Welcome to the Future

Happy Back to the Future day! It’s finally (or already) here!

Back to the Future Part II is one of the first films I remember seeing at the cinema (along with Tim Burton’s Batman the same year), I was 10 years old. My elder brother Björn took me to see it in Paris, and just that was already special given we lived in the far suburbs. I remember to have been really impressed with the future it imagined. I can’t believe that day is already now.

I had fun watching this video of teens reacting to the movie. I thought it’s really interesting that Back to the Future features as an important movie reference for teenagers today, to the point where at least one says he can cite all the dialogue. Another insight in there is whatever the level of the technology we use every day, because it’s every day it immediately looses the appeal of something from the future. We take thing for granted very fast, and the teens in the video are growing with devices that were impossible not so long ago, like thirty years ago actually.

It would be easy to focus on our lack of flying cars and hoverboards, but we have a lot of the things in that future, the fashion is just a little different. Video conferencing, pocket digital devices, etc. No holograms at the cinema but 3D movies have made a come back. Voice activated commands aren’t ubiquitous but they exist. It’s funny how technology is evolving fast yet at the level of a short human life it seems like ages. We don’t have tiny pizzas growing into a huge one in a microwave but that’s probably a good thing. We do have retro-style arcade games bars, but no robot waiters just yet and they hadn’t planned for the hipster beard fashion.

I think smart clothes are an experimental thing though, I think they exist in a certain way. It’s easy with hindsight to say they were pretty optimistic about the technology advances for the movie, and so they should have anyways given it makes for more interesting TV, and they wanted to keep the story within the time of the characters lives, just one generation behind and in this case another ahead.

Of course everyone myself included is writing about Back to the Future Day, and why not. That said, and while I understand some would mention it because it’s of course a big pop culture memorabilia event today, of course brands are jumping on board with ridiculous statements in social media:

The Power of Frozen, seriously..? Please abstain. It’s unnecessary. You’re just asking for people to make fun of you Iceland Foods.

Gregg’s is a chain of baked goods in the UK in case you haven’t heard of it. This is one is even better, so you’re basically saying that your food is garbage to fuel the DeLorean from BTTF?

A few brands participated in the movie back then and might have a claim on some marketing activities, but for this kind of message I’d recommend abstaining from saying anything.

There are many more bad examples I’m sure I’m not even scratching the surface, I just came across these thanks to Chris via Twitter.

I enjoyed what Christopher Lloyd has to say about it as Doc Brown and I’ll finish with it, a simple message:

“The future has finally arrived. Yes, it’s different from we all thought, but don’t worry. It just means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has. Your future is whatever what you make it, so make it a good one.”

A Few Things I Learned From My Sister on Her Vineyard

In the past year I’ve had the chance to spend more time with my sister Saskia on her vineyard, Les Arabesques. She owns a small estate in the Roussillon region of the South of France. It’s about 30km west of Perpignan, between The Corbières and the Pyrénées mountains. She is committed to growing grapes and making wine in a traditional and natural fashion. It’s still very new, this year was her third harvest. I’ve had the chance to learn more about winemaking talking with her, and occasionally helping throughout the season – so I also got some practical experience of the process.

The first thing that keeps blowing my mind is the timeline she works to. All she does is dictated by nature and seasons. Every choice she makes has an influence over her potential livelihood for the following 12 to 18 months or so. She creates the best context and environment possible, maybe give things a nudge in the right direction, and lets nature do its work.

I know it’s always been that way, but I’ve never been particularly close to nature. I’ve been used to working in large cities and advertising agency offices where the briefs are due yesterday. Everything needs to happen faster and faster. Everyone is busy and power-walking around. As soon as I arrive in a city, I walk faster from the moment I get off the plane or train. I spend time with brand clients trying to understand and explain the evolution of consumer or purchase behaviours. Peering over new and popular technologies, networks or apps that may well be obsolete or irrelevant tomorrow. Obsolescence is a recurring theme, businesses even bake it in their products, or if not release new goodies on shorter and shorter cycles to always create news and needs.

My sister works with the seasons. The project cycle is a year or more and necessarily adaptive. While the general seasonal pattern is the same every year, and the tasks roughly take place in the same order, there are still a lot of variations depending on the weather. She has a direction in mind for her wines, though has to adapt to what nature throws at her.

Winter is pruning time. While the vines are sleeping it’s time for her to go through all her plots and snip off the unwanted branches. I spent a day with her last winter where I was “pre-pruning”. Basically just cutting off the major branches without going into the detail, which are important choices she makes herself. She told me pruning is the job where the most knowledge and experience is required. There are several techniques she learned while being trained in Burgundy and Provence. As I understood it, she visualises the path the sap will most probably take from the roots to the branches. This guides where she prunes to encourage the growth of branches that will bear the most and/or best fruits for the harvest. It is quite similar to pruning a bonsai actually. Now she is getting to know her vines better in the third year, she also has a better idea of the way they behaved in the last harvest, pruning also based on her experience. Most of that work is done by herself with her dog, in cold, windy yet often sunny weather. She says there’s something meditative about caring for her vines during that time of year that she really enjoys.

In parallel, winter is also time for several professional exhibits and shows. It takes a lot of time to make the wine, and it takes time to sell it too. This year she was invited to participate in what is often considered the best professional show for organic and natural winemakers, Renaissance des Appellations (Return to Terroir). The yearly event gathers many of the best natural winemakers, sommeliers, and wine importers from around the world.

And if that wasn’t enough work already, the wine from her previous harvest is slowly getting ready. She has to watch out for any sudden shifts in temperature that might upset the wine in the cellar, check and taste it on a regular basis. Christmas is luckily a quieter time where she can generally take a few days off, away from her cellar.

Spring time is mostly about fertilising and treating the vines, caring for them so that they’ll be able to be healthy, and resist trouble from fungi, diseases, or insects. That means going out before dawn to sprinkle the vines, as well as removing rocks and weeds from the plots. I tried removing weeds. It’s hard work. Stooped over with a small pickaxe hacking at the rocky terrain. It was another opportunity for her to make fun of my city like habits and general uselessness when it comes to most manual labour. It’s also bottling and labelling time for the wines from the previous harvest that are ready to be sold and drank. That’s where I’m more comfortable, particularly the drinking part of it.

The spring time work carries over into the summer, and then there’s a quieter time before harvest when many of the local winemakers can take a holiday, around late July or so. The rest is about selling wine, watching out for the weather, checking the progress of the growing fruits, watching out for any trouble that might take place, and generally gearing up for the harvest. I helped on the harvest for the first time this year. It’s tough work for the back, but it’s also a good time. It’s fun to be outside in the beautiful countryside, bantering with other grape pickers under the watchful eye of my sister’s partner. He plays the role of mock tough supervisor, to the tone of “I don’t want to see a single leaf in those baskets! We’re not brewing tea here, monsieur!”

Everything at that moment is crucial, from the grapes picked or set aside, to the choices made in the cellar. Are these grapes ready to be harvested yet? How much sugar content do they have now and how does that compare with the alcohol level I’m aiming for? How many days should these grapes ferment before being pressed? With or without the stems? These are only a few of the questions she has on her mind at that time of year. There might be more bottling beforehand too, for the wine from the previous year that wasn’t ready for consumption yet, and to make space in the cellar for the new wine.

I learned that grapes for rosé and white wine are pressed immediately after being harvested. Grapes for red wines can be pressed later, the when and how depends on the kind of wine being made. I tried the age old tradition of stomping on grapes, which is both harder work than it seems and pretty satisfying. It’s not just folklore, it serves an important purpose. Given the grapes have just been picked, the berries are still firm. The press works from the top down and is flat. Stomping the berries helps more grape juice to be extracted. If they aren’t stomped then a lot of berries can be stuck at the bottom without being pressed, and you can lose a lot of juice.

As soon as the excitement of the harvest is passed, it’s already autumn and time to keep in contact with her clients, as well as find new ones. Most wine cellars and restaurants start ordering and stocking up for the end of year holiday season. Meanwhile she also has to watch out for this year’s wine fermentation progress. Update Facebook with new photos from the harvest. Watch out for any press or worthwhile professional show opportunities. Then of course there’s the joys of year-end admin and finance.

And the cycle starts again.

As a strategist an important part of my job in advertising is to synthesise everything I learn from research for a particular brand in order to provide a direction for the creative team. While I might have the chance to do some research with people and try a product or service before a write a brief, I rarely have that much time to really experience it in the way I have with the vineyard in the past year, and even then I’ve probably only skimmed the surface. That said, I certainly have a new appreciation for working with nature that I hope I’ll be able to take into account for future work.

What I’d write in a brief is traditionally called a single-minded communication, or proposition. Most of the time it’s one sentence, as short and inspiring as possible. It encapsulates the main message to be communicated.

In this case It might be a shame to try and summarise something as complex as this process to a single short sentence. It would be near impossible to do it justice. Traditionally made wine like my sister’s should really be tasted (I recommend getting advice from a professional in a wine cellar or restaurant to try a good one). Each one is unique. You won’t necessarily like every one you try, but you’ll find one that you enjoy. If you get into it you might even have a hard time going back to mass produced wines.

Fortunately I don’t have to write a short sentence here. If you’ve read this far you may well be the kind of person that will  remember and appreciate the amount of work that goes into these wines when you taste one.

Insect Ice Cream near Borough Market

I had organised to meet my friend James in Borough Market last month while I was in London. It used to be one of my main haunts for a few years, while I worked at iris. I lived nearby so I could be in walking distance to the office. I was already salivating at the idea of eating one of Kappacasein’s famed grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I hadn’t had one in two years, and I think it’s still the best in town. I know some have tried to imitate them. I remember trying a grilled cheese sandwich in Maltby Street Market last year and it wasn’t as good. But I digress.

It was a lovely sunny morning and the streets around Borough Market were already crowded. I hopped off a bus at London Bridge and quickly made my way over to the tube exit where we’d organised meeting, thinking I was already late. I just about walked past a sign, my brain assembling bits of information at the same time.

FREE. Ice cream. Insect-like icon?

I stopped and turned around to check the red sign. Given the name of this blog, you can imagine I just can’t ignore a promotional sign advertising free ice cream, with the added intrigue of an insect looking icon. It piqued my curiosity. It’s like they made it for me. It’s a funny feeling to know or imagine that you are the target audience of a piece of communication. I didn’t think that on the spot. A that first moment I was just intrigued and curious enough to stop, and then excited about the promotion.

As I looked at the sign, a guy in a red shirt smiled at me, asked if I wanted to try the insect ice cream, and handed over a flyer featuring The Economist logo. Now the red made sense. The insect ice cream still didn’t.

I smiled back and said something like: “Hi! Really!? But what does The Economist have to do with giving out free insect ice cream?”

You might have come across the promotion already, I checked as I’m writing this and I see this promotion garnered some press in London and Hong Kong over the summer.

They went on to explain that The Economist had run a feature about the future of food being insects, and that they thought it would be a fun device to sell a promotional offer for The Economist: 12 weekly issues for £12 and a free book.

Only a few months before, my brother’s business partner Omar had featured an insect dish in his fun “Nipponexican” inspired menu for his two-week chef’s residency at Carousel. He gave a short speech about insects being a sustainable future for food worldwide before serving a grasshopper taco. I was tuned in to the idea.

One of the friendly attendants serving insect ice cream

There were two flavours available, and that’s when I realised it was “normal” flavoured ice cream with insect bits, rather than insect flavoured ice cream. Chocolate with grasshopper bits, and strawberry with mealworms. My mate James was running late so I had time to chat with the friendly attendants taking care of the promotion while tasting the ice cream. It was pretty good, just like good ice cream with crunchy bits.

I’ve tried crickets and grasshoppers a few times now, and I find it has a kind of texture that breaks. I might have small flat bits that get stuck in my teeth. Other than knowing I was eating insects, it didn’t that make much difference to the ice cream flavour. I recommend trying insects out if you have the opportunity. It’s like most food in that it really depends how it’s prepared – once you get over what it looks like.

Now back to the promotion and feeling like I’m the target audience. By the time my friend James arrived and was also trying the ice cream I had signed up for the promotion. He told me he was already a subscriber. This is a little embarrassing. I like to think I’m the kind of person that reads The Economist. Except I’m really the kind of person that very rarely buys magazines and doesn’t go beyond paywalls online. The fact is I rarely read The Economist, even if I like the idea of it. I mostly stopped buying print magazines when I was still a teenager, and now I have so many articles online to read for free I don’t bother paying for subscriptions. I’m also not loyal to any one publication. I must have read like three articles on the website since I subscribed. Paying £12 isn’t enough to change my reading behaviour, which is kind of interesting in itself.

However I am sensitive to ice cream and intriguing promotions. I think the main lesson here is that if you really bother thinking about your promotional activity with a specific kind of person in mind then it doesn’t feel like a hard sell on the receiving end. That also means the risk of excluding the people who just won’t go near insect ice cream, by the way. I think it’s better than a middle road of nobody caring at all. I enjoyed spending a few minutes having a new experience, a useful book (Pocket World in Figures), and the opportunity to trial The Economist. That alone was probably worth my time and money.

Thinking About What to Write Where

A couple of weeks ago I attended an evening at Google for a Firestarters event about content marketing & complexity. These events are curated by Neil Perkin and the few I have been able to attend so far have been excellent. I was looking forward to this one to hear Dave Trott speak. He was brilliant, as were the other speakers, Doug Kessler and Sarah Richards. It was also good to catch up with a few acquaintances in the industry.

For the past several years I’d decided not to worry about my blog’s content. Whatever I fancied writing about and publicly sharing is here. It has been more about my travels than thinking of business lately.

Now I’m working independently, I feel I should write more thoughtful posts. I can tend to be lazy to think and write about it. I find it easier on a client deadline and with a group of people to talk with or present to. I find it more difficult to think by myself in front of a blank page. I want to keep practicing and improving at it though.

Dave reminded us to keep things simple in his talk. At one point he also mentioned that different platforms are probably good for different types of things. He has 140 characters on Twitter so tends to write funny things, that may have more impact and drive the interested people to a longer article via a link, for example.

I also listened to a Q&A from Paulo Coelho this past weekend, and learned the author manages his social media presence mostly by himself. He made an interesting comment about the formats of different online platforms and the kind of opportunities they offered for writers. The theme running on his Twitter account seems to be motivational phrases or quotes, sometimes with images. Ironically his last tweet at the time of writing states:

Success comes to those who do not waste time comparing what they are doing with what others are doing.

I’ll argue I’m not exactly comparing, only noting that his Twitter feed seems to specialise in a certain type of writing that of course fits the 140 character format well.

This is how I’ve been thinking of what I’m writing and where I’m publishing it. In short I’m weighing the merits of a content strategy for my writing while wanting to keep things simple and consistent.

Let’s start with what I tend to write about. I know I am particularly interested in these topics:

1. Strategy, communications, marketing, and business innovation – that’s already pretty vast
2. Tabletop games (board games, card games, role-playing games), and wider thinking about integrating playful elements in other areas like education or business (I am wary of the term “gamification” which can be the object of another post)
3. Travel
4. Science-fiction and fantasy
5. Craft beer and home brewing
6. Personal experiences and stories – which can admittedly blend in with any of the above topics.

I only had to look through my library to make sure I have the right topics, almost every book I own fits in one of those.

Point 6 is what I’ll be focusing on in my upcoming email newsletter, the reasoning is that an email is a one on one message so hopefully a good place to share personal stories while possibly integrating other things too.

I can simply keep writing all kinds of topics here, though a few people have also recommended writing on Medium and Linkedin Pulse. I wonder if those platforms could be more appropriate for some topics or styles of writing.

So far I’ve only reposted things from this blog on there. Linkedin Pulse has garnered far more views on the same post compared with Medium: 83 to 1. That was for my previous post about the newsletter. I also re-posted something I’d written about traveling on Medium and that has 12 views, 11 of which come from posting the link on my social networks. This last post was more promotional in nature and perhaps not of sufficient quality for Medium, or maybe just more relevant for Linkedin. In any case it raises interesting questions about the best platforms for my writing.

Out of curiosity I’m going  to do more testing about this in the coming weeks, and see whether Linkedin or Medium might work better for writing about certain topics, and try out a few things with Twitter as well. It won’t be particularly exhaustive or even that objective research. I hope to discover a few interesting things and share what I find out here. Given my main goal is to write more, that should be achieved whatever the results of the experiments are.

 

 

Ice Cream Sundaes

Header image credit: Sundae on the cruise by Brian Holland

A few friends recommended starting a weekly email newsletter. I’ve been thinking about what I could do that might be different from my blog, different from what others are doing, and most importantly something I’d enjoy writing and sending out every week, which I think would help me keep disciplined.

I’m taking the opportunity here to tell you what this new weekly email newsletter is going to be about, and why you might want to sign up to receive it.

Let’s talk about sundaes first. According to some research, the origins of the dish are somewhat obscure with multiple places claiming to be the originators of the dessert. Everybody apparently agrees it was first created in the United States, in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. A shocker first: apparently the name comes in fact from the day Sunday. In case you hadn’t yet guessed when you’ll be receiving my email if you sign up, there’s an extra hint.

One of the places that claims to have invented the ice cream sundae is Evanston, Illinois, nearby Chicago. The story provided by the Evanston Public Library is that in 1890, the pious methodist community of Evanston passed a law forbidding the sale of the popular ice cream sodas on Sundays. Smart confectioners and drug store operators started selling ice cream sodas without the soda (or fizzy water), so basically ice cream topped with syrup, thus complying with the law. Those became known as the Sunday sodas. Some people, probably the same pious mentioned earlier, objected to the dish being named after the day of the Lord, so they changed the spelling to sundae. The Evanston Public Library doesn’t certify the story is 100% historically accurate, but that’s ok. It’s a good story.

I like it because it demonstrates a simple and ingenious solution to a problem, and that is the way I strive to work with clients. Sometimes we tend to focus on the soda too much, particularly when it’s taken away, when in fact what people really want is the ice cream.

When I think about a sundae I also like the idea that it’s more than the sum of its parts: the chocolate fudge, ice cream, sprinkles, nuts, maraschino cherry and even the high glass all make for a greater whole. On their own, they’re not as exciting. Moreover, ingredients can mixed and matched, and recombined at will to satisfy every want or need. It’s colourful and playful. It’s also similar to when we work together to come up with new ideas and solutions to business and communication problems.  Not too keen on sugar? No worries, you can have a coconut milk base paleo ice cream with dates, nuts, and say a 90% cocoa dark chocolate. See, ice cream for everyone.

When it comes to the newsletter, I’ve been wondering what kind of intelligent sounding marketing related stuff I could write about, or whether I should share links to stuff I’m reading like I see some other successful consultants are doing.

I wasn’t too sure about the links, I don’t know about you but I read a lot of articles and blog posts every week. Even then, I still have way more links than I have time to read. I’m only talking about the ones I’m aware of and know I’d like to read. You will have little to no links in my newsletter – say one to three links at most, with context to explain them. My Twitter feed has links to stuff I’m reading. Twitter, Medium, Fraggl, and many more online platforms or tools provide many many links very well.

I intend to keep writing about marketing in my blog and don’t want the newsletter to be doing the same thing. People sometimes tell me I have interesting stories to tell about my life. It might sound narcissistic, and maybe it is, but the fact is I enjoy writing that kind of stories, so that’s the kind you will receive when you sign up to this newsletter. A pretty simple text email with a relatively short story to read alongside your Sunday papers, possibly with a link for context, and perhaps another leading to the latest going on the blog or podcast.

The first Ice Cream Sundae newsletter will be sent on Sunday 4th October 2015 and every Sunday after that. Please try it out for a few weeks and see if you enjoy hearing about me – if you don’t like it you can unsubscribe any time obviously. You can sign up by filling the form below or clicking here.

See you in your inbox!

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PS: Someone pointed out it’s still not obvious how this newsletter will be different from what I usually write. Obviously I’m still the person writing both so whichever you read you’ll find similarities. I’m experimenting with writing about different topics in different places online or at least different content. I’m loath to state clear guidelines just yet (I’m working on those, wondering if they’re necessary too), though I can say for sure is what will be in the newsletter won’t be on the blog and vice-versa. I hope it helps. In doubt, just sign up.

What is Luxury?

I’m finding that one of the benefits of traveling to London temporarily is that I’m paying more attention to art exhibitions, and cultural events happening while I’m visiting. With that in mind and while I’ve been in London to meet with existing and potential new clients, I also reserved a couple of hours – luckily on a fine and sunny morning – to visit this exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum before it ends in about 10 days. It’s free and I recommend checking it out.

The exhibition, created in partnership with the UK Crafts Council, is an inquiry into the meaning of luxury through selected attributes. The curated craft and design pieces mean to illustrate and interrogate different aspects of luxury.

The first room, “Creating Luxury” featured two exhibits for several attributes, such as passion, exclusivity, innovation, etc. Some of these were pretty amazing pieces, with interesting choices of pieces to present contrast, such as an opulent yet described as very uncomfortable howdah (the chair sitting atop an elephant in India) under the term “pleasure”.

The second room, “A Space for Time” and The Future of Luxury” featured very interesting installations, projects, and design pieces questioning the place of luxury items: carbon based items shaped into diamonds which don’t have the same value as mined diamonds, a machine printing uniquely curated booklets of images randomly pulled from the Internet, a short film tracing the journey across the world and the people involved in crafting one unique luxury piece.

Ultimately, the exhibition invites visitors to consider what their own personal version of luxury is or might be.

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in London as I’m writing this, stricken by a certain duality: feeling privileged and lucky to manage my own time and location, while looking out the window at a continuously rainy and grey street which doesn’t look like anything luxurious at all. Being independent certainly carries benefits, however I’m not sure I’d call that luxury.

Unique and spectacularly crafted items have traditionally been the privilege of the very few, and to a large extent this hasn’t changed. That said, what seems to have changed is that the many are now very aware of what the few have. An entire industry of popular magazines or TV channels are dedicated to the topic.

In consequence, I believe other changes from the past have to do with the aspirations to own the same luxury items as the few, and perhaps growing resentment towards deepening inequalities.

I remember meeting a group of people in Kunming, China, a few years ago and talking with a female student. She visited the hostel where I was staying on a regular basis to practice her English. She was very excited to learn that I was French and grabbed my notebook to write all the luxury brands she could remember, asking me to tell her how to correctly pronounce Hermès and Louis Vuitton. It made me smile at the time, but I also wonder how long increasingly distributed and common items can retain their badge of luxury, or why we hold such as a fascination for a name and a bag or a scarf – even granting it an exceptional level of craft.

It also reminds me of Japanese movies about craftmanship, like this short about a traditional sword maker, or the documentary Jiro dreams of Sushi. They can likely easily fit within definitions of luxury, yet I wonder if the craftsmen think of their work as luxury, I doubt it actually.

The difference between the points above may well be the interest of celebrities and media. If some movie stars decided to start carrying traditional Japanese swords tomorrow, would there be sudden surge in their popularity? I think it is entirely possible, but then perhaps people are missing the opportunity to define luxury for themselves.

As for me, as much as enjoy stuff, I think my own version of luxury is pretty simple: idle time. Time is our most precious resource, so idly enjoying an hour or two of it sitting here and slowly writing this while I watch a busy street of London is the height of luxury.

On that last point, I highly recommend We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider that I am reading at the moment. You can listen to this great fifteen minute long excerpt called “Lazy: A Manifesto“.

"If it bleeds, it leads" - About Photojournalism, the News, and Our Fascination with Horror

Above: Award-winning photojournalist Bulent Kiliç talks through his exhibition at Visa pour l’Image 2015

It is the 27th edition of Visa pour l’Image in Perpignan at the moment, an international photojournalism festival, the largest of its kind in France. I happened to have caught up with an episode of the Freakonomics podcast about why we really follow the news last weekend, and I have been thinking about this as I visited several of the photo exhibits in the past few days. The exhibits cover a wide variety of topics, though more often than not they aren’t happy times holiday photos. The festival selection features stories from the some of most important and horrible news events of the past year: the war in Syria, refugees fleeing Syria, the Ebola epidemic in Western Africa, the earthquake in Nepal, and much more.

As I’ve been looking at these photos I’ve been wondering about our fascination for these photos of human pain, misery, and suffering. I’ve also been thinking about the photojournalists who live through increasingly dangerous situations to cover these stories.

I read a few articles and Wikipedia pages to find out more about these questions. It is ironic that following an exhibition featuring photos of the pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, I found out that it was the Illustrated London News that pioneered the birth of early photojournalism during the Crimean War in the mid nineteenth century. It’s almost like photojournalism came full circle last year.

It is also strange to read the stories the photos relate to, in order to get an idea of the context and background, and then to evaluate or judge the photography itself (composition, colour, light, etc). At first thought, it seems the story and content are an opportunity to relate to the photo emotionally, and that the technical appreciation is more rational.

In the choice of photos published or exhibited, the distinction blurs. What could be considered technical elements of a photo reinforces and conveys emotion in a good one. I caught myself thinking “What a beautiful photo” when the subject is clearly suffering. That is the experience I felt was strange. Even when the subject isn’t suffering, the separate experience between appreciating and imagining the person or landscape being represented and the representation itself.

Shadenfreude is a well known and well researched concept, but not necessarily that well understood. Many theories exist, such as it being a need to pay attention to dangers elsewhere and learn about them for our own survival, or feeling better about ourselves by knowing others are worse-off. On this topic, I haven’t read Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, and On Photography but they have been recommended to me in the past and I’m adding them to my reading list.

Many photojournalists adhere to ethical codes such as the U.S. National Press Photographers Association Code of Ethics. Their fourth point reads:

4. Treat all subjects with respect and dignity. Give special consideration to vulnerable subjects and compassion to victims of crime or tragedy. Intrude on private moments of grief only when the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see.

I find the last sentence is particularly interesting, it seems to leave the door wide open to interpret what “the public has an overriding and justifiable need to see”.

The ubiquitous use of social media has seen the rise of citizen journalism, which doesn’t adhere to any code of conduct by definition. Their motivations aren’t necessarily about what people need to see, but rather what they want people to see, and even perhaps more about them altogether. A friend recently called my attention to a creepy new trend in selfies: taking photos of yourself with a corpse in the background, or even making news by murdering someone and then taking a selfie with the corpse. Going even further, terrorist organisations also leverage social media to communicate. They relish in publishing gruesome photos and videos of executions and they are being talked about because of it.

Seeing how virtual reality technologies are rapidly evolving, I wonder what this could mean for the future of photojournalism. Is the future of news people experiencing virtual reality simulations of war-torn areas, maybe seeing and feeling events through the eyes of a sensor-laden “VR-journalist” wandering around? The idea has been explored by several science-fiction authors in different novels, so it seems a pretty reasonable idea by now.

However at that point I think it becomes really difficult to pretend it would be about civic duty for knowledge rather than purely about entertainment. I would say it is a worrying kind of entertainment too.

The McWhopper Proposal

This is a tough one. I think it’s one of the best marketing ideas I’ve seen in a while on one hand, and depressingly ridiculous at the same time on the other. My cynical side is struggling with the exciting possibility of eating a McWhopper, and even the idea of bringing peace and type 2 diabetes to the world one McWhopper at a time! And there goes my cynical side again. I guess I could also go and buy a Big Mac and a Whopper and just put them together myself without waiting for World Peace Day, but that’s besides the point.

It is definitely and already great for Burger King, and I’m pretty sure it’s already unexpected (?) positive media exposure for McDonald’s, and they haven’t even responded as far as I know.

Is it any good for the World Peace Day and the Peace One Day NGO..? That’s just one of the other areas I have doubts about.

My first impression is that the Peace One Day’s message is drowned out. It’s certainly benefiting the burger makers. Let’s say it is about making the world a better place, if so then how are they doing that exactly? Are they handing out some cash on the 21st September? How would that cash be spent?

My second set of doubts come from looking at Peace One Day – I’ve only had a quick look at their site and a couple of video so I admit I could be missing information. Their main message seems to be: ” Awareness creates action, and action saves lives”. I saw it on their website, and on this McWhopper video.

I’m not convinced awareness creates much immediate action. I knew smoking was bad and I kept smoking for years, it’s an easy example and I’m sure we can easily think of similar ones. And certainly not all action saves lives. Some actions even eliminate them, actually.

I also thought of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge from last year, and the numbers tell us the viral sensation raised $115 million for the ALS Association. They also produced a nice infographic to tell people how they’ve been spending the money so far. I find interesting in comparison that the whatever you thought of the ALS ice bucket videos, the message was pretty clear and straightforward: Throw an ice bucket over your head, commit to donating to the ALS Association, and nominate friends in your video to keep the chain going. The ALS Association is spending the money on research, patient care, etc.

I don’t see this kind of simple message with the McWhopper Proposal, and certainly not the difference it’s going to make for peace in the world. The ice bucket videos weren’t branded, so maybe it’s just a bad comparison altogether. World Peace is a great ideal but not as simple as researching a cure to a disease, even the most difficult one.

The video suggests Atlanta as a middle ground between two US locations, none of which are or have been at war for a long time. Maybe well played Burger King, but what are you actually going to do in the name of World Peace then..?

I agree that these companies have the kind of size and influence required to make changes on society, but in this context I fail to see how Burger King and McDonald’s can make a positive difference towards peace in the world with a McWhopper restaurant in Atlanta. If anything, it may just be showing how much more people like fast food than the idea of world peace.

I also think fun and play is important, and if that’s only what Burger King has in mind, then great. That said, just tell us what this is actually doing for World Peace, because I don’t think the so called “war” between two fast food giants is what the UN wanted to solve by creating the International Day of Peace.

Or am I being too cynical (for a change)?

Who Does Advertising Serve?

Bronze plate printing an advertising for the Liu family needle shop at Jinan. Song Dynasty era (960 – 1270). One of the earliest existing examples of printed advertising.

I’m catching up on some reading and came across this article written by Tracy Follows: “Cannes Lions: will advertising ever again be about the people it serves?”.

At first I didn’t take any special notice at the title, I might have been paying more attention to the Cannes Lions part of it. I was mostly nodding to myself in agreement at several points made as I was reading. And then towards the end the title question appears again and that’s when I really took notice:

“The question for the future, then, is this: will advertising ever again be about the people it serves?”

You might think I’m being too concerned with semantics, and you might be right. I may well be focusing on a different definition of the word service than Tracy had in mind. In any case, I thought: “Wait a second, when has advertising ever been about serving the people it’s made for? Who does advertising serve?”

Just to be clear, I enjoyed the article and I agree with Tracy’s interesting points made about creativity vs. media and technology, about the fascination of the industry with technology at the detriment of creativity or better understanding people.

At the same time I can’t help but thinking there is a slight leap made in the article that jarred with me. It’s related to the word serving, and the notion of service. I went to read the Wikipedia article about advertising for a quick history overview, to make sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious about the origins and history of the practice.

I picked the image above from there, apparently one of the first still existing examples of printed branding and advertising, for a needle shop in Song Dynasty China, between 927 – 1270. It seems like an old enough example to suit my purpose. Along with the rabbit brand logo representing the Liu family name, the text above and below reads:

“We buy high quality steel rods and make fine quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time”

Who does this serve, first and foremost? I say it serves the Liu family needle shop. Advertising serves the client, the company advertising or promoting their products and services. It doesn’t serve the consumer, not first at least. I don’t think it ever has, so it would be difficult to have it be about that again.

Advertising, the modern 20th century style of it in particular, is about creating demand and persuading people they want or need something, whether they actually need those things or not, or whether it’s useful or not.

 

Both World Wars and cigarette advertising are famously what allowed the advertising to grow into what it is has become today. I remember visiting the Weapons of Mass Communication exhibition at London’s Imperial War Museum years ago, which was very interesting in that regard. With what we know about the ill-health effects of smoking nowadays, I find it tough to say those ads were serving the people they were destined for.

I absolutely agree it’s ideal if advertising is made for the people it is destined to. It is better when ads are concerned with real people, their lives, motivations, feelings, concerns, etc. In rare cases I’m even inclined to believe advertising serves the consumers as well as the advertiser.

It is probably part of the reasons most people dislike advertising: everybody knows it’s trying to have them do something, most often buy something – possibly against their will. Nobody likes the impression of being influenced or manipulated against their will.

I’m writing all this because I believe it is possible for advertising to be relevant, entertaining, and even useful to the people it is destined for. I think that’s an important point the heart of Tracy’s article, and if I’m correct in my understanding I agree. I don’t know if there was a time the industry did a better job at that, but I’m sure it can do better now. I aim to help with that in the work I do with clients, though I admit I don’t always succeed as much as I’d like to.

I also think mass communication can be used to make a positive difference for people. I recently found out about The International Exchange and it’s great to see this type of exciting projects in the world, committed to making a difference with the help of communication professionals.

That said, I’m questioning the distinction of who advertising serves because I think it’s important to be honest and realistic about it. The next question could be: if it serves the advertisers, then how can it serve them better by being for the people they are targeting?

To finish on a another thought, I particularly liked this definition of service in the Merriam-Webster:

2c. Contribution to the welfare of others.

Going one step further with this definition in mind, if advertising served the people it is targeted to, then how would it influence products and services being developed by advertisers, rather than the other way round?

22/08/2015 update:

In the middle of an unrelated conversation a day after writing this, a friend reminded me that the origins of the verb to serve and servir (we were talking in French) are from the latin servire, literally “be enslaved”, related to servus “slave”. The meaning then extended to being a servant later on, and then even later into the figurative kind of meaning I used for this post.

Taken in this sense, the title also makes for an interesting question to ponder: Who is enslaved to advertising?

 

Le Coq à l'Ane is Open!

My brother Morgan opened his first restaurant & wine bar on Saturday 1st August, which I was – and still am – very excited about! It is called Le Coq à l’Ane, a playful name based on a French saying which translates best in English as a non sequitur, going from thing to another completely unrelated or illogically. Literally the saying translates as “going from rooster (or cock) to donkey” and the restaurant name can literally translate as “the donkeyed rooster (or cock)”.

My brother told me the saying was used as early as the 14th century in France, and “l’âne” then was spelled “l’asne” and designated a female duck rather than a donkey. The saying originally referred to farm cocks that would have sex with ducks.

As for the restaurant, Morgan liked the sound of it, and he feels it reflects what guests will be experiencing when they visit, depending on what produce are available at the market and his inspiration or mood, one day he might be cooking something very elaborate and gastronomic, and the next day a simple like you’re at home Catalan sausage and mash, or an Indian curry another day. Main dishes can change suddenly with no rhyme or reason, yet you can be sure it will all be delicious and very affordable.

The restaurant is in the small village of Latour-de-France, by a lovely river. The village has a reputation amongst all-natural wine aficionados; while small the village boasts twelve different independent organic and/or all natural winemakers. The restaurant is also a wine cellar, so you can try different local wines and craft beers, or select a bottle and enjoy it at home or by the river with friends. For now he mostly has wines from the village, and he intends to get wines from other regions of France soon enough.

Morgan cooked delicious slow-roasted pork ribs and mashed potatoes for opening night dinner

The opening night was a success and different generations of villagers came by to have drinks and plates of artisan cheese and charcuterie, the atmosphere was great and it was a pleasure to be there. We finished late at night with Morgan’s ex-colleagues from the previous place he worked at, La Coopérative Riberach, a Michelin-starred restaurant nearby.

 

If you’re in the South of France near Perpignan or know of anyone visiting, please come by or tell them about the restaurant! In the meantime, they are regularly updating the Facebook Page with photos and information, check it out!