The Canadians got this (wo)man

We're all branded.
I'm a Brit, so I'm supposed to be reserved (haaa!) and superior. If you're American, then you're brash and boastful (allegedly). French? You're rude. Italian? The same. Irish? A right laugh. Australian? A bit raw round the edges but a good sort. Scottish? Totally incomprehensible but hospitable. And the Canadians? For some reason they're boring. Everyone says so, so it must be true.

I've lost count of the number of times when helping visitors in London find what they're looking for (and providing an impromptu history lesson because I always go the extra mile for Brand Britain) I've been asked if I'm British. And on replying in the affirmative they always look surprised, because I'm "open", "friendly", "loud" and so on. They have an expectation. An expectation based on folklore. On a single encounter, or a second, third, fourth-hand experience. So then we're all branded as being this or that. It's all bunkum, of course. Well, for the most part.

Walking though Mayfair recently I bumped into these three Canadian Naval Officers and being struck by their smartness, I asked if I might take a photo of them. They obligingly stopped, but the chap on the far left (being the most junior of the three) seemed to be unsure as to whether he was required. On spying that his name was, Pile, I told him to 'pile-in', which they though was hilarious. They were such funny chaps and good sports. So when I teasingly asked them which part of the States they were from, they faked a flounce. So funny. The most senior chap leading the other two guffawing guys off and leaving the alfresco diners who had watched the scene unfold in giggle-fits. Not so boring after all then. 

And so the moral of the story is two-fold:
1. Every encounter matters.
2. I must stop picking up sailors in Mayfair.

Pile-in, Pile (left).

"States!" "We're outta here!" Nice chaps.

 

Prêt à Cri

We all have our favourite examples of brand mangling. You know, where someone gets ever so slightly carried away and injects a little bit too much of themselves into their work environment. It's usually either because they've done it off their own bat, or it's the result of someone's desire to create their own personal fiefdom and in doing so they skew, distort and water down the brand and – on occasion – decimate it.

Transgressions can range from clipart notices (replete with those vile and infantile cartoon figures and characters, sun and starbursts and the Smiley face) 'designed' by someone in the office and plonked on the shop floor or pasted onto the windows. (Fitness First in Charing Cross station does a good line in that stuff.) To 'Greengrocer Bold' handwritten signs stuck on very expensive and beautifully designed doors and interiors – often misspelt – thus adding insult to injury. To customisation and highly personalised interpretation of corporate and brand guidelines in regional outposts of organisations, inflicted by those determined to make their mark, rather like a dog marking their territory. (In my experience, this is much more prevalent when HQ is based in London.) And my personal favourite, the sugar-paper lovers who imagining themselves to be back in primary school adorn the brand environment with collages of photos of the last company 'do' and clipart and all within eyeshot of the customer and often at the expense of the expensively produced materials lying beneath. 

But I've never come across anything as destructive as the impromptu B&Q-esq tableau abomination created by the manager of this branch of Pret A Manger on Fetter Lane. I first encountered it yesterday morning. I told him what I did and remarked that it wasn't what I understood Pret's brand to be about. He agreed and said that his manager had approved it and he described it as a special place where special customers can try out new products. I describe it as a sackable offence. The visual language of Pret A Manger is about clean lines and a pallet of certain materials and surfaces to underscore hygiene and trust factors. Surfaces you could eat your dinner off, which is the whole point. Velvet flock curtains, static inducing cushions and tablecloths and what looks like odds and ends from Next's last sale, don't do Pret any favours.

Do head office know? I doubt it.
And if they do, what the hell are they up to?

 

The altar of very bad taste.

For those of you who have never visited a Pret, their interiors were originally

all brushed steel and latterly a fusion of wood (warmth/please stay) and tiles (we're clean).

This is as foreign to Pret as a big dog turd would be atop of your sandwich.

You can see the visual anomaly in this picture. Farcical..

This banking thing is all out of proportion...

So TSB leave the Lloyds stable and spend a fair bit of wonga on a rebranding regime, which of course means new signage, part of which I accidentally nicked (and returned) a couple of weeks ago.

The shot above is of a branch mid-way down Holborn. I spied it yesterday. It's a disgrace. Nice signage, and then some buffoon creates a stick-on thing to cover the area around the ATM on the right, which is contrary to what is happening on the left. What a dog's dinner. Did someone in procurement get the printers to knock something up? Because if it's the Frankenstien-child of an internal design unit, or heaven forfend, a designer, they should be fired.

As we say in Blighty: buggered already!

Faithless? Not me.

Few things from our early lives stay with us. Likes and passions come and go: Bay City Rollers on Monday and David Cassidy by Saturday. Allegiances and devotions switch and fade: Everton 'til I die! But in reality only until Alan Ball went to Arsenal: Arsenal 'til I die! But sometimes you get caught up in something which ends up running through you like a stick of rock, dictating attitudes and behaviours and making you forever an active or passive ambassador for something the values and attributes of which, once lived, are never ever forgotten.

Monday marked the 40th anniversary of the first all-nighter at Wigan Casino and all over the land circle skirts and Oxford bags will have been neatly pressed and donned to mark the occasion. I didn't go anywhere to celebrate, but I had a bit of a shuffle around to Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes' classic, Get Out. R. Dean Taylor's, Ghost in my House and Esther Phillips', What a Difference a Day Makes, amongst

Essential dance floor kit for smooth moves.

others — making talc-angels on the floor as I spun around and ignoring the kids from Fame staring at me from the 3rd floor of The Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. (Eat your heart out would-be hoofers!)

Northern Soul. For most of the 70s it ruled my world. It fashioned what I wore, where I went, how I danced, who I was friends with; it really was a way of life and for many it still is. It never fades away. One of the sweetest proofs of this can be seen on YouTube, wherein a dressing-gown and PJ-clad mum is persuaded on the morning of her 50th birthday to soul dance for a £50 bet. 

What wasn't to like? The sounds were eclectic, the beat and pace being the identifying features and, looking back, I realise that it pandered to the adolescent need to be different, in that the more obscure your record collection the more respected you were. The charts! Pah! Alan Freeman can take a running jump.

We shared with our cousins,The Mods, a love of heraldry, and our clothes and accoutrements, be they a bowling bag, shirt, or a Vespa, became a canvas on which we could display our colours as each club you belonged to or all-nighter attended was thereafter forever commemorated by virtue of the embroidered badge sewn onto your bag or slim-fit cardigan.
They were the most graphic of movements.
      
And the clothes! 
Blimey did people look smart! There was a uniformity to the look, but customisation lay in the flourishes you added (buttons, badges etc) and in the way you wore it. So made-to-measure suits were teamed with crisply ironed bowling shirts, Fred Perry's and Ben Sherman's. And who could forget Harrington jackets and Oxford Bags, the width of which could be anything up to 18 inches (and if unpicked would provide sufficient fabric to run-up a circle skirt) and the weight of which was trebled by dint of the dozens of buttons sewn onto the back pockets. Bowling shirts, cap-sleeved 'T' shirts and vests allowed ease of movement on the dance floor. And footwear. Platforms, Brogues (with segs) and Chelsea Boots. Bowling shoes, mochassins and beetle-crushers for dancing.

And the moves!
The athletic and balletic qualities of Northern Soul dancing are a wonder to behold and, interestingly, the blokes were always the best and most enthusiastic dancers. Watching some of the links I've provided and others you will find, it's not difficult to see how Northern Soul dovetails into hip-hop, break-dancing and disco. The strength and fitness required to be able to perform some of those moves is breathtaking and if we made it compulsory in schools the obesity problem would simply dissolve away. The moves once learned are never forgotten (back to our birthday girl above) and they're likely to resurface in the most unlikely places: supermarkets in my case (and it seems I'm not the only one, take a look at this chap in Japan) when someone in charge of the music knob has an unexpected bout of good taste and plays a 'tune'. Coded!

A recent feature film Northern Soul The Film contains some truly fantastic dance sequences produced by veteran 'soulies', professional dancers and (encouragingly) very young converts. Perhaps the latter 'found' soul or it's an adopted brand, rather like the Brillo pads you buy because your parents did. And there continues to be a sizeable market in Soul fashions and all-weekenders at various holiday camps around the country have always enjoyed high attendance.

To commemorate the anniversary mentioned above, BBC2 will be showing a documentary about the Northern Soul movement as part of its Culture Show strand at 10pm this evening. And if you're stationed elsewhere in the world, you can now use the BBC iPlayer service to catch up. Do watch.

Northern Soul. It's a way of life.
Who knows, it might become yours too.

Keep the Faith!

  

TSB: Took Sign...Bollo*ks!

TSB Savings Account book.

So TSB is back on the high street today after 18 forgettable years as the back-end of the Lloyds horse and I have a confession to make.

Last Monday morning at around 5-ish I was making my way up Holborn. Being Monday, the street was awash with bags of rubbish and debris of all descriptions and as I approached the junction of Holborn and Kingsway I saw a TSB sign propped up against the wall.

Now TSB was the first bank I belonged to. I imagine that many of us got a savings book like the one above as a christening present, or as part of our school's 'financial awareness' programme and going into the bank to have my deposits of Ten Shillings on birthdays noted (in longhand) and stamped in my book made me feel very grown-up indeed. It's a 'starter brand', the fiscal equivalent of a Ladybird training bra. So when I saw the sign dumped and waiting for the bin men, I thought, 'I'll have that'. So I took it, but I was out on a run, so I walked back to the nearby McDonalds and they kindly agreed to look after it until I returned in an hour or so.

I set off again only to see that around the other corner of the building there were a couple of chaps putting up TSB signs and I'd just half-inched one of them. Ooooops! I explained all and went to retrieve and return the blessed piece of Perspex. Happily they saw the funny side.
That's my account.

I'm 93, you know.