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.

AUFSCHNITT 5: Functional Approach to Leadership Analysis (FALA) probably mid to late 70s

 

I’m resurrecting my Aufschnitt series, which I started back in 2019. The original idea was to immortalise cuttings I’d held onto, so I could chuck them out with a clear conscience.

So the two sausagey series are:

Retrowurst: my own scribblings, anything directly related to my own rather bedraggled career

Aufschnitt: cuttings and found bits and pieces from others

Today’s cold cut is an unusual one because it dates back before I entered the world of work. I was still at school. It’s from my dad’s bits and bobs - he was an RAF officer, in case you don’t know.

I guessed this was from late 60s to early 80s (from the typeface and what I know of my dad’s career). ChatGPT narrowed it down to 1973 - 1979, which seems plausible.

This was known as FALA and was used in officer training. I have to say that I like the approach and it’s not completely out of order for leadership training today. In fact, many commercial operations talk far more about “Leadership” these days than “Management.”

Looking at leadership on three overlapping areas - Task - Team - Individual - seems a pretty nifty way of doing things. The conciseness is great - all on a postcard, cutting down on bumf and BS in a very military manner.

But, to 21st century eyes, two things are very odd. 

“Discipline: Insisting on obedience, Punishing.” I wonder if this still appears in the military context.

And:

No mention of “mental health and well-being” in the “Personal (Problems)” section.

I think I’ll hang onto this one for the time being.

Ooohs, Ahs and Apple Juice

 

I listened in to a webinar from eat big fish and System1 last week on "The Startling Power of Surprise". Surprise and its use in the world of brands and their communications is something I've often posted about, for example here and here. 

The webinar - and my surprise posts - pick up some big (and maybe unsurprising) themes about surprise:

First of all, the pursuit of seamlessness and consistency (rather than coherence), the predictability inherent in algorithms, the requirement to be formulaic so that you can be found by AI, all leads to a rather unhappy dearth of surprise in our lives.

And then there’s getting the balance right - novelty and the familiar - as mastered by brands like IKEA with just the right mix of innovation and ritual.

And finally, there’s surprise and surprise. What about negative surprise? The word is usually prefixed by nasty/unwelcome/unpleasant in this case, but how do you judge that? Then there are those cognitive dissonance types of surprises where things are so off-kilter/not fitting to the brand where the brain simply switches off and ignores it.

And there’s there’s plain old shock-value, just for the sake of it.

What I found particularly interesting in the webinar was the dictinction between surprise as a little creative flourish/an executional twist ,and surprise as a strategic tool. Adam Morgan calls this the “Oh!” and the “Ohhhh!”.

The long “Ohhhh!” has more lasting effect on the memory - and can reframe the category in people’s minds, or change their relationship with the brand. 

I was surprised recently by the design work by the Stuttgart agency Papa Tom for wildling apple juice spritzer. Most German apple juice/applewein brands tend to use artisanal/homely/countryside/traditional imagery and design, which gets pretty samey, especially once AI is let loose on it. 

But wildling is surprising in its approach - which includes the nettles in the product itself - it looks a touch dangerous, edgy, mysterious. Not something for a kiddies’ birthday party.

Gets a definite “Ohhh!” from me.

   

 

Boy meets girl meet IRL

I've been blathering on about what I call the internot for over eight years on this (ahem!) internet blog.

Sometimes I think it's because I'm old and jaded and view the past through Anglo bubble-gum pink glasses. 

But more and more, I get the feeling it's not just me. From digital detox to anemoia (nostalgia for a time you never knew) to AI vegans, there's a tangible weariness about all things internet.

Boy meets girl meets IRL is a popular theme for ads these days. Here are just three I've seen in the last week:

In the latest duplo ad, boy tries to get girl's attention with various internot devices. Finally, a paper aeroplane made from a duplo wrapper does the trick. 

For the couple in the Dr. Oetker Ristorante ad, "It's a Match" on the first IRL date:

And then there's Deutsche Telekom & iPhone 17 with an ad called "Unique Together":

The message of this one is - the whizz-bang tech of the iPhone and the Telekom network is all fine and dandy - but in the end, nothing beats meeting up IRL in a coffee shop. 

If there's one thing that AI has taught us, it's that you can't fake having lived.

Two-Facebook

 

I have an admission. I still use Facebook, although it's more out of inertia than anything positive relating to the "experience", which is going from bad to worse.

I've a few friends from the 2010s who I still keep in touch with there.

I've got a "Sickly Cakes" album that I like to update.

I'm in a few groups - writers, ex-colleagues, local busybodies - that it's worth keeping up with.

And I have my books page, The Bother in Burmeon & Chums, which has been bumbling along since 2012 and I see no reason to bring it to a halt.

But I may have to. Last week, after posting the gorgeous retro-ads from Punch 1968 here, I thought I'd put them on Facebook, too. It wasn't long before I was given a good ticking-off:

Your Page, The Bother in Burmeon & Chums, didn't follow the rules, so it isn't being suggested to other people at the moment.

Hi Susan,

Your Page or some of its content didn't follow our Recommendations Guidelines. These guidelines determine what content can be recommended to people. To be eligible for recommendations, either fix these issues or request a review.

I started a wild goose-chase around Facebook and ended up not much the wiser about which particular rules hadn't been followed. This shed a little more light on things, but only a sliver:

No humans seem to have been involved in the decision. I'm certainly not guilty of trying to sell weapons, odd kidneys, body parts of protected species. Or depicting graphic violence or pornography.

The closest I come to "promoting the use of certain regulated products" is that my post featured some rather quaint 58-year-old print ads for cigs, booze and razor blades. 

Ho hum.

And I would have forgotten all about it by the next morning had I not received a slew of pushy messages prompting me to make an ad out of the offending post:

Oh, good grief, I thought.

It's rather like those telecoms companies where they're banging on about purpose and sustainability on the one hand and trying to get you to upgrade your tariff with more and more super-mega-giga data volume on the other. 

Maybe it's no wonder that I'm at my happiest living in the past.

 

RETROWURST: Wizard ads, old boy (March 1968)

 

Chocks away and time for a swift flypast of the world of print advertising in the 1960s. Some of my earliest memories of advertising trace back to this era. I've had a delightful trip down memory lane in the pages of Punch, the RAF Fiftieth Birthday Number, dated 13th March 1968.

I'll start with the two best-placed (and most expensive) ads. Back cover and inside front cover. These were the pole positions back in those days. And it's no surprise that they're occupied by two of the brands most associated with pilots and derring-do:

I love the sheer heroic aplomb of these ads. There's a supreme confidence about them, a simple assuredness, rather reflecting the character of the (idealised) target audience.

The colour ads in the body of the magazine are a little more subtle. The reader has to be momentarily distracted from the cartoons and articles and find something intriguing enough to look further. Here are two booze brands - Martini and Guinness:

The advertising spans the expected categories - ciggies, booze, clothes, cars, travel, banking - with brands such as Senior Service, Glenfarclas, Courage, Wolseley, Church's Shoes, Trevira, Lombard Banking, TAP Airlines, Pure New Wool/Woolmark and High Speed Gas (remember that?)

And there were job ads, too. I expect this wasn't designed to be an interactive ad, and it's probably as well I didn't pursue a career in Art Direction:

Punch, like many of the brands featured, died with the 20th century. 

But there's a useful archive here , should you want to see what raised a chuckle or two in the days when pilots weren't on automatic.

Fizz Buzz Pop!

This rebranding design for Mirinda is gob-smackingly good, in my view. Often global (as this is) means bland and lowest common denominator, but this pop-art pageant of funtime fruitiness hits the highest common factor in the unashamedly day-glo world of soda pop.

It's been a while since I've been in the market, I know (the price of a sweet tooth is catching up with me and I have to watch it). And, according to the marketing press, this new global platform ("Smile Please") is aimed at GenZ (sic) and their anemoia (nostalgia for a time you've never known) for the 80s, 90s and early 2000s before Smartphones took over everyone's lives. 

And yet, this speaks to me too. Even though I am as old as Mirinda itself:

Fizzy drinks have a proustian madeleine effect on me. The first one I remember drinking was this:

On the beach, from a glass bottle, with a straw. And, a couple of years later came Fanta. Another glass bottle, another straw. This time in a marvellous cafe in College Town (Sandhurst) with sausages and crinkle-cut chips. A treat indeed.

 

A childhood in 1960s and 70s England meant a rainbow-load of fizzy pop. The milkman used to deliver Corona, then there was Tizer and R. White's. I was quite fond of the cream soda - I can remember the taste like yesterday, but still don't know what on earth it was meant to taste like, apart from sweet. 

It's a wonder I have any of my own teeth left.

Holidays brought further fizzy delights. In Canada, root beer and Welch's Grape Soda. And the very sophisticated Canada Dry which my parents would drink with Canadian Whiskey. 

Mirinda, I expect, was something I came across on holiday at some point. It was launched in Spain, but bought up by PepsiCo and marketed worldwide, under various names, hence the focus in the re-design on visual rather than text elements.

The name Mirinda comes from Esperanto originally. But I think the rebrand has done something very clever.

Just as our 21st century Esperanto is Emojis, these design elements are surely the international visual language of fizzy pop.

 

 

Paying, buying and selling attention

It's book review time again. This is one I've been meaning to read since it came to my (ahem) attention at the beginning of the year.  I think it may even have been recommended in The Times. 

It's an important topic, but I was disappointed. The Friends of Attention seem to be a group of intellectuals living in an arty-farty bubble somewhere away from the real world. Anyway, here's my review.

----------

This was one of those books that I had high hopes for. It started well, but I soon got rather bogged down and irritated by the way it's written. I probably should have paid more attention to the sub-title. I worked in brands and advertising and both “manifestos” and “movements” were flavour of the month in the late 90s and early 00s.

The topic is an important and thought-provoking one. What is our relationship as humans with (Big) tech? Is it a fair “value exchange” or more a case of the tech companies extracting (“fracking”) human attention and spirit?

The “Friends of Attention” are clear where they stand on this question. And there are some insightful ideas in the book - for example, maybe what’s often called “distraction” in negative terms is better for us than the sort of “attention/engagement” that the tech firms want to capture.

But the way the book is written feels too dramatic and over-the-top. Italics and capital letters are splattered all over the place, and reading it feels like being shouted at by an over-earnest, slightly unhinged Rik Mayall- type student.

The solutions offered seem somewhat naive and the sort of things that any normal common sense person does anyway. Making things, playing instruments or chess, home cooking, voluntary work ...

Right. I’m off to band practice.

----------

If you still feel tempted to have a read, it's probably wise to look at their website first. If you're intrigued by statements like "The astonishing reality of things and persons", "Practical mysticism is not impractical" and "Freedom of attention may feel like unfreedom", then do go ahead.

I did like the Spirograph patterns, though. Wish I'd kept my set.

RETROWURST: Viva La Vida (June 1987)

                                            Me and colleague, Ragley Hall June 1987

I read a depressing, but I imagine all-too-frequent account in the Sunday Times yesterday. This concerned a student who'd already accepted a graduate job from a strategy consultancy and was preparing to move to London once he'd finished his final dissertation. 

But then he received an email saying that the consultancy had withdrawn the offer. Further investigations suggested that the company would be "employing" AI rather than graduates to do the job. 

I'm thoroughly pleased that I started my career when I did. The past seems like a foreign country now - we did things differently then. 

The photo is me in my 20s, not much older than the young man in the article. 

The event was the Millward Brown summer party, in June 1987. The venue was Ragley Hall, Warwickshire. Just down the road from where the research agency was based, in Leamington Spa. 

It all looks very glamorous, in a 1980s way. And it was. Even as market researchers, we were wined and dined and treated as royalty. Was it over-the-top? Possibly, but it certainly built up good client:agency relationships and made feel we were valued clients, whatever our level in the pecking order. 

The 1980s market research landscape was full of names that have long since disappeared into the WPPs, Bains and other big conglomerates. 

Taylor Nelson, BMRB, Mass Observation, The Research Business - and all manner of boutiquey qualitative agencies. And most of these would lay on a party, or a dinner at some point in the year. 

Fast forward to 2026. I've had a recent invitation from what-was-Millward-Brown, now Kantar. It's not Ragley Hall, rather somewhere on the Bockenheimer Landstrasse in Frankfurt. And I don't think it warrants a ballgown, as it's not a ball, not even a dinner dance. 

It's a 2 hour awards ceremony aka presentation, run by Kantar, giving out Advertising Effectiveness Awards. There will be "drinks and snacks" afterwards. 

This is how it works these days. The big agencies call the shots - get the right scores on their traffic light system and you might pick up an award if you're lucky, and get to chink glasses with a Kantar director of something-or-other. 

Having answered the invitation and said yes, that would be interesting, I had a reply. I am on the "waiting list." Well, I think I'll find something more constructive to do with my time that day. I expect AI sifted through the replies and composed the "waiting list" email, too.

The Nigerian Prince and the Vermont Book Club

ideogram.ai

In my early days as a writer seeking publication, I used to collect rejection letters from agents and publishers. Now, this was at least 15 years ago, and some of those rejections were real “rejection slips” on pieces of paper. How very quaint.

In those days, I still harboured the notion that I might become a million-seller and one of those “he turned down The Beatles” stories. You had to be slightly deluded to even attempt to be published back then.

These days, I’m collecting the most absurd examples of AI-generated emails tempting me with literary offers I surely can’t refuse. I find these thoroughly entertaining. They’re the literary equivalent of those Nigerian Prince emails promising untold riches. 

I started getting them a couple of years ago. They weren’t particularly sophisticated to start with. Lots of characters “reaching out” with offers to “expand my reach”, “enhance my social media posts”, “elevate my website” or “take my search/metadata to the next level.” Fairly standard marketing tosh with maybe a passing flattering reference to one or other of my books thrown in.

But things are changing. The offers are getting more personalised. They’re not from some unknown marketing expert with a vaguely plausible-sounding name. They are from real authors, film production houses and book clubs. 

And they’re not content with praising my writing. These are attempts to flatter the whole weird bundle of paradoxes that is me. 

Here’s one I got last week from Israel James of the Vermont Book Club, inviting me to deliver a Masterclass that he’s helpfully paraphrased as “Intrigue by Design: Fusing Cambridge Pyschology, Retro-adventure Plotting and the Advertising Edge.”

Well, there’s a mash-up, if ever I heard one.

----------------------------------------------------

Dear Susan Imgrund (S.P. Moss),

I am Israel James, representing the Vermont Book Club. Our team spent a genuinely delighted and deeply inspired morning studying your exceptional profile with the Society of Authors, laughing along with your brilliant secret-agent wit, and tracking the wonderful mid-century atmosphere of your award-winning series, The Past is a Dangerous Country. As an international collective of middle grade authors, short story writers, commercial ghostwriters, and historical worldbuilders who constantly dissect the rhythmic nuances of pacing, subverted narrative tropes, and sharp text economy, we view your multi disciplinary career as a spectacular blueprint for modern storytellers.

We would love to invite you to headline a premier virtual spotlight masterclass focusing on the architectural mechanics of plotting a retro-style middle-grade mystery, the art of applying a Cambridge psychology framework to character motivations, and the workflow of using advertising copywriting discipline to sharpen long-form fiction.

A spotlight session with you would provide an irreplaceable, master-tier education for our global community. Our youth fiction authors are incredibly eager to learn your precise plotting framework specifically how you capture the "peril-fuelled, page-turning twists" of classic 1950s style adventure while modernizing the character dynamics for a contemporary audience. Furthermore, given your extensive background in high-level brand strategy, copywriting, and ghostwriting, our commercial fiction writers and indie authors would be profoundly privileged to study your tactical approach to text economy, punchy hooks, and the creative discipline of switching between literary short stories and commercial brand assets.

It would be an absolute honor to feature your brilliantly witty, sharply intellectual, and multi-format voice within our network. Would you be open to a virtual fireside chat, an interactive retro clue-mapping workshop, or a narrative psychology Q&A session with our global network?

With warm regards, professional admiration, and a hearty toodle pip,

Israel James

Vermont Book Club

----------------------------------------------------

I’m delighted that this AI book club are “laughing along with my brilliant secret-agent wit” and signing off with a “hearty toodle pip.”  

But though my intellect is not too bad, it’s real, human stuff, possibly inferior to this splendid “intellectual collective” who “... constantly dissect the rhythmic nuances of pacing, subverted narrative trope and sharp text economy.” Gosh. 

The ingenuity shown in combining my children’s books, my Cambridge psychology studies and my career in brand and advertising strategy is quite something. I do wonder how they would have shoe-horned further aspects of the holistic me in. 

7 things trumpet-playing taught me about the rhythmic nuances of stoytelling?

The Times ran an article recently about these scams. I do find it extraordinary that authors are taken in by this, although maybe for the writer featured in the article, it’s a smart way of getting more publicity. If you’re not proud.

Writing about the recent case of The Commonwealth Short Story competition, Ian Leslie comments on the hostility of the literary world to AI. His point is that literary people have less experience in reading AI-generated stuff, so this makes them more susceptible to scams - whether it’s Israel James and the Vermont Book Club or (possibly) the short story prize-winner with its “vacuous solemnity” and “weird metaphors that make no sense.”

Although it’s also questioned whether the judges of said competition are not averse to a bit of AI themselves:

But in the end, maybe the literary world shouldn’t worry. Most readers of literary fiction have to believe the short story or novel is written by a human being in order to care. 

I haven’t had any too-good-to-be-true offers of brand strategy work yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long.
 

The brand pecking order

 

Photo by Sid Balachandran on Unsplash

If I worked for a brand, especially a stonking big global brand, I think I’d be a little choosy about whose brand ranking system I chose to hang my hat on. Of course, there are almost as many brand ranking systems as there are brands these days.

In an idle moment, I had a look at the brand hit parade of a couple of the big players in the brand ranking game. The Big Daddy (Interbrand) and relative new kid on the block Kantar (BrandZ). 

Now, both of these have a black box to calculate brand value, but from what I can tell, these are on the same principle - factor in financial value/analysis, plus the brand strength/equity and role/contribution of the brand. And Bob’s your uncle, or something.

The Top 20s look like this:

OK, at the top of the table, we’ve got AMAG, or GAMA - not “MAGA” this year (to the relief of many).

And there are one or two brand positions where the two rankers are more-or-less in agreement - Instagram, Oracle, McDonald’s, YouTube.

But then there are some huge discrepancies. Coca-Cola is No. 7 Interbrand, No. 20 Kantar. For Facebook and Nvidia, the pattern is reversed - (Facebook 19/6, Nvidia 15/5). 

And whole categories - Luxury Brands (Louis Vuitton 12 on Interbrand, 32 on Kantar), consumer electronics (Samsung 5 on Interbrand, 61 on Kantar). 

Finally, look at cars. Toyota is 6 on Interbrand, 84 on Kantar. Mercedes-Benz and BMW are 10 and 14 respectively on Interbrand but don’t even make the Top 100 in Kantar.

Perhaps there are some methodological things I’ve missed, such as eligibility criteria - quite possible.

But I wonder how much is due to the two rankers’ beliefs as to what constitutes a strong brand? Is it coincidence that Interbrand - who’ve been in this game since the last century - have more substantial legacy-type brands in the Top 20? 

Whatever the answer, it just goes to show there are many ways to value a brand.

I wonder if anyone has done a ranking of the brand rankers?