Tell me Easter's on Friday

If Billy Mackenzie were around today, he’d be ruing the fact that the new Röyksopp LP, Junior, is not very good. How can we work when Röyksopp have produced a third studio LP that just does not chill the mustard? If Billy Mackenzie were around today, he’d be 52, the day after Paul Morley, the journalist who championed him, was 52. We need new musik to work to. Nobody knew this and knows this more than Billy Mackenzie and Paul Morley. We cannot write without rhythm. We cannot think without the resampled biscuit tin drum beat that is Röyksopp’s finest contribution to our overstretched workaday imaginations. On the ninth anniversary of Ian Dury’s passing, these very important Norwegians are just not hitting us with their polychromatic, ulcragyceptamol-flavoured rhythm sticks. Where is the storm, the wonder, flashlights, nightmares, sudden explosions? What else is there? Hmmm…maybe I just better give Junior a second spin.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Truth is stronger than faction

I’ve been on the road for seven hours in the last twenty one. Just me and Eddie Stobart. Another seven of those hours have been spent sleeping. Two hours passed in a very successful client meeting. I can’t for the life of me think of what I did with the other five. It’s all in less than a business day. Plenty of things you can do in a car that you can’t do in a business meeting. Ponder how it is at all possible that William Hague and Leigh Bowery can share the same birthday. Smile when you think that, today, in 217 years’ time, James T Kirk will be born. Chuckle when you discover that today is actually Leonard Nimoy’s birthday. But what really made me want to throw thoughts onto screen was the knowledge that today is the 20th anniversary of the first free elections in the USSR. 190 million votes were cast and Boris won. When the history of this epoch is written, I don’t think it at all likely that our Boris will figure, but theirs probably will. Somehow, the future we all live in seemed to begin around about 1988/9.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Everybody's talking, nobody's listening

This week Nestlé announced it was following a Japanese philosophy called kansei to help the company design products which elicit certain emotional responses from customers. It begs the question: how come it hasn’t been designing products with this in mind from day one?! But then, certain Nestlé products have drawn very definite emotional responses that the company did not want at all. Even though kansei appears to be about product design rather than brand accountability, this will be a strategy worth watching. If Nestlé is actually working closely with customers, then maybe it will learn something that will encourage it to go beyond the rudiments of mere product design. The zeitgeist is that everybody’s broadcasting and nobody’s receiving. Brands are blogging and bragging, boosting their messages through multivarious mobile means. Kansei actually means ‘sense engineering’. It’s all about acquiring an understanding of customer sensitivity to certain product attributes. Yet we have an English word for the real art form that’s required here. It’s called listening. Of course, there’s listening, then there’s hearing. Take note, Nestlé.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

I can Can, can you Can?

Holger Czukay. Holger Czukay. I was always banging on about Holger Czukay. Ask my friend, Martin. Who’s Olga Shoe Kay? Well, he was the man who put can in Can, that great, over-sampled German group from the 60s and early 70s who influenced other leaders from Brian Eno to The Human League, The Fall to David Sylvian, Aphex Twin to Röyksopp. And it’s a happy coincidence to learn that Holger Czukay is 73 in the same week that Lee Scratch Perry is 73. For what these two did for electronica and reggae in their own different worlds is nobody’s business. All of which means it’s everybody’s business. Most of the popular music we hear today has a root in something sprung by these septuagenarians. A fan of the new, I’m not always big on continuity. When it comes to drawing threads from the past through the eye of the present, however, I find that I can’t do any of my daily labour without one of them, a strong cup of coffee and a banana or two. You see, I write in rhythm. I like my words to sing to me. Admittedly, it’s a rhythm you’re not always going to pick up on. Not everyone can hear it. But they’re my words and I can Can.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Epic Soundtracks

I’m doing a lot of naming work for clients. Naming work is positioning work. It takes imagination, patience, purpose, persistence, resilience and not a little toil and tears. In other words, it all takes time. But there has to be some humour in the mix somewhere. Not just for some light relief – it adds some flexibility to the often abstract, fibreglass rigidity of many corporate product, service and company names emerging today. I’m always happy to go back to the late 70s for my inspiration. Half the reason punk music caught on was the memorable playground names of the main players. You felt strangely familiar with Poly Styrene, Sid Vicious and Captain Sensible. You realised it had all gone too far with Ivor Biggun, Tenpole Tudor and Jilted John. Yet, when a record label was called Stiff Records or Step Forward, it somehow connected more than Atlantic or EMI. And there were lots of lesser lights and labels you were aware of. These I carry around in my time machine of a mind. There was Gaye Advert. And there was Epic Soundtracks. Sounding like a label himself, Epic was born Kevin Godfrey, he formed an eccentric band called Swell Maps with his brother, Adrian, who went out under the moniker, Nikki Sudden. Both are now no longer with us. Epic Soundtracks would have been 50 today. As I persist with my naming manoeuvres, I'll make sure his name lives on.


Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

He did it his way (but did you?)

This morning, on BBC breakfast, they were celebrating the 40th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s My Way. Paul Anka, who beat David Bowie to writing the English version of an original French song, once said that Sid Vicious did the best version. I agree. So many artists have covered it. Everyone from Andy Williams, Dorothy Squires and Elvis Presley to Nina Simone, Jon Bon Jovi and John Cleese. William Shatner even performed a spoken version. It’s become cheesier than gorgonzola. Have you performed it? It’s one of the most popular karaoke songs in the world. J K Rowling wanted to play the song at Professor Dumbledore’s funeral. It’s the song most frequently played at British funerals. Ironically, My Way has become a cliché. But tell that to people in The Philippines, where it can cause violence and even suicides. Nobody told Slobodan Milosevic that he couldn’t play it over and over again in his Hague prison cell while undergoing his trial for war crimes. These days, it’s the Sid Vicious version of the song that you’re more likely to hear in popular culture, whether it’s in Goodfellas, Buffy The Vampire Slayer or The Sopranos. And that’s the version I’ll be playing today. What do I get from it? The struggle for individual identity in a collective society? Blimey, I'll be trying to relate it all to branding next! Ahh! My Way? Don’t think about it too much. Just do it anyway.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

It ain't what you do (it's the way that you do it)

Sometimes I feel very distant from my branding work. I just can’t get close enough to it. You can’t do branding by remote control, via email, telephone, Linked In or Twitter. It has to be done face to face. There are times when you’ve just got to thrash things out, kick the litter bin into the corner of the room, disagree, bang the table, throw it all away, taste it, smell it, spit it out and start again. Shake people up. Until you see beauty and they see sense. I’ve found this to be true more and more over the years. Way back when, doing too much, too young, I had none of the answers but all of the passion. But I’m compassionate towards that raw young self. I can look back at me and still say I’ve got a safety pin stuck in my heart for you, for you. That passionate me does not seem at all remote. Yesterday can seem further away. If I concentrate, I can still feel I’m up close to Terry Hall, 50 today. And Patrik Fitzgerald, 53 this 19th March. For me, there’s a branding breakthrough to make today. I need to avail myself of some of this attitude and punk poetry. That's what gets results.
Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

The name of the pose

Alex Hurricane Higgins is 60 today. Hurricane is a moniker he's had to live with for well over half his life, both on and off the snooker table. Is he happy with it? He used it in the title of his 'autobiography'. It's his brand and he owns it. The name has stuck, years after he stopped playing snooker professionally, or well. At Ideal, a lot of naming comes our way. Rename our business. Name our new service. Name my blogspot or book. Here's one we came up with earlier. What do you think? I usually think that very few people know anything about naming their organisations, products and services. Many assume that it's simply a question of pulling a word out of thin air, like a magician with a rabbit. You'd be surprised how much carelessness goes into choosing such a crucial element of the branding mix as a name. Professionally, you have to live with it. Personally, you have to live up to it. Even when you're 60. Ask Alex.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Harmful packaging – who needs it?

As I approach 50, it’s a question of what’s winning – the tinnitus, arthritis or sentimentality. On days like today, I’m going for the safe middle ground – I’m finding it increasingly difficult to open things – tins of beans, bank accounts, other people’s conviviality. On the packaging front, I’m wondering whether I can find anyone to agree with me. Is it just me, or, after years of recognising packaging for the unnecessary summer overcoat it mostly is, is there a return to packaging for packaging’s sake? Yesterday, I read an article about Unilever launching a luxury version of its Magnum chocice on a stick. It will come in a cardboard box. Yes, that’s right. Apparently, the brand is trying to offer customers an ‘affordable bite of luxury’. And the only way to distinguish it from rivals (or, indeed, its own existing Magnum in a packet), is to stick it in a box. Now, instead of the three hands you will need to open it on the street, you will need four. This is the kind of packaging I don’t need. And neither does the world. This morning I spent ten minutes trying to break into my new Oral B Advance Power 900 electric toothbrush. Like a tramp standing outside McDonalds, I could see what I wanted through the beautiful, clear, indestructible plastic exterior. But my teeth had dropped out through neglect before I could hold the gleaming product in hands that were shredded from grappling with impossibly jagged plastic edges. Electric toothbrush? More like samurai sword. Another fine mess that unnecessary packaging has got me in. My view - when it has to exist, packaging should do no harm? Who agrees?



Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Vulnerability

My mind is in pieces today. Waking up from a long day interviewing staff with a mental healthcare client for some brand positioning work. I listened to directors, governors, front-line staff, carers. There were tears. It was at once enlightening and harrowing. And the working environment was oppressive, cell-like. One word chased me into sleep last night. Vulnerability. It’s still with me as, following instructions, I’m cleaning the house this morning before the monthly cleaners arrive. Then something stirs upstairs – in my mind, as opposed to the house, that is. Did I once see Dexy’s Midnight Runners play at Bradford University, or is this a figtree of my emancipation? My memory says yes, but my brain is uncertain. As the toothless Mancunian sage says, ‘There’s nothing stranger than the things you know but don’t quite realise.’ I saw a piece of paper which says that today was the day in 1980 when Dexy’s released Geno. My mind’s eye gives me the picture. Kevin Rowland ranting and gyrating, orchestrating the crowd. Almost straightaway, I’m thinking about Bradford University in another way. My long lost school and Bradford University mate, Rog, emails to announce he’s 50 tomorrow and confesses to struggling with it. What’s so great about reaching 50, he asks. ‘Is not being dead yet a cause for celebration?’ Only Rog could throw away a line as profound as that. The irony for me is that, at school, we always used to tease Rog for being one of the undead – something to do with the pale, translucent skin and tendency not to appear on photographs. So, while I think of what I’m going to be saying to Rog ('you're a long time undead?), I’ll be playing Monster Mash, by Bobby Boris Pickett, in his honour. And then, perhaps, Geno. Then maybe my mental jigsaw will begin to piece itself back together and I can get on with the two brand identity jobs that are leaning into me.



Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Another music in a different kitchen

I hear voices. Saying things like, ‘You’re an idealist, yet when you want to highlight something like singlemindedness, honesty or other useful brand qualities, you choose people like Lou Reed or Bernard Bresslaw as examples. What about Martin Luther King or Gandhi or other ethical supermen? Or, why not just successful people from the world of business?’ Well, as much as I admire the world-changing luminaries, I sometimes find it difficult to relate to them. I also think it’s somewhat pretentious to be dropping Barrack Obama into every conversation. My influences are personal. They are never going to be Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Richard Branson. I get my drive from the renegades, the real and fictional. Mark E Smith. Rab C Nesbitt. Tom Waits. Estragon and Watt from the work of Samuel Beckett. The guy selling the Telegraph & Argus in Bradford city centre, whose eyes were so deepset they seemed press-studded to the back of his head. Much of my branding work lies in social and environmental change with charitable and public sector organisations. I can respond to the ‘I have a dream’ and ‘Yes we can’ statements as much as the next man. I even write some of them myself. But I get my inspiration for my work from the way my imagination plays on certain conditions of humanity. There is a theme here. And it’s probably something to do with the taboo of mental illness. Having met and befriended my own demons, I feel a great empathy for others who are struggling with theirs. So, I can understand the Kron Man who picks up the mouldy cabbages in the final minutes of Lichfield Market more than I can understand Sir Alan Sugar. I can come to terms with the plastic intonations of the Cone Man of Carnaby Street more quickly than I can with Princess Diana. What can I learn from The Economist or The Spectator that is not better said in songs by Mark E Smith called Eat Y’Self Fitter or How I Wrote Elastic Man? The people I select to discuss in this blog are not chosen because I need to pick somebody from today’s birthday list. They are people who are meaningful to me. In my branding work, I seek to break through people’s outer crust and journey on to the centre of their earth. I’ll only stand a chance of doing that if I put myself into my writing. And the only way to do that is to put everything that has meaning to me into these words. One man and his blog.

Mark Griffiths http://www.idealconsulting.co.uk/

Who is the guy who isn't Tony Blair?

You can tell how poor your brand image is when people define it by what it is not. As pointed as this is for Gordon Brown and his future, this approach to describing people and organisations is quite common. It may seem amusing, but it is also disappointing. Calling a spade a spade is not that easy. Especially if it’s new, obscured by what has gone before or simply contravenes majority values. Meat-free sausages. Non-governmental organisations. Childless couples. Such institutionalised language suggests that society is not very forgiving of anything outside the mainstream. Over time, I’ve moved towards the mainstream from the margins. On the way in through this asteroid field, I’ve dodged a lot of jagged acronyms. Up in the atmosphere, I’ve punctured many jargon filled barrage balloons. But then, it is my job to be precise, definite, say the unsayable, all with an imaginative flourish. So, naturally, I take great pleasure when I discover an example of precision that fuses language together to create a meaning that was always there before but never expressed. My singleminded friend, Mark E Smith, does this to great effect. In a song entitled Hip Priest, on the LP by The Fall called Hex Enduction Hour (released 27 years ago this week), the narrator nonchalantly says, ‘I got my last clean dirty shirt out of the wardrobe’. This could only have come from a working class Mancunian with a sharp wit and a pub habit. Just as the title of this piece could only have come from a blank and bemused American government policy wonk. But one has nailed the meaning in an unforgettable way.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

One man and his dog

Old brands die hard. As the BBC is discovering. But when the audience is gone, it’s time to move on. Even if you have to take your criticism for doing so. Even if you are partly responsible for creating the situation yourselves. And, after 50 years, that looks like being the case with Blue Peter. When I was a kid, I watched it because it was on, when nothing else was. It was a wholesome way of passing the time before The Magic Roundabout. Now, Blue Peter is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Last year, the BBC moved it from its slot to accommodate The Weakest Link, a programme with built-in obsolescence if ever I saw one. Cruelly, there was even a Weakest Link Blue Peter special. Now, the BBC Children’s Controller wants to re-model what remains of Blue Peter into a show with the buzz of Top Gear. While it doesn’t surprise me at all that Top Gear is seen as a children’s programme, the thought of Jeremy Clarkson saying ‘And here’s one I made earlier’ is enough to make me join Al Qaeda. All this comes to mind on the day that John Noakes is 75. Blue Peter’s longest serving presenter, he unknowingly did all of his famous death-defying stunts uninsured. He was voted off 2nd on the Weakest Link special. When host Anne Robinson mentioned Shep, John’s famous Blue Peter dog, who died in 1987, she brought the man to tears. I liked John Noakes. When I was a child, he seemed like an intrepid iron man with a heart. A bit like my friend, Dean. He is an example of the kind of British spirit I’ve been writing about. Much braver than the BBC. And now for something completely different! Today, comedian Alan Davies is 43. You know, I think he’d have made a very good Blue Peter presenter.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

The man whose head expanded

In the springtime of our lives there was also The Fall. Yet from desperation came renewal. You see, there’s staying power, then there’s reinvention. I’m working with brands who need British people to re-invent what Britain is all about. People talk us down. As already noted, we do a good job of it ourselves. When we talk of British spirit today, we usually mean Dunkirk or Dunroamin. In the new world we are old. We look back at the Romans. But, are the Chinese running ironic TV programmes entitled What did the British do for us? Doubt it. As we approach a General Election in benighted Blighty, there’s going to be even more talk about what’s wrong, a broken Britain, mediated by the wagging index finger of blame from the psychomafia. Live at the witch trials, indeed! Personally, I’m not interested in what’s wrong or what’s been, only what’s right and what’s coming. Optimism – it’s the new thing. So, let’s get this one out of the way, shall we – things did not start going wrong in 1997 or 1979, as some would say (nor even 1966). If you want to know, nothing’s been quite the same since the Battle of Hastings. Mark E Smith, who was born in 1066 (or 1979) is as Saxon as they come. Now here is a manbrand who combines staying power and reinvention. 52 today, a bad hip and no teeth to worry about, there's hardly a more broken Briton. And yes, his chip-flavoured lyrics came from Alf Tupper via Fred Dibnah, with all the Ts crossed by Albert Camus. But it’s his sheer hydrochloric singlemindedness I’m talking about. 60 singles, to be precise. And 55 albums on the turntable since 1979. And 47 other band members, but only one Mark E Smith. Doing anything Sunday 15th March? Hear him talking at Huddersfield Literary Festival about his life, work, writers and writing and his recently published autobiography: Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith. As the man says: ‘I hope this book turns out like Mein Kampf for the Hollyoaks generation’. I recommend it. Even though, on close inspection, it’s not always easy to like the man. Ask Big A&M Herb. And last Time I saw Mark E Smith, he was arrested for being drunk on stage at Worthing Assembly Rooms on 8th October 1996. But I was the one who was breathalysed. Yet, toothless Mancunian wazzock that he is, it’s hard not to admire the spirit of persistence in this very large brain in this very big head. My heart and I agree. Matt Lucas, it’s your birthday today, too. A new face in hell. But what’s all this Little Britain stuff? We need Big Britain. So, I’m awarding Mark E Smith the Big Briton Award for March 5th. He makes me think of the task ahead for a very old country with a lot of new thinking to do. Singlemindedness.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

I've got time for Dieter Meier

Three reasons why.
1. Yello. Well-heeled pop music conceived by Groucho Marx and Kraftwerk on a Sicilian holiday.
2. He works with ReWATCH, a Swiss company that recycles aluminium cans into watches.
3. In 1972, he installed a commemorative plaque at Kassel railway station with the message: ‘On March 23rd 1994, from 3 to 4pm, Dieter Meier will stand on this plaque.’ 22 years later he did just that. He did what he said he was going to do. He delivered his promise.
And that’s why I think I like him most of all. It’s exactly the sort of thing my long lost friend Graham Sutherland would have done, with a bottle of cider sticking out of each coat pocket.
Today is Dieter Meier’s 64th birthday. Celebrate his beautiful timing and well-delivered brand promise by playing 3rd of June from the album Flag.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk

Everybody's happy nowadays

When The Buzzcocks released the single by this name 30 years ago today theirs was an oblique strategy. As far as they were concerned, everybody was far from happy at all. But they were damned if they were going to have it like that. Admittedly, back then, I just wanted a lover like any other (but what did I get?). Today, 30 years on, I’m a strong critic of doom mongers, particularly the gleeful BBC News tendency to see the cup not only as three quarters empty, but cracked and full of bacteria probably picked up in a NHS hospital stuffed full with suicidal bankers and the terminally obese. I’m glad that Mandelson had a go at the Starbucks CEO for talking down the UK marketplace last week. We don’t need Americans to do that for us. We’re pretty good at it ourselves. Well, Pete Shelley refused to be part of it 30 years ago and I refuse to be part of it now. Certainly not on the second day of March. A day when I saw my first ever gig at Trentham Gardens in Stoke. Status Quo. A day when D H Lawrence died, but Lou Reed was born and is 67 years strong. Life’s an illusion, love’s a dream? Everybody’s saying things to me, but I know it’s OK, OK.

Mark Griffiths www.idealconsulting.co.uk