I was halfway through reading the story and was speculating that maybe a load of oil people with English as a second or third language got together without any professional help and came up with the name unaware of potential unsavoury connotations elsewhere.  And then I read the end of it and thought again.

There is a long history of such branding cock-ups because something that is meaning less in one language, or has a positive meaning, can turn out to be a problem in some overseas market.  The most famous case is probably Toyota’s MR2 car, where in French it sounds very like ‘merde’ when you say it, and the runner up is probably another car, the Nova, which translates as “doesn’t go” in some languages.

More obscure examples are the mobile phone company Orange, who were unable to use their famous slogan in Northern Ireland - and then Ben & Jerry came along with a flavour called “Black & Tan”.    In the 1970s the American computer company tried to use the marketing slogan “Wang cares” in Britain and found some resistance from the UK office.

So anyway, when the story introduced a ‘top branding consultant’ I was expecting some comments about how this could have been avoided by employing a specialist like him, and how much the brand has been poisoned by taking a name deemed to be extremely offensive in much of the world.

To be fair, he does say that such mistakes are more common in government ventures where they do not have marketing experience - although I find that hard to believe: government bodies seem to spend half their budgets on marketing and branding consultants to choose a name and logo.  But he  also says that when companies make such faux pas they very rarely change the brand name when they discover their mistake, that it is usually harmless, and in this case the fuss will soon die down as people will soon forget that the name sonuds bad.

There is some truth in that.  Coca Cola brought out a drink called Fresca, which apparently means ‘Lesbian’ in Mexico, but it didn’t hurt sales.  Hoover managed to markey a vacuum cleaner called the Zyklon in Germany without too much trouble - though Bosch re-considered when they were going to use Zyklon as a trademark for, among other things, gas ovens.

Bearing that in mind, why bother with expensive marketing ‘experts’ when even that admit that if you get it wrong it doesn’t do any harm?  And why bother with them when even someone regarded as one of the top experts can’t see anything offensive about a company called Nigaz?  If it turns out that Gazprom and NNPC actually paid somebody thousands of dollars to come up with the name I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  As I type this, they are probably engaged on their next commission - finding a snappy name for Welsh Oil and Gas…

Brand consultants… prime candidates for the B-Ark!

I look forward to adding his feed to Google Reader if and when it happens.

Me & Tony Benn, Worthing, June 30th 2009

Today I went down to Worthing for ‘an evening with Tony Benn’.   This was a fundraiser for his grandaughter, Emily, who is the parliamentary candidate down there, and a very pleasant evening it was too.Tony Benn has always been a bit of a hero and inspiration to me.  The only time I ever saw him before was when he was speaking at a rally in Trafalgar Square in the 80s.   I can’t remember if it was a CND rally, or an anti-apaartheid rally, or something else, but I do remember that it was his birthday and the whole crowd (estimated to be in excess of 7 by the police at the time) sang happy birthday.

Back then Benn was held in great esteem by the sort of person who went on these marches but was public enemy number one in the tabloid papers.  In the years since then he seems to have acheived national treasure status.  Not sure when that happened, but surely he deserves it.  He spoke to us for a short time, leaving most of the evening free for questions from the floor.

It was a welcome change to have somebody from the Labour party speaking and to be able to sit there agreeing with everything they said!   There were some very thought-provoking comments on all sorts of topics, particularly on war and how much we should interfere with other nations’ affairs.

Emily Benn was also there.  I thought she was very impressive and so absolutely bloody young.  I am still finding it hard to adjust to parliamentary candidates who are literally young enough to be my children, but I can see why she was selected because she spoke well and sounded like a real politician. (But I won’t hold that against her)

I know that when she was selected there were suggestions that it was just because of the family name and Tony’s influence in the party.  Personally I think that if Tony Benn’s influence had anything to do with it then it was only the influence he will have had over Emily and her development rather than anything else and when she gets into parliament, as I am sure she will, it will be under her own steam.

East Worthing & Shoreham Labour Party put on a really good evening.  Tea, coffee and soft drinks laid on, and a plate of strawberries, raspberries, grapes and cherries on every table. Lots of party members and supporters from all over the county were there and made to feel extremely welcome.

I can remember all those times I was crammed in a commuter train from SE London with the cassette player in my pocket.   If I had shoved in a tape that was halfway through, it was almost impossible to extract the player to turn the tape over without causing injury to someone.  Auto-reverse improved my life somewhat.  A lot of the time I just listened to the radio - the Capital Breakfast Show with Graham Deane it would have been.

When portable CD players came along I remember looking at them enviously.  When I got one I was so chuffed until I tried to fit it in a pocket.  The Minidisc player was a vast improvement: all the sound quality advantages of the CD player but in a small size plus the benefit of being able to make up your own compilations like you could with the tape players.

When a friend of mine visited and showed me his Creative mp3 player I was sold on the idea.  I was tempted to get one myself but the thing was the size of a CD player which put me off.  When Apple did their version in a smaller size I couldn’t justify the expense and it wasn’t until about 2001 that I moved into the mp3 age when I got my 20GB iRiver - the same iRiver that now sits by the bed connected to a set of speakers.

Thinking back on all those old toys I have to agree with the boy from the BBC story - how did we ever get by?   Only Friday I saw somebody in Crawley town centre carrying a portable CD player and did a bit of a double-take.  I didn’t think people still used them.

I’m looking forward to 30 years time when the 2039 equivalent of the BBC do a story on the 2039 equivalent of a web site and some kid who will be born in 17 years is given space to ridicule us and our primitive ipods.  He will probably say they are “so 20th Century” or something like that.

Three Bridges station from above

Earlier today I saw a description of how to do fake tilt-shift photos, using aerial photography from multimap and a website called TiltShiftMaker, so I thought I would have a go.

The results are not as good as using a proper tilt-shift lens.  They are not even as good as taking a decent high-res photo and doing some Photoshop trickery on it, but they don’t come out too badly and the whole process is ridiculously easy - and how would I ever be able to take an aerial photo of my house anyway?

Here are a few fakes of Crawley from above - bigger versions are available on Flickr.

EDIT: a belated thought…  I still like tilt-shift and fake tilt-shift photos because of the way they make everything look like a model.  Its a gimmick, but one I have yet to tire of.  The thing is…  now I wear varifocals everything looks a bit like that anyway!

My house from above

Broadfield House from above

Crawley College from above

Crawley Down Motors from above

K2 from above

Q Magazine, August 2009. In the shops from the end of June

Over the weekend it has been hard to ignore Michael Jackson.  His name was on the front of all the papers in the newsagents, his songs were all over the radio and there was an unfeasibly large display of his greatest hits in HMV.   On top of that there was Q magazine with Jackson all over its cover.  Knowing that magazines have a bit of a lead time from the writing to appearing in the shops this looked like quite an achievement, but it turned out to be just luck.  Not sure whether it is good luck or bad luck though.

Is this the sort of thing that magazine editors dream about or have nightmares about?I imagine they will pick up a few extra sales, being the only glossy magazine with MJ’s face all over the cover - at least until the others catch up, but given that it was all written before he died and in anticipation of the now-cancelled (surely!) tour who knows what hostages to fortune may have been written inside.  There must be something unsavoury in there with the potential to upset fans, because the editor has published an apology already.  He says:

Work on this issue was completed a fortnight ago and it was printed shortly thereafter. When news of Michael Jackson’s death broke in the early hours of Friday morning, it was already being distributed. As such, we have had no opportunity to change any of the editorial content within the issue. Such is the risk inherent in producing a monthly magazine – that events may overtake a story that you are committed to.

If you do take offence to any part of the issue in light of Michael Jackson’s tragic passing, I can only apologise on behalf of Q. Hopefully, you will understand that no offence was intended or meant.

It will be fun looking through to see what they have written.   Its a recipe for disaster because Jackson’s bizarre life and behaviour encouraged suitably ripe comments, all packaged up in a magazine that must currently be a magnet for obsessive Jackson fans.

Of course, the (valid) excuse about preparing a special issue to tie in with the comeback tour applies to HMV as well.  When I saw the large number of Jackson CDs on Friday I was impressed that they could have gotten so much stock within 24 hours.  I had a mental picture of CD-pressing plants and printers working overtime to get them done but although there probably were CD plants suddenly turning to churning out extra copies of Jackson CDs, I realised that it is more likely they already had a substantial stock in the back in anticipation of the tour.

Back to Q though.  I haven’t read any of the stories yet, but I have read the editor’s introduction which says, ironically:

At the time of going to press, the self-styled King of Pop was due to play the first shows of his proposed 50-night stand at London’s O2 Arena within a matter of days.  But as Q has learnt in the process of putting this issue together, there are no certainties in Michael Jackson’s world - besides the one that suggests anything that can go madly, will go madly.

No certainties indeed, except that plaudits for the, admittedly rather good, Thriller will result on the equally good Off The Wall being cruelly overlooked, and that Quincy Jones’ contribution will be even more cruelly overlooked.

Seemed very subdued though.  I know they are getting on a bit, but for a band given to boasting about amps that go  ‘up to ten’ they didn’t seem very loud.

I also caught a bit of Dizzee Rascal doing ‘Bonkers’ which seemed to go down well.  I do hope my recordings include a bit more of Dizzee.

With that sort of cack-handedness I think I was lucky to manage mowing the lawn with no more than the normal minor injuries.