Jam today and jam tomorrow

Carrying on from last week's post on the subject of Great (New) British brands, I'll turn my attention this week to a couple of British brands born on the other side of the millennium.

The received wisdom is, these days, that it's all about 'Experience' and 'Story'. Something the brand Colman's Mustard did, I feel, most admirably with the Mustard Shop & Museum in the Royal Arcade in Norwich. Sadly, it seems that this wonderful emporium closed down last year.

But just a little further south in East Anglia, Tiptree jam is opening up another tea room, this time in Chelmsford.

This tea room is slightly different from the brand's previous forays into retail and gastronomy in that it's in a rather more modern setting. It's easy to design an English tea room when you have a quaint country cottage or ancient mill at your disposal, but with a modern building, the designers have to think differently. I think they've succeeded with their blend of the past and the present:

Let's just hope that Tiptree isn't the next to be taken over by Unilever.

From Motoring to Mobility

Cars, or should I say Automobiles, were one of the obsessions of my generation. As children, boys and girls alike poured over Observer's Books. We collected Matchbox Toys, Dinky Toys, Corgi Toys. We were given a pedal car as a special present. We helped Mum and Dad wash their cars (by hand) and watched the neighbours polishing up their cars. On Sundays, it wasn't unusual to go out for a drive. Not to get from A to B but simply for the whole family to enjoy motoring.

The automobiles in those days were works of art - beautiful and characterful - and those still running can make us gasp today. And a few years later, in the 80s and early 90s, success was measured by what you managed to land as a company car, as well as the size of your wage packet.

Children these days still play with cars, of course, and brands such as Hot Wheels, which I remember from my childhood, are still with us. But there has been a fundamental shift in the way we think about cars - as a means to an end rather than an end in itself.

In the same way that many younger people these days don't have a landline, more and more young people, particularly those in cities, don't own a car. The car-sharing market, made possible by technology, is booming. Car-sharing, whereby one can set up an account, rather like a phone account, and have almost instant access to vehicles on a pay-by-trip basis has been driven (arf, arf) largely by companies of German-speaking origin. Brands like the Swiss Mobility and car2go - recently arrived in Frankfurt - are leading the way.

As trends go, Car-sharing ticks plenty of boxes. There's the meshing of the real and virtual world, the sharing economy, urbanisation, sustainability and so on. It's also a way for established brands - both car manufacturers and traditional car rental companies - to refresh their image and to be at the forefront of innovation.

Who knows - maybe one of these brands will introduce Classic Car Sharing, combining the dreams of childhood with the technology of today.

Wish you were here

When I walked into my Motel One room last week, I was reminded somehow of the Pink Floyd song in the title, especially the line "we're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year".

Unfortunately the music to accompany the swimming and the giant aquarium wasn't Pink Floyd, but that ubiquitous "Chill-Out" music, on a loop like the film. Both got switched off after the second or third cycle.

I do think Motel One is one of the best new brands to come out of Germany recently. A true millennium baby, the company was established in 2000. The underlying idea, a low-price design hotel, is an excellent one. And I know that when I first saw those turquoise chairs a few years back, I was blown away.

And yet... that fish-bowl bothered me. Along with the chill-out music, the "Summer Feeling" place sets,  the flickering fire on the flatscreen, even the brown n' turquoise look - it's all beginning to feel of its time, the noughties.

Although the 'One Lounges' are more individualised with local themes incorporated into the look, Motel One is a very standardised experience, which has its good and bad points.

I just hope to see a little rebellion as the brand expands into its teens.

Leaves of Grass

On my recent visit to dOCUMENTA (13) I was interested to see if there were any examples of the territory that I work in - brands, communication, media - finding their way into the world of art. Probably the most famous example of this is Andy Warhol's Campbells soup cans, but that was 50 years ago.

I was expecting, perhaps, works of art incorporating some of the social media - I don't know, maybe Facebook screenshots contrasting with what was happening in the real world, or maybe that's too obvious.

One work did take my breath away: Geoffrey Farmer's Leaves of Grass, a 20m 3-D collage consisting of thousands of pictures cut from Life magazine 1935 -1985 and mounted on wooden stalks. It's a fascinating piece, because all editorial comment and structure is removed, so that images from advertisements sit next to photographs of politicians.

To me, it represents the visual overload that developed from the middle of the 20th century and continues its unstoppable path with faster download times, more channels and mobile internet. In fact, looking at Leaves of Grass is rather like looking at a typical Facebook stream - brands mixed with people, close friends adjacent to celebrities, the trivial vying with the world-shattering.

And, back to the subject of artists and brands, I did notice that a couple of Dali works were on show. But not the Chupa Chups logo that Dali designed.

Clueless

My son got a Cluedo game for Christmas. I suppose I was looking forward to cosy evenings in our nostalgic cellar bar, lost in an Agatha Christie-esque world.

So I was quite surprised when I found that the game seems to have mutated into something from the pages of Hello! Not only is it called "Discover the Secrets" - even worse in German - which sounds like the latest steamy teen vampire saga, but it's set in a Hollywood mansion, complete with indoor pool and Spa/Wellnessbereich. The English country house set have been chucked out in favour of a blingy posse including a video game designer and an ex football star.

It's just a game, said my husband, and he's right. And I don't suppose my son really cares whether he's in the billiard room of Tudor Mansion or on the patio on Hollywood Hills. There are a couple of extra weapons, which I grudgingly admit could make the game more exciting.

But I can't help thinking: why? Part of Cluedo's charm is the 1940s world into which the game was born. Look at another well-known - and ancient in comparison - cult brand: Marmite. Yes, there are 'contemporary' line extensions. Yes, there are all manner of funky communication ideas. But they haven't taken the salt out of the product to be 'more in line with today's world.'

You know it's time to start blogging when...

I had one of those rather disconcerting experiences on Sunday whereby everyday memories and part of my past became the subject for an exhibition in a museum. Luckily, this was "one step removed" as the memories and past were not actually mine, but my husband's.

We visited an exhibition of advertising and packaging from the last 100 years and amongst the enamel signs, copperplate invoices and monochrome cardboard record sleeves were plenty of exhibits from the more recent past.

Brands like Florida Boy, Salamander shoes and Imi washing powder (from whence comes my husband's nickname) are not that familiar to me but there were one or two "global" brands knocking around, even in the 1960s: Lux soap with a wonderful Austin-Powers-"Fembot"- style lady on the packaging - who I am sure adorned the UK packaging, too. Talking of ladies, I wonder if anyone can guess what the Gwen Stefani-esque skier on the poster is advertising. Answers in the comments, please: I'll let you know next time.

On the subject of time and the past, I was having a conversation with a non-native English speaker yesterday about the difference between "contemporary" and "modern", in relation to positioning a brand. My view was that it's a question of taste. I have never liked "contemporary" myself, probably because it used to appear as one of three adjectives in the "mood and tone" box on the creative brief when I started in advertising - or that it appears, along with "professional", in every other Mission Statement these days. And it just sounds plain pretentious, if that isn't an oxymoron. Modern is more direct, more inclusive, more of a statement. But that's just my view.