Friday, November 28, 2008

Japanese if you please

They're just checking their balance

My ma stayed over last night and she let rip. 'What the hell are you at?' she said, holding up a jar of Greene & Blacks drinking chocolate. 'And what's this carry on?' she added holding up a half eaten pineapple, slowly dying in tinfoil. But it was the packet of fruit fusion tea bags that threw her over the edge.

' I was 17 before I ate my first banana', she announced before adding, 'we used to get an egg a month in those days and even then you had to split it 4 ways and if there was a man in the house who was lucky to have work, then he got the egg.' Steady, ma!

This is a woman who grew up during the war, not the emergency. The only butter she had enjoyed from '39-'45 was when her older sister, on the pre-text of seeing a maiden aunt in Dublin, managed to smuggle some up her jumper and get past the Belfast customs at the train station on the way home.
But guess what - she's lived a better life for it. She doesn't over-eat or over-drink. She can run up an aran jumper in a few days, bake apple pies and beef and guiness stews and can use the internet better than me at the age of 73.

And then i got to thinking how stupid our generation is. We may have, during the tiger years, earned more than our parents ever did but now that's all come to an abrupt end. And what life skills have we learned?

We're a nation of twits who twitter but who can't cook, knit, mend, darn or save.

'Time to get like the Japanese' she said, giving me a stern look in the eye. Apparently they're pulling in their collective obi and are getting very zen about their yen.

I then looked around my kitchen with fresh, post-war eyes and I now feel cleansed. There'll be no more fresh pineapples or knobby drinking chocolate lying around and tea bags will now be used twice. So, so long the good times, I don't think they really suited us anyway.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Lord Saatchi - tit

Can you spot Charlie?

One word equity - a concept so 'simple' he had to use three words. Basically in the new digital times, whether you're a digital blow-in or a natural, he thinks our attention span is so amoebic that we won't be able to remember what an ad is trying to communicate.

Hence his reduction ad absurdum, - distill a brand into one word and there you have it. There's 750,000 words out there including 'meh' (which probably sums up the nissan micra, or the whole nissan range, but hey).

Apple, he says, can be reduced to 'innovation' and google, 'search'. But what happens when a brand's perception collides? Ok volvo is 'safe' but its one word equity could just as well be 'boring'.

Heinz can be both 'nostalgic' and 'modern' depending on when your mammy first gave you it. And what happens if a load of brands are fighting for the one word? Surely Jaguar, Lexus and the Maybach all want to own 'luxury'.

By simplifying a brand to one word, he's also removed an emotional connection from the brand and there's nothing simple about how people feel. And judging from the ads M&C Saatchi are producing at the moment, maybe their one word equity is 'shite'.

Ghost of Christmas parties

The office party is now to be dreaded. When things were going good there were no gripes. Our yearly steam-off migrated from the the local Italian to a local Italian in Perugia or wherever a cheap Ryanair group-rate would bring us. Wine flowed, compliments too and we all gave each other a collective pat on the back.

The next day would be spent laughing at how teenage we had all got. A hotel room was trashed - 'sure we're only having the craic'-but made good again as the company credit card was waved like a plaster in the face of an irate hotel manager.

Now it seems, things could get really ugly. Managers are nervous. Employees are nervous and the whole country is looking at its feet, terrified of making eye contact. It'll be the local Italian this year - but it wont be a Kodak moment.

We'll ignore the taste of the cheap house wine and instead throw it into us just to feel normal again. We'll push the pasta round the plate and then, just after dessert, we'll let rip. 'Tourettes with your coffee Sir?'

We'll mumble our disagreements to the bosses; our lack of bonus, our shaved salaries, our extra hours per gratis, our job fears, our new culture of presenteeism which jars with our Irishness. And then - before you know it - there'll be mints flying with four letter words. And this time, we've used up all the plasters.