BOGOF!

Photo by Weglet (CC by 2.0)

BOGOF! It may sound like a rudely dismissive phrase, but in fact it’s the most potent acronym in a supermarket’s arsenal. Buy One, Get One Free – five words that induce economic orgasm in shoppers, euphoria overpowering any semblance of rational transaction.

My mother, bless her, is particularly susceptible to such deals. We might end up with six months supply of mayonnaise or enough soya sauce to bathe in. After a particularly enthusiastic shopping trip one might be forgiven for thinking our family was stockpiling to survive a nuclear winter.

Whilst at university I had a similar problem. I wasn’t attracted to bogof deals because of the price, but because it gave me two uniform shapes to fit in my trolley. In modern times, where excessive packaging means one can no longer blindly identify an item of food just from its shape, I have developed a form of shopping trolley OCD. I stack like Tetris. While I’ve written off the conspiracy theory that supermarkets are promoting bogof deals to exploit my irrational and so far unique quirk, they are a contentious subject in today’s self reflective consumer society.

When your fridge is already full you have two options, you eat it or you chuck it. Obesity is thrown around (probably with some difficulty), but one cannot deny that it, and many chronic diseases, are self inflicted ailments that continue to thrive due to over eating.

A characteristic of post-apocalyptic films are admonishing statements about ‘the world before,’ The Book of Eli was no exception. One of Denziel’s best was “We had more than we needed. We threw away things people would kill for now.” In the context of the film it was worthy of an eye roll, but in the cold harsh light of the supermarket aisle it’s alarmingly relevant. In the UK alone perfectly good food to the value of £10 billion is dumped each year. £6 billion of which has never been used/opened and £1 billion is within date.

However you can quote as many stats, show as many sickening photos and run as many adverts and as you like, but it won’t change the fact that we’re suckers for a ‘bargain’.

So it’s nice to see Tesco are launching Buy One, Get One Free Later; allowing shoppers to postpone their free second product until a later visit. Now mother can get her bargain relatively guilt free and I might become rehabilitated from shopping trolley OCD. It’s a first step towards avoiding want in the unpredictable future.

A very social sale

Slightly off the pace with this, but when I passed Social Suicide in Carnaby St. yesterday the sight of their innovative, interactive Dictator Discount sale spurred me into blogging action.

It’s a fantastic idea. For their winter sale Social Suicide have decided to leave their discount up to General Joe Public; letting mentions in social media and news coverage dictate the percentage in real time.

“The more you say, the less you pay. All you have to do is a little Twittering or better still blogging… or better still BBC News at 10ing, and we will bow to your command.”

They’ve come up with a weighting system to apply to each medium and have search feeds looking for mentions of “Social Suicide”, “socialsuicide.co.uk”, Dictators of Fashion”, “General J. Public”, “Dictator Discount,” etc.

It’s not the first time they have left sale percentages out of their hands. In the summer they set up a direct link with the Met Office in store to display the temperature outside and set discounts accordingly. However it wasn’t the greatest of risks, knowing the British Summer.

While I can only speculate about the success of the enterprise, I think the Dictator Discount is a brilliant example of a marriage between social media, marketing and a brand. It also occurred to me that while I had no intention of buying their clothes I was more than happy to spread the word and boost the percentage. It’s a form of altruism; something one would not normally associate with the self interest and greed induced by ‘the sales’. At the time I passed the discount had dropped to 18%, but hopefully this post, and others like it today, might present a fortunate visitor with a great deal.

Smells like Christmas

You can't have watched TV this Christmas without noticing the bombardment of adverts for branded products suitable as gifts, and no product has been advertised more frequently than the humble fragrance. You’ll have been subjected by at least two or three each ad break. I’ve never really got the point of fragrances, most of them smell the same to me, but what really interests me is the way that they are marketed.

This is because until some nutty professor one comes up with a practical, affordable, home version of smell-o-vision we shan’t be able to smell what they’re selling. This can be troublesome because when it comes down to it fragrances only have two tangible parts, real value if you will, and that’s the scent and the bottle. Therefore they rely on marketing their perceived value through emotive means that dazzle the audience’s other senses and differentiate themselves from competitors. It seems that fragrance brands have pulled every trick out of the bag this Christmas. They’ve brought to our screens a glut of famous faces, iconic soundtracks, passionate voiceovers, stunning settings and not forgetting a selection of inventive product names.

Perceived value #1 - The Name.

Challenge. XS. Cool Water. CKin2U. Be Delicious. CK Free. Be Delicious Red. 1 Million. Adventure. Fuel For Life. Sex Panther. Only The Brave. I Am King. They may read like a list of requirements you need to meet to join Gok Wan’s private army, but these are all fragrances for men. Some may have recognised ‘Sex Panther’ in there, it’s a fictional fragrance from comedy film Anchorman, but it honestly doesn’t look out of place amongst the real names. And as for those pour femme? Well, looking at a list of women’s fragrances is like having a life coach repeatedly smash you in the face with an emotional thesaurus. No doubt hours of brainstorming and thousands of pounds worth of focus groups contribute in the end to the dynamic, powerful, sexual nouns that might add perceived value to the product. On the other hand, maybe not. ‘Gucci’ by Gucci – now that must have been a Eureka moment.

The Advert.
This can be broken down into four main base parts. The setting, the celebrity, the soundtrack and the voiceover.

Perceived value #2 - The Setting.

In a bedroom. On a boat. On a beach. In the sea. In front of a mirror. In a hotel room. 21st Century Paris. In a lift. In a staircase. In bed. On a roof. Monte Carlo. In a car. On a car. London. In an abandoned loft space. In the rain. 19th century Paris. In a casino. On another planet. New York. On a motorbike. On stage. In a ballroom. Outside a hotel. Surrounded by paparazzi. Amongst nature.
All these locations have been in one advert or another; the setting for the fantastic, almost comical montages that are guaranteed to occur.

Perceived value #3 -The Celebrity.

Most fragrances are aspirational products. Associating their product with someone the audience would like to emulate gives it further value. Generally it’s a nameless model, but sometimes, particularly at Christmas we find actors sacrificing their artistic integrity by associating themselves with a particular scent. This year has seen Hayden Christensen, Sienna Miller, Matthew McConaughey, Evangeline Lily, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Beyonce, Jude Law, Kate Moss, Audrey Tatou, Josh Holloway and several others, lending their face, voice and character to a smell. And who can blame them? It must be terribly easy work. In fact I’m sure that in the Gucci Advert they just followed James Franco as he went through his daily routine of sitting, staring and walking around his dimly lit apartment.

However they don’t always work. Ewan McGregor got a huge amount of stick for his Davidoff ‘Adventure’ advert. You could see what they were trying to do, but does anyone believe when he was motor biking around the world he gave a damn what he smelt like? The advert did lead to this great parody though. Sometimes it has the wrong effect. For instance, whenever I see Josh Holloway and Evangeline Lily appear in their respective Davidoff ‘Cool Water’ adverts I don’t feel remotely compelled to buy the fragrance, but instead develop the overwhelming urge to watch my entire Lost box set.

Perceived value #4 - The Voiceover.

“Moisture is the essence of wetness, and wetness is the essence of beauty.” – Derek Zoolander

A ridiculous line from a brilliantly funny movie, but also an accurate representation of some of the bizarre copy that genuine fragrance adverts use to evoke emotions and add further value to their product. This Christmas has offered a plethora of grandiloquent, vapid voiceovers. Here’s a selection. See if you can match the line to the product?

a) “Life’s a game – Go for it”
b) “Who’s going to tell me when to stop? Which way to go? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who’s going to judge me? Me.”
c) “You’re running with me”
d) “The scent of adventure in the air.”
e) “Wear it – with passion”
f) “Use with caution”
g) “The best thing about getting lost is, what you find along the way”

1) Davidoff ‘Adventure’ 2) Diesel ‘Fuel For Life 3) Boss ‘Orange’ 4) ‘Gucci’ by Gucci 5) CK ‘Free’ 6) Diesel ‘Only The Brave’ 7) Lacoste ‘Challenge’

Perceived value #5 - The Soundtrack.

I’ve blogged before about the relationship between music and adverts, and fragrances are no exception. Perhaps the best sense to evoke when smell is not an option is sound, it can be sensuous and emotional which is similar to what the fragrance is designed to achieve. However, even that cannot begin to explain some of the song choices this year. Okay “Diamonds are a girls best friend” was the obvious choice for the Emporio Armani ‘Diamonds’ advert, but some other choices have me bemused. “ShadowPlay” by The Killers, “Drive My Car” by The Hot Rats, "Do It Again" by Chemical Brothers, “Slave To Love” by Róisín Murphy (Bryan Ferry Cover) and “I Feel You” by Depeche Mode were all slightly bizarre selections.

So there you have it. While they may be bafflingly irrelevant, pretentious, vacuous and annoyingly pop up on your telly every hour or so, I actually thoroughly enjoyed having a Christmas where advertising was dominated by fragrances, and hopefully after reading this you will to.

It's An Advert-off! - Fifa 10 vs PES 2010

Video games and football are a marriage made in man heaven.

The two giants of the football gaming world are, without doubt, Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer and EA Sports' FIFA. Consumers are generally loyal to their brand, but consistently demand more from developers and when new versions are released annually, it's then that gamers can be converted.

Before the games hit the shelves, the adverts hit halftime.

Below are the trailers for PES 2010 and FIFA 10. Two contrasting approaches to what is a very similar product. One is entertaining, vibrant, noisy and engaging - accompanied by poetic narration rich with alliteration and assonance. It concentrates on the consumer's perceived values - friends, community, competition, celebration and passion. The other, well it incorporates a showcase of the game graphics – real value if you will - along with sporadic suggestions of the gamer’s input, but conspicuously lacks any narration or soundtrack.

I don't know about you, but I'm sure which game I'd buy just on the evidence of these adverts...

FIFA 10 "How big can football get?" by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam

Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 (by Frontroom)

...It's FIFA 10, if you hadn't guessed.

Someone's had their Weetabix

For a time during the 90s a phrase, influenced by one advertising slogan, became the common reaction to something excellent or extraordinary. As young, innocent and impressionable kids it entered our vernacular. Whether someone had just scored a wonder goal, got an A in a spelling test or simply squirted milk out of their nose they’d be greeted by the phrase “Someone’s had their Weetabix.”

The tagline “Have you had your Weetabix” on its own was rather mundane. It was the public’s adaptation and adoption of it that elevated its status to that of the most iconic slogans. For some reason Weetabix dropped the idea and as the nineties made way for the noughties hearing the phrase became more likely to evoke nostalgia, rather than recognition.

Now, Weetabix have brought back the strapline in a new advert, created by WCRS, called ‘Steeplechase,’ which returns to the humour of past adverts.

I saw the ad for the first time on TV yesterday, having not previously heard about it. Maybe it was the bizarre premise of the advert, maybe it was the jockey wearing the same colours as the Weetabix packaging, maybe they’ve done something horribly subliminal to my brain – I don’t know – but I found myself instinctively thinking the strapline before it appeared.

It’s a great, fun advert - a return to the simpler premise of past advertising, while still taking full advantage of modern techniques in the execution. It certainly made me crack a smile and it’s a very sorry situation when one fails to be tickled by the sight of a talking horse. Maybe “someone’s had their Weetabix” will once again become a part of the vernacular, but for me it will still evoke a pang of nostalgia for those fantastic adverts from my childhood.

A dry spell

Some may have noticed that recently the intervals between my, admittedly sporadic, meanderings have become lengthier.

I am convinced that this is the result of my becoming employed.*

Firstly, working full time, it’s hard to find the time to blog (believe it or not my posts do take some time to craft). Furthermore, while my work at the moment I would classify as being a ‘job,’ I’m also spending the limited spare time I get trying to sort myself a ‘career.’ Currently, as I type this, I’m guiltily averting my eyes from the folder of unfinished graduate applications on my desktop.

The second, and more worrying, reason for my blog drought is a lack of inspiration, a creative impotence, which I have been feeling for the last few weeks. While I could blog about the various characters I meet on the job - the yummy mummies, the silver foxes, the brand slaves and the forty-somethings that still shop with their mums - that’s not what this blog is about.

Again I believe the blame for my blogger’s block lies with my job. While I still read the newspaper in my break, I fear that it just isn’t enough to sate my appetite for afflatus. Working in retail means spending nine hours away from a computer. Which means nine hours away from the internet, which means nine hours away from social media.

Although the results of a study released today suggest that £1.4 billion a year is lost due to time spent by staff on social networking sites, I still feel that there are innumerable benefits in internet accessible jobs. I can see how Facebook is a distraction, but when used the right way, I believe Twitter is a font of information and inspiration.

Since I’ve been deprived of constant cultural, political, social news updates, my pool of inspiration has been severely depleted. 95% of tweets may be valueless tripe, not worth the energy it took to write them, but they are worth sifting through to find nuggets of knowledge, links to enlightenment and perceptive opinions.

So that’s my excuse for a barren spell of binge thinking. However, I’m hoping that my underwater post is a sign that my inspiration for blog topics is once again flowing.

* I’d just like to point out that I really enjoy my current job, I’m merely reflecting on the effects it has had on my blogging.

Just Add Water

Ironing, gardening, marriage - Pretty much everything is cooler underwater.

I understood this from an early age. I have fond memories of childhood holidays, where the underwater exploits in the swimming pool would be documented with a single use Kodak clad in a chunky blue waterproof cage. Of course the camera only had a range of took 0.8m and it was usually click and hope – eyes clamped shut against excessively chlorinated water – but those were simpler times.

Since then I’ve embraced scuba diving, I love the tranquillity resulting from being submerged. The feeling of weightlessness. The surreal beauty of hydrodynamic forces on fronds of seaweed and anemone tentacles - their movements appearing in slow-motion. The unnatural turquoise-blue hue and shards of light visibly penetrating the gloom.

Luckily, you don’t have to be there to experience it. Underwater technology is such that photography and cinematography can absolutely do justice to the serenity under the surface - transforming it into something cultural.

The photos above and at the beginning of the post are part of ‘Water on the Lens’; a collection of stunning underwater photos captured by Phoebe Rudomino, offering a rare behind the scenes look at some of the film shoots that have taken place in the U (Underwater) Stage at Pinewood Studios. It’s been showcased at The Movieum of London, located above the Aquarium on the Southbank during October.

The U Stage was also used to film this recent, unusual UK fire safety advert. The underwater footage is beautifully composed, from the cloudy tea diffusing to the ‘breathing’ curtains, but the setting is also integral to the message. That you can ‘drown’ in toxic smoke, with it rendering you unconscious in a few inhalations. The eerie serenity, blue hue and muffled sounds of the underwater scene are a stark contrast with the final seconds as it cuts to a crackling, smoking, orange inferno.

These aren't the only recent initiatives to adopt the unusual underwater initiatives. Mexico plans to build a Subaquatic Sculpture Museum in the Caribbean and recently the Maldives government donned scuba gear to hold a cabinet meeting whilst submerged 6 metres underwater. It was an imaginative stunt with a serious message, that this could be a reality if global warming continues to cause sea levels to rise.

Finally I'll just add that that very little, save actually being there, captures the serenity and beauty of the underwater like this video of the Kuoshio Sea Aquarium. (It's best watched full screen in HD)