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.

RETROWURST: Rauchen verboten November 2007

 

For this year’s birthday party, I decided to make it non-smoking, at least indoors. A first for me. And it all went pretty well. The smokers were OK with standing outside when they wanted a ciggie and my clothes and our cellar bar didn’t stink to high heaven the next day. 

I’ve definitely become less tolerant of smoke, and perhaps it's no wonder - the ban on smoking in public has been in force for 18 years now. Here are my thoughts on lighting up and liberty in general from back then.

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We have now had just over a month of smoke-free Hessen. The smoking ban in public places came in here on 1^stOctober 2007 and, now that the cold weather is upon us, it’s worth taking a look at how this is going so far and at the topic of personal liberty generally in Germany.

 

Around 25% of Germans claim to be regular smokers, with an additional 4% as “occasionals”. I haven’t any up-to-date figures, but I believe this is slightly higher than the UK. Smoking is more prevalent amongst men (35%) than women (22%) and amongst manual workers, lorry and bus drivers (52%!) than amongst professionals such as doctors, pharmacists and teachers (a mere 18%). Again, similar to the UK, the percentage of smokers is falling but this seems due to more people in their 30s, 40s and 50s giving up rather than less young people starting. Teenage smoking, especially among girls, is still a social issue here.

 

The smoking ban, due to the governmental structure here, was carried out in a piecemeal fashion, in contrast to the UK. Each of the Länder had its own date and policy for the smoking ban and even now, there are different rules and regulations should I drive 15 km southwards to Bayern.

 

The other huge difference to the UK was the “low key” way that the ban was brought in and enforced. There was no expensive multi-media campaign heralding the ban and you would be pushed to find one beermat, sticker or sign in a Hessich pub or restaurant with Rauchen Verboten, or similar. Indeed, you may even find that the restaurant still has a room for smokers which seems to be allowable under the rules. And even if there is no place in the restaurant for a quick smoke, you are likely to find a pavilion and benches outside, complete with giant electric heaters. The result of this is that smokers have accepted the ruling rather better than they have in the UK. There is a feeling that they have been treated like adults and are responding like adults. The ban was announced matter-of-factly in the media, without a huge build-up or constant niggling to make smokers feel put-upon or militant. Of course, there have been mutterings and grumblings by the electric heaters but overall, one feels that people have accepted that this is now the way of the world.

 

Overall, there seems to be a less hysterical attitude to smoking in Germany than in the UK. Children can still buy “sweet cigarettes” here and cigarette vending machines are a more frequent sight than post boxes. It was only at the beginning of this year that these were fitted with a credit-card identity check; last year, anyone who was tall enough or resourceful enough could buy cigarettes at any time of the day or night. And smokers are rarely vilified as they are in the UK. The ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt frequently appears on television, pooh-poohing global warming while chain-smoking for Germany, although I must admit that I haven’t seen him since the ban!

 

I am not particularly pro or anti-smoking: after all, some of my best friends smoke! But it does occur to me that in Germany, there seems rather less hysterical telling us what we can and can’t do than in the UK. Or, rather, perhaps this is a more recent development in the UK which one simply doesn’t notice here as it has always been the case. If we take something like food labeling, I am freshly amazed each time I buy something in a UK supermarket as to how many warnings, stamps and “dos and don’ts” can fit onto a small label, from “may contain traces of nuts” to “part of your 5-a-day.” We have very, very little of this in Germany. This is partly because there is less packaging. If I buy apples, I’ll probably buy them loose and decide for myself whether they are “perfect for lunchboxes”. Or I’m pretty sure that the cheese that I buy from the cheese counter will contain milk, so I won’t be force-feeding it to anyone who has a dairy allergy. Most of my friends who are vegetarian are clever enough to work out what fits in their diet without those little green symbols everywhere.

 

The other reason is that people are treated as responsible adults here. There are no speed limits on the Autobahnsoutside built-up areas as people are expected to drive responsibly and there don’t seem to be more accidents here than anywhere else. In general, on the roads, there are less signs and road-markings and certainly nothing of the jokey “don’t be dirty, stick to thirty” variety. Although Germany has more than its fair share of petty rules and regulations, these tend not to be screamed at you from every roof top. Once you know what the rules are, you know who is responsible. End of story. So, if you slip on the ice in front of my house because I couldn’t be bothered to grit it, my insurance has to pay your medical bill. I am responsible and that’s clear. It probably won’t go through the courts.

 

Of course, the main reason that the nanny state hasn’t taken over in Germany is that they’ve been there and done that, as we all know. Being told what to do, how to behave and what to think by the state is something that Germans have had more than enough of. Perhaps the government in the UK should pause to think where it might all end.

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It’s difficult to get hold of comparable stats, but my best estimate is that the % of smokers in Germany (regular or occasional) has fallen from 29% to 22.7% in the last eighteen years. The decrease is more marked amongst men (35% to 25.7%) than women (22% to 19.6%).

Of course, during this time we’ve seen the rise of cigarette/tobacco alternatives from vapes and shishas to legalised cannabis. And cigarette vending machines still grace many a pavement. 

But there are clear signs of the Nanny State stomping into adults’ lives with food labelling and packaging, media and manufacturer band-waggoning on Veganuary, Sober October and whatever all those virtue-signalling months are called. I have even tried alcohol-free wine. It was nasty.

I think Covid has a lot to answer for.

At least it hasn’t got quite to the absurd stage that the UK has reached. In almost every restaurant we went to on our last visit, we were “greeted” with “any allergies?” before the waiter had even said hello to us. 

RETROWURST: Chemicals in Home & Garden September 2004

 

In September 2004, I wrote on the rather unpromising-sounding topic of chemicals in home and garden. Nevertheless, the article references schoolboy bombs, drinking your own urine and packs of fags for under £2. So here goes:

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In September, everyone in Germany is back from their holidays, feeling a little glum as the first leaves start falling in the beer gardens and the mini-golf courses close up for the Autumn. People retreat back into their homes, start packing away the summer clothes, inflatable boats, garden furniture and barbeques. It’s the time of year to make a bit of an effort in the garden and a recent visit to the garden centre has inspired the theme of this month’s Extrawurst - the German war against chemicals.

 

It may seem a paradox that the country that spawned so many chemical and drug giants - Hoechst and Bayer to name but two - should be waging war on chemicals, but please hear me out. To illustrate my point, let’s pop back to the garden centre. I was after something to kill off a few weeds- in the lawn and growing up between the patio stones. I didn’t anticipate any difficulty and had the German word for weeds - Unkraut, literally ‘un-herbs’ – in my head. In the UK, of course, it’s completely in order to pick up products off the shelf to rid your lawn and garden of dandelions, thistles, slugs and even unwanted cats. Only the neat Sodium Nitrate (or whatever it is) that my brother used to combine sugar with to make schoolboy bombs back in the 1970s is probably under slightly stricter control these days. In Germany, however, I searched high and low and couldn’t find any easily accessible products on the shelves of the garden centre. I eventually saw a locked cabinet behind an information desk and enquired hesitatingly if they had anything to rid my lawn of a few dandelions. I was subjected to a complete interrogation as to the dimensions of my lawn (who, other than the average German, knows exactly how many m² their lawn is??!!) and given a lecture as to how the products were not to be let near any footpath, pavement, road or any other public place (accompanied by pointing at large handwritten signs to this effect) before the cabinet was unlocked and my weed killer handed over.

 

Maybe some of this attitude can be put down to the inherent closeness and responsibility that Germans feel for the Umwelt, or environment. There are many words that exist in German which relate to the environment which don’t have a direct English translation- such as Mülltrennung, or ‘rubbish-sorting’. But the war against chemicals is also fought on fronts with a less direct connection with the environment. Some of you may remember my piece about the Kräuterhexwhich looked into the reluctance that Germans have about treating ailments with something that might actually work. While it’s quite easy to sneak into Superdrug in a UK high street and buy copious quantities of Anadin and Alka-Seltzer (or your preferred poison) to deal with the hangover from Hell, in Germany it is rather different. None of these remedies are available in the Supermarket or even the Drogerie. You are expected to go to the pharmacist where you will be questioned carefully as to the nature of your headache and will be asked which dosage level, pack size and even possibly dosage form (don’t think about this too closely - let’s just say suppository or Zäfpchen and be done with it. Yes. For a headache.) The moral of all this is, go easy at the Oktoberfest.

 

Within the household cleaners category, the same rules seem to apply. Finding an oven cleaner that is at all effective is hard work, almost as hard as cleaning the oven itself. Ditto stuff to unblock drains - everything proudly promotes its Bio mode of action, which seems to actually mean elbow grease and sheer man (or woman) power. Needless to say, the lurid Oxy-this and Vanish-that types of products with their day-glo packaging haven’t really caught on here. At my last ‘real’ job I remember hours spent trying to convince brand managers at a well-known US detergent company that ‘anti-bac’ variants of washing powder were the ultimate turn-off to German Mums - this is the country, after all, where quite normal women’s magazines run articles about the health benefits of drinking your own urine (although marginally preferable to drinking someone else’s, I suppose.)

 

The reluctance to spray chemicals everywhere also has its consequences when buying fresh produce. It is not unusual to buy a lettuce and find it crawling with caterpillars or buzzing with bugs, and this is not just from the Bio, or organic section - I imagine one would find a whole menagerie lurking in the Lollo Rosso there! Rather than throwing up their arms in horror and demanding a refund, most Germans would find this reassuring that their salad leaves had been properly raised in a natural ecosystem.

 

Of course, it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security and suppose that, as long as we stay away from chemicals and unnatural substances, then we are giving the Germans what they desire. But there are always exceptions to the rule. While paranoid about polluting the environment, many Germans have no such qualms about their own bodies when it comes to smoking. Smoking still bears almost no social stigma here, cigarette vending machines are on every street corner at a height that a four-year-old can reach and even Aldi Süd have capitulated and are now selling cigarettes. At €2.90 for a packet of 19 ‘Giants’ (that is just under £2), there is not much financial motivation for anyone to give up!

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Covid has made a little dent into the “germ/ans are good” perception, but other than that, the view on chemicals is just as strong as before.

Plus ca change? Well, not exactly. Remember those £2 ciggies? In your (pipe) dreams. At last, it appears, the tide is turning and we may well be at the fag-end of the great German smoke-fest (to mix more metaphors than is good for me). 

Government Health Warning

 

I’m not sure, any more, if I can remember cigarette packets or advertising without a Government Health Warning attached.Ssuch things are now confined to the annals of nostalgic ephemera, preserved for posterity in, for example, Peter Ashley’s marvellous publications (see above).

I’m certainly getting used to warnings on bottles of booze about this or that and drinking responsibly, and to traffic lights on food (the subversive part of me is keen to buy those with Ds and Es and red lights, as they’re likely to taste better - treat me like a child, and I’ll behave like (a naughty) one). 

And, if I was French, I’d have to start getting used to this sort of stuff on car ads, too. From March, under a new law, car ads in France will have to carry environmental warnings advising potential car-buyers (and, I suppose, anyone seeing the ads) to consider alternatives: “think about carpooling” or “for short journeys, walking or bicycling is preferable.” Weirdly enough, these same warnings will be on ads for electric cars, too, according to the article I read in The Times.

I expect a lot of this will fall on deaf ears. Those that feel vaguely guilty and are receptive to the message may take note, but the overgrown boy-racers about to splurge on their next revving, powerful, polluting beastie won’t pay the least attention.

I’ve always felt that making the alternatives more attractive is the best way to change behaviour rather than ticking people off. I quite like this ad from Heineken for the 0.0 “Cheers with no alcohol” beer. Nicely put together, and there’s a real insight there - sadly missing from so much current advertising.

Or - and now I have a chance to wallow in some Saatchi & Saatchi nostalgia from the last century: one of the best ads they ever did. 

 Credit: The Advertising Archives

Who remembers this one? It’s “Relax” by Saatchi & Saatchi, directed by Tony Kaye, from the late 1980s, for Intercity.

Simply glorious - who needs a car?

Naughty or nice?

In the rush to buy last minute presents, there's one gift idea of yore which I can guarantee won't be found under any family Christmas tree - or left out for Santa:

But - oh! The glamour of days gone by!

A good alternative to socks for Dad?

I wonder which gift ideas of today will be seen as not just naughty, but definitely despicable in decades to come?

Aufschnitt 2: Brits, Yanks agree/disagree over social concerns March 2007

Here comes the second in my series of offcuts from the archives. Apologies as usual to my vegetarian friends for the visual.

At the end of a scorching week, I've got a topical one - an article from March 2007 about Millward Brown's ReputationZ study about the main social concerns on both sides of the Atlantic.

The astonishing thing here is that, while the Fridays for Future protestors were crawling around in their not-terribly-environmentally-friendly nappies, Climate Change was the number 1 concern in the UK. But this topic didn't even feature in the US top 10, with Obesity being the main concern there.

Another finding for those marketers who have suddenly discovered Purpose is that more than twelve years ago there was already a strong feeling that companies should behave responsibly and ethically, although the tendency was for "buycotting" rather than boycotting - supporting those companies you approve of rather than punishing those whose ethics or working practices you find to be lacking. Of course, back in those pre-mainstream social media days, it required a lot more effort to "call someone out".

What about today? I did search around to try and find a comparable study, but failed miserably, so if anyone can help, please leave a comment. I suspect that smoking risks and irresponsible drinking may be lesser concerns today. I did find this article from Grayling which lists the main social issues for the UK as:

1. Hate
2. Mental Health
3. Climate Change
4. Obesity
5. NHS

In addition, I suspect that plastic, inequality, poverty and immigration would be issues for both UK and US. But look at those top 2 - linked, without a doubt, to each other and related to the explosion of social media over the last decade. Of course, social media is here to stay, so the question is how technology and brands in this area can support solutions rather than further contributing to the problems.

If anyone can tell me where "climate change" now stands amongst concerns in the US, I would love to know.

Age fluidity

When I was a lass, our corner shop was always well-stocked with sweet cigarettes. As well as packs that mimicked grown-up brands, all the TV stars of the day, human, animal and robot, had their own offering, complete with cards to collect - just like Grandpa.

And, if you got bored of getting your pretend-smoking kicks in this form, there was always Spanish Gold:

Mmmm: can still taste the coconut!

Fast-forward a few decades, and my husband recently tried to get some e-cigarette refill in the UK with a vague taste of tobacco and failed, miserably. Instead, he was offered a vast array of flavours that wouldn't be out of place at a 6-year-old's birthday party:

Caramel, Cola Pop, Juicy Blueberry, Liquorice Torpedo, Bubble gum, Marshmallow, Blue slush - need I go on?

It was all rather reminiscent of those over-priced milkshakes in Starbucks that masquerade as coffee - vanillacaramelbutterscotchcheesecakefrothochinos - or whatever they call themselves.

Or the alluring colourful bottles of homogenised baby food dressed up as trendy hipster smoothies.

Not to mention alcopops, alcoholic ginger beer and beer with banana flavour.

I've blogged about Kidults before, but maybe, as all these items seem to be liquids, perhaps the correct term for this trend is Age Fluidity.

A lost world

A discussion about football over the weekend prompted me to get out the only World Cup programme that I possess - from Mexico 1970. And, once the argument was resolved, as is my wont with printed ephemera, I starting glancing through the ads.

You have to bear in mind that the ads would have been bought to a target audience of young men, possibly with young families as a secondary audience, in those strange days 44 years ago. So there's lots of stuff about cars and automobile-related brands: British Leyland, Fiat, Esso and Mobil. And the odd 1970 hi-tech ad (such as the one for a company called Vines of Trafalgar Square, who made film projectors, in 16mm and 8mm.)

Children were catered for, with ads for Raleigh, Action Man (in his World Cup Kit) and Chelsea ("The girl with the groovy gear" "the up-to-date dress-up-dolly") - funny, she never featured in my childhood!

But the overwhelming impression is of ads for tobacco. B&H takes the back cover, Player's No. 6 proudly presents its prices and Wills Golden Virginia takes us into a pub scene. It's straight out of The Sweeney, with its dartboard and expanses of polished wood.

Given that such scenes will not be appearing in the programme for this year, I realised what was missing. No food and drink, especially of the fast variety. No McDonald's. No Pizza Hut. OK, they had not been introduced to the UK at this point. But no Coke. Not even beer.

Maybe the anti-obesity crusaders have got a point.

The ghost of advertising past

I'm going to be contrary and start my blog this year with a look back into the past instead of looking forward.

In these days of self-destructing posts on social media and ad-blockers of all varieties, it's interesting that there has been a renewal of interest in the medium of hand-painted signs on buildings, now known as ghost signs. There is a website dedicated to documenting and preserving such signs in the UK here, and a blog full of examples, including France and Germany here.

Most of the signs hail from the first half of the twentieth century and say a lot about everyday life in those days. Matches, cigarettes and beers are often featured, as are long-forgotten remedies, perhaps to put right an overindulgence in those vices.

But more extraordinary is the glorious optimism inherent in this medium. Who, these days, would dare to imagine that their brand might still be around in a hundred years, let alone that the price would stay constant? While some of the household names who advertised in this way, such as Bovril and Hovis are still with us, most, like Black Cat cigarettes have gone to the big brand graveyard in the sky.

It's a case of advertising long outliving the brand.

The colour purple

Most brands have a signature colour, or colours. There are the single statement colours of red for Coca-Cola, or magenta for T-Mobile, or turquoise for Twitter and the two-colour approach of IKEA, McDonald's or BP. And even some multi-colour brands, of which Google springs to mind.

Some colours are used less than others, especially as single branding shades - brown is a case in point, with UPS the notable exception in the use of this colour. And a colour that's a rare tone in nature is also relatively scarce on the branding front: purple.

Purple, as a non-primary colour, has a complex set of associations. The connotations of luxury, wealth and nobility may have influenced its use for indulgent brands such as Cadbury's or Milka, or Silk Cut. The links with creativity could have been grounds for Yahoo! changing their logo colour. But purple also has more difficult connections - with spirituality, magic and even emotional immaturity according to some - which makes it a tricky choice for a brand's uniform.

However, if one colour was in evidence in the UK in the last couple of weeks on top of all the red, white and blue, it was purple. But maybe this was a lucky choice in this case as purple goes so well with gold. 

Compare and Contrast

A few weeks ago, an TV spot from Cancer Research entitled "Plain Packaging" broke in the UK. The spot is intended to generate support and lobbying for a move to pack tobacco products in plain packaging, and shows clips from a group discussion amongst 7-10 year-olds, discussing what attracts them to cigarette packs. The children mention that the packs are "pretty", "funky" or "cool", or that "red is my favourite colour."

I haven't got an axe to grind about smoking. I don't smoke myself and any sensible measures to help people give up smoking should be praised, knowing what we do now. However, there is something unpleasantly manipulative about this film. How do the parents feel about their children being "used" in this way? Surely, if the packets really are so compelling and attractive, the children in this film are already hooked. The comment from one boy that the symbol on one pack "reminds me of the Tintin books" will give some over-zealous official the excuse to kill off two un-PC elements with one stone.

The criticism aimed at much market research that it deliberately hot-houses and draws people's attention to things they would not notice in real life couldn't be more apt than in this case. On the list of communications vying for a 7-10 year old's attention, cigarettes packets aren't exactly competing with the latest McDonald's Happy Meal Toy or upgrade to Doodle Jump.

Contrast all this with Peter Ashley's new book, "The Cigarette Papers". There's no preaching here, for or against, simply a beautifully illustrated commentary on the golden age of cigarette packaging. There was a time when cigarettes were as woven into the tapestry of everyday life as Smartphones are today. And, to prove that there's nothing new under the sun, this book is packed with examples of product placement, loyalty schemes, brand extensions, celebrity endorsements, sponsorships, added value, branded apps and games - except that no-one referred to them as such in those days.

Just make sure you leave it on the top shelf - you don't want your children seeing it.