The Adjustable Productions Business Blog

Moving on from the rather crass re-branding of Mr Muscle (which I focused on in an earlier post), something caught my eye while in Wilkinson’s yesterday. I spotted two brands sitting side by side that have not been obviously altered since the 1980’s, if ever. The brands in question are Frazzles and Chipsticks.

Chipsticks and Frazzles, 2009 - or is it 1989?

There are some interesting things about this consistent approach to branding and design. For one, the products look very 1980’s. They retain a lot of the design style, layout and typefaces common in that era. If you jumped into a time machine and snuck it onto Sainsbury’s shelves in the 1983, the current product would probably hard to spot amongst the product of that era. However, perhaps surprisingly, they also keep the classic ‘Smiths’ logo, even though the brand is now owned by their former leading competitor, Walkers.

A Chipsticks close up. Miss no detail...

I am not quite sure what the marketing thinking is behind this approach (some may argue it a non-approach) to product design, but I think I like it. Many producers seem to have an unhealthy pre-occupation with always claiming that there is something new about their product, constantly changing and tweaking the contents and the packaging. In the current retail climate, where a lot of groceries and food shopping is done in vast hypermarkets that carry hundreds of thousands of lines, I think there is a real benefit to having an easily recognised products design. And while there are people that do have the attitude of wanting the ‘new’ thing, a lot of people actually just want the reassuring familiarity of the brand that they know and are comfortable with. Jazzy rebrands and product redesigns can alienate a lot of that core market. I am still yet to be convinced that radical redesigns actually do more good than damage.

What a lot of marketing people seem to miss is how effective the campaigns of yesteryear were, and that people really do attach a lot of nostalgia to the logos, the typefaces, the colours, the packaging, the catchphrases, the adverts and so on. For instance, on the way back from that that trip to Wilkinsons, we walked past a newsagent that had a flag with the most recent Walls ice cream logo, and another with a logo from the late 80’s/early 90’s. The new logo meant nothing to me, but the old logo reminded me of holidays at Sandbanks, walking on the beach, watching the tide go out for miles, and all the little things that I associated with the good times had when consuming the product. Now, the newer logo might inspire this for people who were going on those holidays 10 years later, but I am not sure. For me the newer logo just looks like a swish corporate effort, used to impress shareholders and investors when it is on the front of some portfolio, and it just makes me think how much more rubbish and miserable and full of care life has become. If there was a little more consistency in the logo, everyone that sees it could be more inclined to hold the values and feelings it implants during childhood.

It does not seem that the value of old campaigns and designs are entirely lost on the established branding giants. Some have recognised that reverting to old designs can bring about reminiscence and nostalgia for times perceived as ‘happier’ and ’simpler’ (such as in a recent soap powder campaign), and they want these themes associated with their product. Some have observed that the current economic climate seems to be driving a nostalgic interest in consumers for both old versions of their branding and older versions of the actual products themselves. What is more, it must be an appealing approach for brands that are trading with reduced marketing budgets. Recycling old campaigns is surely cheaper than commissioning a brand new one?

I shall look at the various approaches marketeers are taking towards re-purposing old campaigns in some forthcoming posts.

Sometimes I just can not figure out what is going on in the minds of those who are given the most attention in the media. Right now, the BBC reports that there has been an “outcry” against the detention of Roman Polanksi in Switzerland in accordance with their extradition agreements with America. The BBC reports that the French minister, Frederic Mitterand, has said “a scary America” has just “shown its face”. They report that British novelist Robert Harris described the arrest as “disgusting treatment”. They also report that the Swiss Director’s Association have also criticised the arrest. Apparently they called it “not only a grotesque farce of justice, but also an immense cultural scandal”. And don’t forget about the Swiss newspaper, Blick: “Switzerland let a guest walk into a nasty trap. We should be ashamed,”.

How blinkered, deranged and completely aloof these people are to think that trying to bring this man to account is unacceptable. Let us just be reminded of the facts. He was left alone in charge of a 13 year old girl whom he was photographing for a feature in Vogue magazine. He got her drunk on champagne and fed her quaaludes, and then undressed her and sexually assaulted her despite her protestations. He was tried and convicted and then absconded from the country prior to sentencing. There is no question of his guilt. If a man has done something, been convicted with overwhelming evidence in a country with a relatively highly regarded legal system, and then has hidden in other countries to avoid sentencing, surely those countries have been offering him shelter from justice? How can anyone suggest that he had been a “guest” who was “walking into a trap”?

Why do they think it is so wrong that he be arrested and face extradition? Are they stark staring bonkers? Do they not think it is right that people that commit such crime face the punishment? Do they think that because he is a famous director and regarded an artiste that he should be allowed to do such things? Maybe they think it is the girl’s fault? Or maybe it is just part of the culture in some parts of the media, politics and showbiz that it is ok to abuse young girls and boys?

I mean, it would be understandable to come to that conclusion if you look at the way the industry has treated Polanksi since he took flight. He has subsequently been welcomed as a stage director. He has directed blockbuster films for Warner Brothers and TriStar and subsidiaries of NBC and New Line Cinema. Those films have starred the likes of Walter Mattheau, Harrison Ford, Hugh Grant, Sigourney Weaver, Ben Kingsley and Johny Depp. Oh and I almost forgot, he has also won the Palme D’or and last year, Hollywood honoured him with an Oscar in his absence.

All of these companies, individuals and awards bodies have agreed to work with a fugitive on the run from facing sentencing for a sex attack on a 13 year old child.

Let me just clarify that: This is not even one of those cases where you can say “well, he paid his debt to society” because he didn’t. He did a runner. The man is a convicted fugitive.

So maybe we should not be suprised that the industry rallies around him when he finally looks as if he will face sentencing. Perhaps because he is ‘one of there own’ they are happy to overlook these things?

Written by Robert Wheeler

Every now and then, I see things like this:

Hello Kitty Mallow Briefcase

It is one of the incredibly long line of officially sanctioned ‘Hello Kitty’ products. What is ‘Hello Kitty’?: I don’t quite know. All I know is that it came from Japan, there is a lot of it, and Japanese people get the Hello Kitty logo and derivatives heavily marketed to them in their native country. The mystery is, why is the line getting so popular in Europe and the Rest of the World? As far as I am aware, there is little of no direct advertising of the brand in these territories. It is just like the mystique of the brand is somehow magically carrying over across the waves.

It seems that the only marketing exposure the brand gets outside of Japan is the incidental PR the various licenses merchandise picks up in the popular press. If it was not for that, I am guessing that nobody outside of Japan would have heard of Hello Kitty. Or is it that the character embodies so much of the fundamental elements of ‘cuteness’, that it will offer a magnetic attraction to all those susceptible to such things, and thus self generate its own buzz and interest with no need for a coordinated marketing campaign? Is it like a cross between a cleavage and go faster stripes, but for women?

A zimmer frame in a cage.

Recently, I was quite suprised and somewhat concerned to see the above sight on platform 4 at Nottingham Railway Station. I am not sure why anybody would need to keep a zimmer frame in a large metal cage. Noting the urgency of the ‘keep clear at all times’ painted in large letters underneath, I began to wonder if it was some kind of zoo where they displayed wild and dangerous geriatrics. Did the cage prevent these people from causing mischief such as spitting their false teeth out as passers by? Maybe I had come at the time when they had been taken out for cleaning and for new straw to be put down? I almost found myself looking for a sign saying “do not feed the pensioners”. Perhaps it was a kind of creche where travelers could leave elderly dependents while they went off on their journey?

It would be fair to say that this sight raised my slight tendency towards cynicism. Maybe there is something I have missed in this equation, but I have never seen anything like this at any station before. Does anybody know why Nottingham Railway Station needs to keep a zimmer frame in a large cage with a great painted warning in front of it? It does not seem to send out a particularly friendly message to the railway’s elder patrons.

I have a great respect for most older people, and while in the first instance I found it to be quite funny, the second reaction is that it is a bit of a concerning blunder, and it could cause some quite understandable offence. Even if there is no ill intention in this ‘arrangement’ of platform equipment, you would have thought some planner or member of staff would have thought it looked a bit odd.

I shall find out which franchise runs the station, enquire about the cage and then report back…

P.S. It has been pointed out to me that in order for the title of this post to be grammatically correct, it should read: ‘Of what are you scared Nottingham Railway Station?’ However, that sounds a bit too Yoda-like for me.

Back in the 80’s when adverts were generally brilliant, and agencies in the UK had mastery of a concept known as irony, there used to be quite a popular series of 20 second spots for the ‘Mr Muscle’ brand of bathroom and kitchen cleaners. The tag revolved around the user of these goods being a rather weedy looking spectacled man, usually dressed in a string vest and shorts:

These adverts were quite a phenomenon, and achieved with distinction what all advertising agencies should surely aspire to: They entered the national psyche.

School children would use ‘Mr Muscle’ to describe the wimpy kids in the class. Workmen who were struggling to saw a piece of wood would get cat calls of “you need to get in the Mr Muscle for that job”. Anyone with a pair of glasses, or pair of shorts or vest that had less than a herculean figure would be known as a ‘Mr Muscle’. The campaign work fantastically well as it got across the message that the product was something that anybody could use to get good results.

And now, 20 years later, in the homogenised era where we seem to share our poorly redubbed adverts with Spain, Germany and most of the rest of Europe, we have this regressive offering:

The funny thing is that Gerald Home (the actor playing Mr Muscle in the previous advert) is much more of a man than the new, beefed up, multi-lingual computer sprite Mr Muscle will ever be. In reality, that Mr Muscle is actually no more than a tennis ball on a stick waived around in front of the actress.

One of the reasons this does not work is because the previous series of adverts were so successful that a sufficient part of the target audience still remember them. Their first reaction to this advert is therefore likely to be “what is this rubbish?”. They would probably do a lot better rerunning or repurposing the old adverts (something which a few brands such as Ariel and Felix have been doing recently).

Interestingly, this version, which appears to be in Russian, seems to allude to the old ways of the Communist era athletes ‘training’ programs…

Prior to last night’s Derren Brown “How to Win the Lottery” I had already pretty much decided on how I thought the illusion was done. Five minute into it and after his initial claim that he did actually “predict” the numbers, I knew it was bollocks, and that he was about to go through a convoluted explanation involving directing a bunch of unwitting stooges being guided into producing last weeks numbers. Luckily, about 10 seconds later a fire alarm went off in my building and I did not return to watching the programme until the last 30 seconds, where he more or less summed that up the solution of aggregating the predictions of 24 people, and then made a nonsensical claim that he may have tampered with the machine.

The fact is that it was a camera trick. It had been a little hard for me to tell because I had only been able to see the video of the stunt on youtube, which to a degree masked the false jitter and zoom effect which had been used to cover it up. The bricks serve as a good reference for computer software to insert a pre-recorded image of the left side of the screen over the actual action. This allows a stage hand to alter the balls. You can see one of the balls appear to raise on the plinth just as the numbers are finished being read out as the fixed image is crossfaded to the live image.

Derren Brown has fallen for one of the pitfalls of modern magicians. Up until now he has had the image of being some kind of modern wizard. Crucially, people have tended to believe that he has some kind of special knowledge or even power to help him achieve these stunts. The problem with this trick is that it is simply too unbelievable. He has crossed the boundary where most people will say “hang on, that is impossible, it MUST be a fix rather than a trick”. From this point it will be a lot more difficult for him to get people to believe he is doing something that he isn’t, and his whole credibility will be affected.

That does not mean he is not skilled at what he does. David Blaine, one of the best palmers and hand magicians I have ever seen on TV, did the same thing. He got to the point where he would walk up to a stranger on the street and have tattoos of their wife on his chest. Logically that means that the “stranger” was either an actor, or perhaps more likely to get the genuine reaction the shot was carefully planned, researched and executed so that it looked like it was a spontaneous thing. Either way, it was too daft to be a straightforward bit of magic, and it tarnishes everything you watch with him afterwards because instead of thinking “oh, there is some amazing slight of hand going on here” you are thinking “this is possibly an elaborately planned ruse made to look like slight of hand trick”. You lose faith in what kind of deception you are watching.

And I really think that Derren Brown has done the same thing here. A man that can actually pull off some very clever mind tricks has resorted to a relatively simple camera trick to do something we all know is impossible and used an explanation we know can not work to explain it. The sloppiness of the actual effect has rather given the game away, and now it breaks the impression that many other aspects of his tricks are have genuine ingenious practical solutions, and suggests that technology might play a role in a lot more of them.

I may have a slight advantage over most people in that I have a personal contact in Camelot that assures me that any suggestion that the draw was unaffected by this stunt is not true. I also know of one of the production team on the Derren Brown show, who I can not see being involved in any elaborate trickery. But judging from the response on the internet in general, it seems most people did not need to have this knowledge to decide that the whole thing was a load of nonsense. I guess the only way Brown could turn this stunt as a frustrating (but well viewed) failure as a piece of entertainment would be to somehow incorporate it into the later ‘Events’. But at the end of the day, the seams are showing. We get it, you can steer people towards picking certain numbers, you can shoot lots of videos to integrate it into a show. A lot of us knew this was coming on Friday night. Please, do something more believable so we can enjoy you as illusionist, Derren Brown. I almost feel as if that will come across as a Snoopy reference, but it was not intended.