in between games and with many relevant titles.

3 ways to be part of CELEBRATIONS : #2 the media

As an Italian living in Paris, coming back from Rome on the 9th of July (two days after the 2006 World Cup final) it was impossible to notice how the media actively became part of the world cup celebrations. I found interesting to look at their focus on the 'duel' MATERAZZI vs ZIDANE. Here's the two sides of the fence.

The Italian side

For the italian press Materazzi was one of the key heroes. The number of articles dedicated to his duel with Zidane initially was low, but began to increase as the media noticed that the issue was growing internationally. The main topic was on how he was the unlikely protagonist in all the key events in the final: the goal, the solid marking of Zidane, the Zidane incident, the well taken penalty. The Italian press initially treated Zidane as the hero who unexplicably slipped into madness.

Only after a couple of days, after they noticed the issue escalating internationally, they jumped on it posing (and trying to answer) what became one of the 'taglines' of the post-2006 world cup: what did Materazzi say to Zidane ?.

The French side

The French press were a lot more focused. For them the MATERAZZI vs ZIDANE was only about one issue. The question what did Materazzi say to Zidane ?, was central in their central theme: Zidane was forced into a crime; he is the victim. They helped embed that question into popular culture for weeks after the world cup - it became the equivalent of who shot JR?

They quickly understood and exploited the importance of 'brand' Zidane. In a country that is desperately looking to restore the lost national ‘fierté’ at a time of a deep cultural identity crisis, the media realised and leveraged Zidane as the most positive face of contemporary France.

Their way to leverage the World Cup celebration was to take a clear point of view - Zidane has been unfairly abused and provoked. Their communication was focused on becoming the champions of his defence - literally starting a movement by getting the country behind them. They even succeeded in helping shift the international focus away from Italy's victory, to the MATERAZZI VS ZIDANE duel.

The key characteristics of how MEDIA linked themselves to the World Cup celebrations include:

- they focused their creative work to amplifying an issue; the more focused the better (the french media were much stronger actors than the Italian one, as they had a clear issue)

- they used a star as a symbol for something much bigger than the sporting event (injustice, in this case) turning him into an underdog

- they were very tactical in their approach (although I guess that clearly comes with the role of the daily media) not just reporting on an issue, but actively creating and fuelling an issue.

Aided by circumstances, I give my 'effectiveness' vote to the French press over the Italian one (who was a just a relatively passive participant to the celebrations). The French had focus and a smart way of leveraging a star.