Life is smelling of Aqua Manda...again!

 The Times, today, 25/10/13.

After the bad news comes the totally fab-tastic I'm still in love with Donny Osmond news. Aqua Manda is back! Yay!

Some two years ago I wrote about this scent. Just seeing the bottle on an episode of The Sweeney brought back more memories than any photo album ever could.

Suddenly I feel much younger and a little happier.
Isn't that the way brands are supposed to work?

Aqua Manda: OMG! Mexborough Grammar School 1975!

        
Why was I watching Jack and George batter down some "slag's" door at 6.30am? Sarah Montague. It was her turn to sit in the big chair and her over-enunciation and total absence of interrogation skills (like witnessing a hamster 'offer-out' next door's Rottweiler) makes both my teeth and hair curl, which would be self-defeating, since at that time of the morning I'm usually running the GHD's through it. It was company I didn't have to share the facilities with.

The Sweeney: a socio-economic photo-fit. Every domestic adornment: the Crying Blue Boy; Auntie Betty's house in Harlington; Joker's Wild; Homepride flour graders; Caramac biscuits; Embassy coupons; Heinz Beans and Pork Sausages; and avocado green - lots of it. Every car: the Ford siblings, Granada and Capri – did we really think they were so cool and play that spotting game? Every item of clothing: cheesecloth shirts and flares – never throwing them away - can't anyhow; they're the boomerangs of high street couture. And on the "slag's" dressing table sat the distinctive Deco brown glass bottle of Aqua Manda.

Aqua Manda: Mexborough Grammar School 1975. We all wore it; our skunk-like trails merging to form one giant invisible stink-cloud that permeated the entire school. Why did we all want to be the same?

So many memories were being let out on day-release.

And then came the most persuasive exhibit illustrating just how far we've come and why we'll be in no hurry to go back: a branch of MACE in all its GUM-esque glory (it made we feel very moist eyed about Tesco) complete with a hanging banner near the checkout proclaiming, "We give Green Shield Stamps."

Green Shield Stamps: Doncaster Watergate Centre; ABC Cinema; Chelsea Girl; The Arndale Centre and that mad semi-pornographic gold statue of 'The Lovers' we used to take the 'p' out of.

For those not of a certain age, Green Shield Stamps (GGS) were a kind of prehistoric Clubcard. You had a book into which you stuck the stamps, how many you got each shop depended on how much you spent, and the books became progressively Dairylea-shaped as they got full. These were then exchanged for whatever you had set your heart on in the GGS catalogue. The barmy bartering rate meaning that a new cruet set would require the pulping of forestland the size of Bluewater to provide the necessary books. Night's in flicking through the GGS and Embassy catalogues!

There are those who think that the use of retro references is lazy. I disagree. Used creatively, even the haziest reference can prove to be very clever and effective indeed. (Check out Gordon's 'Yes you can' campaign. See what I mean?) They provide us with a direct channel to the heart and the means with which to tap into the emotions locked within memories. 

I remember reading a quote from a well-known comedian in which he slated (rather peevishly) Peter Kay. He said that Kay doesn't do comedy; he does 'remembering'. There's something in that, but it works. And it continues to work. His shows sell out as soon as they are announced and his DVD's and books are record-breaking best sellers I seem to recall. It seems everyone wants to re-taste Rolla-Cola.

Sometimes our best memories are the things we can't remember. We need a spark, someone or something to draw them out, just like the newspaper and shovel my gran used to put across the fireplace to draw the fire. (What would HSE make of that today?) That's Peter Kay's genius.

And it’s no accident that his material is heavy on brands, because brands are the very best accelerants. They are conversational firelighters. They make people glow, just as Jack and George made me glow, all day, just like the Ready Brek Kid: Reginald Molehusband; Pineapple Chunks...

Dr. Martens: prime for a kicking?

The Times, today, 25/10/13

People buy things. Brands, companies, buildings and so on. And when they do one wonders what will happen. If you're working for a company which is bought by a behemoth, you wonder if the company you bought into will survive. In common parlance, will they f*ck it up? Sanitise it, merge and dovetail it to the point where it means nothing at all? After all, why buy something for its specialness and then homogenise it? But they do.

Which brings me to this. DM's. 
OK, they began life as a German product but they're as British as fish and chips, deep-fried Mars Bars and Alan Partridge. They've been sold to an investment group, Premira. That in itself is a worry, since history is littered with stories about investors who bought something that meant a lot to others but nothing to them except money and so they screwed it up because they had no real empathy with what they had bought. One recent example is that of Little Chef, which has featured several times in this blog.

They should be very careful with this one. DM's are not mere shoes. They are the keepers of souls, lives, beliefs, times, fashion history, happiness, tragedy...for many, they're soulmates. They don't just contain feet. They lace together people around the world who love this product...have grown-up with this product. They'd better show some respect.

Heritage. In this climate, what does that mean?

Her parents were probably born in 1972.

This waitress from, Maxwell's, a modest grub-factory in a fantastic location, opposite the Apple Store in Covent Garden, on an (undoubtedly) well-earned break got me thinking.

I was struck by the loud and proud 'since 1972' embroidered on her shirt. It made me chuckle because I live in a city where it's difficult to walk down a street and not see an 'established in 1659, 1597, 1473' sign and so on: this is an ancient city. It made me wonder how we define heritage and longevity in these strange economic times. 

In the UK we have Blue Plaques on buildings, placed by National Heritage, to signify that persons of historical importance lived there, or that something of importance happened there. Perhaps we need a new strand, that being something to acknowledge the businesses who rode the fiscal Helter Skelter of the last 30 years and emerged without being sick.

Making a total hashtag of it

Independent, today, 22/10/13

Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair on Twitter yesterday and making, as usual, a total hashtag of it. What do you do when the biggest clown in your circus is the CEO? From an employee perspective how does that feel? He's like the balloon performer you book for your nipper's birthday party, who, instead of making dogs, produces polychloroprene meat and two veg. He's as toxic as some of the stuff in the back of your fridge. Time he was binned.

Expressing herself...

You're an established corner shop, nothing fancy, and then the behemoth moves in over the road. In this case, on New Cavendish Street. What do you do? 

That's right! You indulge in a bit of piss-taking to underscore
your credentials and longevity and to make sure the interloper knows that you won't throw in the towel. I suspect that the locals played their part in this, which is good and apt, because as Tesco knows, every little helps. Lol!

Rendered.

I am fortunate in being able to say that I did my BA at Ravensbourne, a place where (if nothing else) one learned an awful lot about type. Back in the Jurassic age we hand-rendered (that means draw type by hand using a Rotring pen over cell or tracing paper from a Monotype typesheet featuring the typeface of your choice) the type for our posters or whatever, which is unimaginable to those at the younger end of the scale reading this. Computers didn't exist then and photocopiers were at a premium, so we did everything by hand, or we used Letraset. Or we knocked out a bit of calligraphy. And we spent an awful lot of time learning how to set hot metal and then we used that. I love type.

Around London and other places, beautiful, grand and expensive houses, traditionally have sign written numbering and lettering. Some are superbly done and others less so. If you've ever watched a signwriter at work you'll understand my unabashed admiration for them. Walking through Mayfair yesterday I saw the following.

 

 

And then I saw this.
Rendered speechless!

There are no more words.

This banking thing is out of proportion two.

In the dark days before the National Lottery we had other things to waste our money on. The pools for one, the gee-gee's for another, one-armed bandits and my personal fave, Spot the Ball, in which one had to mark an 'x' where you thought the ball was on a shot from a football match or indeed another sporting occasion.



Pre-digital entertainment. Eat your heart out, Grand Theft Auto.

I've created a design and branding-based modern day variant. I give you, Spot the Signage. Dah-da!

TSB at the junction of Holborn and Southampton Row.

 

Yes, it's the newly rebranded TSB again. Now don't get the wrong idea, I don't have it in for them. They didn't diddle me out of my pocket money when I was a nipper, thus seriously curtailing my ability to buy copies of Whizzer and Chips, or scoff myself silly on Aztec bars. No. I'm wondering why the signage is so hopelessly out of proportion to the building it's sitting on. Obviously some twonk has ordered standard sized signage and used it willy-nilly and it looks ridiculous. If this is their idea of budgeting then it's a false economy, because they'll end up doing it again.

 

Tut, tut! less than a month old and already such a checkered history.