These are brilliant sweets. Any company that still has 'works' is alright by me, especially if they're based in Dudley and have a random large dog as a registered trademark.
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comics of the month - december 2005
Two splendid comics this month, the first is commercial success by graham annable, from grickle, in a very simple, smart and amiable way he points out the ubiquity of brands in people's lives.
Andy Smith's little book is just energetic, mad and gorgeous and talks about target people. Genius.
warming cockles
A brass quartet has started doing carols and stuff on Carnaby Street. (Ideally I'd have voted for another cornet and a tenor horn instead of the saxes but never mind). The sound of it is so warming and lovely. The sound wafts around the area and makes you feel all Christmassy and glowing.
Christmas carols and brass brands - the Victorians may have been wretched hypocrites but they invented some good material for nostalgia.
broken leon (not really)
There's a great post over at Brand Autopsy about a new book called Broken Windows.
The post splendidly explains and summarises the idea in the book (probably making the book redundant) which is that the broken window theory of crime prevention and policing is also applicable to branding. ie that seemingly small things actually make a huge difference. Not a completely startling thought, but one we should all remember.
So, I'd just finished reading that and saw an example for myself.
I went to Leon for coffee, which is rightly getting rave reviews, it's a fantastic place. Great food, nice design, friendly people. So I went to fill out one of their lovely feedback cards.
I especially liked the way they offered to 'gently update' you via email. Very nice touch. And then I noticed they'd left the apostrophe out of 'here's' and my positivity came to a screaming halt. Which I know is massively, unreasonably pedantic, but that's what happened. The tiniest, smallest, most miniscule of errors, but it made a difference to me (and now I'm blogging about it).
Why does it matter? Firstly, retail is detail, you want people to pay attention to this stuff. Secondly, it's the context. It's on a feedback form. I'm less worried about that kind of thing on a blog (this one for instance is dense with errors) because free-form, unchecked writing is part of the blog-context, but a feedback form is something that should be checked and rechecked and rechecked.
Or am I just being an arse? Probably.
Anyway, read the Brand Autopsy post, it's very good.
intriguing or not
There's a teepee in Soho Square. I like the incongruity of it. Not sure why it's there, slightly intrigued, but I suspect it'll be some disappointing reason. A marketing thing. A protest. An art project. Almost none of those would be good reasons. Ah well.
squidoo
I've been mucking about with a couple of Squidoo Lenses for a few weeks. It's been much fun. I've built one for the Planning School and one about Radio 4. There are another couple in the pipeline but they're not much good yet. Have a look and let me know what you think.
Toy Of The Month - December 2005
I'm very happy with this. Very pleasingly matte. It's a Kubrick Special Force SAS Assault Vehicle. The back door opens and the roof comes off so it's the perfect place for the youth marketing executive in your life to store paperclips. Get them one for Christmas. Made by medicom. This guy likes it too.
end snake and ladders frustration
We bought some 20 sided die at the weekend, presumably designed for Dungeons and Dragons etc, but it occured to me that they'd be perfect for easing the frustrations of the forthcoming board-games season. (What else do you do at Christmas?) Playing board games with a five year-old is always problematic because they don't really have the patience for it, but with a 20 sided dice you can fly through a game without needing to introduce any artificial elements. The one pictured above looks good too, it's a jumbo (which means it's less easy to lose under the table) it's from here.
worship shoes
If you like to do very visual PowerPoint you often find yourself struggling to find a good image as a backdrop for talking about more abstract stuff. I saw these two neon signs in Portland and suspect they'll come in very handy from now on.
