Tick Tock

A lot of brands seem to want to be like Madonna. Have you been caught up into one of those "we don't want to be seen like the Rolling Stones, stuck in one groove, we want to be like Madonna, continually re-inventing ourselves" conversations?

I went to see the Queen of Reinvention on Tuesday in Frankfurt. Madonna seems to sing "Tick Tock" rather a lot these days (I think it's taken over from "waiting...anticipating...hesitating" as her favourite phrase...) and it did occur to me that as well as being the Queen of Reinvention and the Queen of Pop, Madonna is the Queen of Tick Tock. Everything in her shows runs like clockwork. A Madonna performance is a triumph of straight-jacketed spontaneity, of disciplined decadence, of controlled creativity.

It was somewhat ironic that, once we left the concert, everything fell into chaos. You would expect the Commerzbank (as in Arena) and the German Police to be masters of efficiency and organisation. But a lack of basic signage and zero presence of anyone to shepherd thousands of concert-goers, mesmerised by the Queen of Tick Tock, back to their car parks resulted in countless distraught and tired people desperately seeking their cars in a pitch-black wood.

Now, if Madonna had only been in charge of car parking and signage as well, we wouldn't have had any waiting or hesitating and we would have all been tucked up in bed at least two hours earlier.