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..