Ostrich down under

 

Some good news from one of my favourite local brands, Engelbert Strauss. 

They're going to try their luck down under. And the interesting thing, as always, with Strauss, is not what they're doing - entering the Australian market - but why, and how.

The "why?" is simple - Strauss has the ambition to be the first global workwear brand, recognised across more countries and continents than any other. And why not? Given that the German car industry is not in the best of health these days, it's good to see the local heroes carrying the flag. And what better place than Australia, where the "Tradie is King", a rough, tough land known for good honest hard work.

The "how" is interesting, too. In retail terms, Strauss is departing from the usual formula of their own outlets plus online, and will be selling through a partnership with DIY retailer Bunnings. This decision was taken to create initial speed and momentum.

In terms of promotion, Strauss are sticking to their successful formula of sports sponsorship. But here again, there's a twist. The deal isn't with rugby or cricket, but with the Australian Football League. Australian Rules Football has a more working class fanbase than the other "national sports."

But it's not going to be an easy game. Australia has its own home-grown workwear brands. There's Hard Yakka "Aussie Rules Workwear" established back in 1930. "Yakka" comes from the Aboriginal word for "work", and this lot aren't sitting around on their tea break, either - they launched in the UK in 2022.

Even older established - in 1926 - is KingGee - named for the monarch at the time, King George V. The expression means "the tops", hence the slogan "You wear the crown". 

Which brings us back to our feathered friends above. Which of the two giant flightless birds would win in a scrap over territory? The ostrich is bigger and faster, but the emu has tenacity and resilience - as well as being a good swimmer. 

On the other hand, Australia is a damned big place, so maybe there's enough room for them to work together.

G'day!

Down in the dumps

 

Re-using, thrift, second hand, vintage, hand-me-downs - these ideas have been with me for as long as I've been wearing clothes (!). As a child, I wore my brother's hand-me-downs as long as they hadn't been too destroyed from tree climbing and falling off bikes. In my teenage years, I rummaged around at jumble sales and leapt on anything quirky older relatives were chucking out. I still have my mum's early 60s pastel green cat-eye RayBans. Then were the High Street charity shops I frequented in my lunch breaks to while away the time. And working in London, Flip was one of my favourite destinations. 

From the perspective of my desk, a lot of what I read about circularity in the fashion industry sounds positive. This post by Laura Vicaria, a strategy consultant who specialises in circularity (her website is here) is typical. Drawing on reports from McKinsey et al, Laura cites positive-sounding developments. New clothing volumes in Europe are shrinking. In France, Vinted outsells every clothing retailer by volume. 

The post naturally talks about the intention:action gap, which is one of the biggest challenges for anyone who works in sustainability. From my own point of view, I've begun to see this a little differently. 

Desk View and Street View.

As I move away from paid work, I am out and about a lot more. And what I see doesn't always correspond to what I've read sitting at my desk. I'd love to think that people are cutting down on new unnecessary stuff, and are busy selling on Vinted or re-purposing old curtains into jaunty shoulder bags.

But, generally, they are not. I've helped with a couple of apartment clear-outs/moves lately. Good intentions aside, there was simply no time or energy to sort stuff out into what could be resold/repurposed and stick it all on ebay. No time, even to sort out the rubbish properly. Towards the end, it all went into the same black sacks to be dumped, to meet the deadline for the handover.

Whatever people's good intentions in theory/Desk View, Street View doesn't have the luxury of time, energy, unlimited resources. There are deadlines. There are health problems and physical constraints. There are inadequacies in the infrastructure when it comes to getting rid of stuff.

The photo above was taken outside a supermarket in my town. Until recently, clothing and textile containers stood on street corners and carparks, collected by commercial organisations for re-use and recycling. There were even regular collections. But in the last few months these have stopped. The main reason is people misusing the containers to dump rubbish of all sorts. 

The only places to get rid of usable clothing now are the Red Cross (I'm praying people don't start dumping rubbish in those containers) and the local tip, which is only open two days a week.

I'd love to see some clever solutions to the growing problem of Getting Rid of Stuff that come from a Street View perspective. 

But in the meantime, it's all making me rather down in the dumps.

  

The Discounter of Cool

 

I wrote here about the first stage of ALDI's metamorphosis back in the early 2000s - as the dreary "pile it high and sell it cheap" discounter found first social acceptance, then positive social approval. There were several factors behind this, not least of all a well-timed in-your-face ad campaign that hit the spirit of the age bullseye. And, most interesting of all, the campaign wasn't from ALDI, but electronics discounter Saturn. 

ALDI's new ad campaign #ALDIstory takes up this theme, and does it pretty well in my view. It reflects how kids carrying their school stuff in ALDI carrier bags, or wearing ALDI jackets were mocked back in the 1990s by their classmates. But today, everyone shops at ALDI. 

The film touches on a further stage of metamorphosis - positive social approval to cult status amongst some groups. The people at the end of the film are wearing or carrying items from the ALDImania collection - ironic/streetwear branded items, from Christmas sweaters to sliders to retro-sneakers to hoodies. And a carrier bag or two.

ALDI has earned the right to do this as far as I'm concerned. Their communications approach has been pretty coherent since I've lived here. But other discounters haven't quite got it. You can be cool, but you can't buy cool.

Penny is one of the worst offenders for inconsistent, incoherent communication. One minute it's sanctimonious, depressing finger-pointing stuff about societal problems. 

Then we get this: 

Influencers giving a run-down Penny supermarket a makeover in their own style.

OK, OK, I know I'm not the target audience, and it's not quite as objectionable as the saving the world guff. But, come on - "Pimp my Penny"? Isn't that ghastly expression past its sell-by date?

And while we're on glamorous influencers, I'm not quite sure about ALDImania Barbie. Possibly a bit too much up its own cult? I do suspect these will be bought by kidults rather than parents, though.

 

  

Singing the AI Blues all the way to the bank

We had a pretty grim 13 hour drive back from the annual seaside holiday yesterday. We'd been enjoying the delights of Baška on the island of Krk, a holiday that involved plenty of snorkelling, good food, red wine and ... music.

I know I'm a bit late coming to the "singer" pictured above. Still, it was interesting to discover his music, sitting on the dock of the bay (more or less). We'd ordered our food, probably had a sip or two of wine, when I became aware of the background music. We like to play "spot the intro" when sitting in bars, but couldn't quite place this one. Sounded like bluesy soul with a bit of an Otis Redding feel about it. 

We were both a bit irritated by the lyrics, but couldn't say exactly why. And after ignoring the music for a few minutes I then asked my husband:

Is this still the same song playing, or another one?

It was definitely the same voice, same style of music, same rather cliched world-weary lyrics, but it was almost impossible to tell where one song stopped and the next started. 

We reached for Shazam. 

No result.

I suspected AI in play and said as much. The next time the lady serving came to our table, my husband (with more guts and perhaps less diplomacy than me) asked:

We're curious about this music. Do you mind me asking if you've made it with AI?

Oh no, no, the lady explained. I've got a paid-for YouTube account with no ads and I discovered him on there. Hang on, I'll tell you his name. She came back with a big smile - Eddie Dalton, she said. Do you like the music?

Very pleasant, my husband answered, more diplomatically than usual.

It didn't take us long to discover the truth about Eddie Dalton. He's got millions of YouTube views and followers, been No.1 on iTunes etc. etc.

And, of course he is "created" by a content "creator" called Dallas Ray Little (which may not be his real name). This character churns out a lot of music of various genres on his Crunchy Records label. 

If you look on YouTube, "Eddie" is there in all his smooth, soulful glory, with songs titled "Another Day Old" or "Cheap Red Wine."

I suspect, if I'd heard one or two songs in isolation, I wouldn't have twigged. Would have thought it was a new artist paying homage to the great 60s soul- and bluesman. Or maybe someone from that era who'd never made it as big as he should have.

But there's nothing on YouTube labelling Eddie Dalton as AI. 

Does this matter? On the one hand, maybe people don't care. From the comments on the videos, people - especially the 60+ age group - find the music soothing and the bittersweet lyrics resonate. And is it really any different to the muzak, lift music, chill-out music etc. that previous decades have produced? As my husband said, one or two of the songs are "pleasant" enough to listen to.

Dallas Ray Little claims to write the songs, but I doubt it. The lyrics sound like he's prompted the machine to go through the back catalogue of every soul and blues singer, plus a few MOR artists and string a few cliches together on the subject of drinking to forget, or regretting you were so mean to her, or lamenting about lost youth. 

It pissed me off, and made me feel embarrassed that the charming lady at the restaurant thought Eddie Dalton was real. While Dallas Ray Little - whoever they are - is raking in the profits.

Still, we had plenty of real music of all sorts, too. Brass Palmas for starters. And then a glorious impromptu singalong in a little restaurant where musical instruments were taken down from the walls and English, Argentinian, Austrian, Italian and Croatian all sang Let it Be together.

It wasn't smooth, it wasn't perfect. To anyone listening, it may not have been pleasant, either.

But we were singing from our hearts.

 

BREXILE: A nasty outbreak of Brand Voice

 

Now that I've officially Brexiled myself, my visits to England this summer have been as a tourist. I've noticed on occasions that I feel like a stranger in the country of my birth.

Not for the reasons that the black balaclava lot and their ilk would have you believe, but something else. It's a nasty outbreak of Brand Voice, encountered on airlines, ferries, in shops, packaging, pubs and hotels. And the particular variant that made me wonder "are they talking to me, a (long) grown-up woman with a qualification or two and a reasonably high-powered career behind me?" is this: CBeebie-ese.

The problem with CBeebie-ese is that's it's developed centrally (and I expect with a load of "help" from AI) but doesn't necessarily match the context in which it's used.

I was staying in a beautiful country inn, part of the Chef & Brewer group. They're part of Greene King. Most of the pubs and inns under the Chef & Brewer name are traditional places, in historic buildings and rural surroundings. The one I stayed in was a place we'd go for an extremely posh lunch when I was a child. 

Staying there made me wonder if I'm still a child.

The once-elegant surroundings are riddled with CBeebie-ese.

Take the menu above - "Picky Bits." I can only think of noses, snot and spots, none of which are at all appetising.  To be honest, "Nibbles" isn't any better. Much as I love hamsters, I'm not a rodent of any kind. 

Then there's this. "Pop(ping) to reception" sounds like quite a hazardous occupation. Maybe the instruction should be to "carefully plod", just to be on the safe side?

Well, it is Chef & Brewer, I suppose. But in this case, it's a direct quote from cooks, rather than chefs. Big Cook Little Cook, as seen on - you've guessed it - CBeebies.

This one has less of the chirpy tonality and sounds a bit more ominous. Was I staying in a hostel for severely disturbed youths? Not sure that the colourful flowers exactly go with the message.

Still, maybe it could be worse. At another pub, I saw a notice where the Brand Voice was that of an unhinged teacher at the end of their tether:

Less CBeebies, and more Grange Hill (or its 21st century equivalent).

 
 

RETROWURST: Globetrotting Gourmets (October 1972)

Time to show off this beautiful branded bit of marvellousness, given to me by an old chum as a memento of working on the British Airways account together. Although this dates back to the days of BOAC when British Airways was just a twinkle in someone's sky. 

The magnificent menu evokes the glory of international travel in the early 1970s. It's from 1972, when the Jumbo Jet (747) this lucky lot would have flown in was likely brand spanking new. The journey was London - Sydney, with 6 stops in between. Frankfurt - Beirut - Teheran - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Darwin. Almost 26 hours airborne. 

And I'd guess that you'd be unlikely to fit into your size 10 Pucci bikini on Bondi Beach if you took full advantage of the food and drink. 

Fresh Cornish lobster, Steak, pheasant & mushroom pie, Prawn Cocktail, Stuffed baby marrows, Seafood profiterole, Baked lobster thermidor, Breast of duckling with apple and prunes, washed down with Negronis, fine vintage wines selected from the great vineyards of Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhine, Cockburns Fine Old Tawny Port etcetera, etcetera.

I hope there were not too many cases of Mr Creosote.

The world and life have changed, of course. First Class passengers today skulk around slightly shamefacedly in sloppy designer leisurewear, trying not to think about the environment.

But if I could have a time machine, I could do worse than joining that flight half way round the world, gazing out at the endless sky, sipping a cool glass of champagne and nibbling on some vol-au-vents.

 

 

The (weirdly) beautiful game

The 2026/7 season has just kicked off, and here's a jolly marvellous ad from bookmaker Paddy Power to get us into the spirit. 

It sums up the weird and wonderful world of football fans. There's great casting, an idea, plenty of clever references to spot, attitude in spades - and the best tagline I've heard for a long time.

Why the football not?

Congratulations to brand and agency - BBH London.

I bet (ahem!) it's even got some of those sanctimonious types who'd never work on gambling or alcohol accounts thinking.