is local the new exotic?

I was reading something in the Cobra beer story 'Bottled for Business' a while ago about how real ale used to have the majority share in the UK beer industry. Then lager came along in the 70's and stole its ground then imported lagers became all the rage and accounted for most beer sales.

The import lagers became so popular because they were seen as exotic and exclusive. It made me think that the opposite is probably true now with unheard of real ales having a far more exotic and exclusive image than Stella or Heinekens.

Team this up with the fact that your average Carbon Footprint is going to be much lighter on a locally brewed ale than an imported larger and I think it could be a far better offering. I actually think that if someone was to do a very good marketing job on real ale soon they'd be onto something in not too long. (I had an idea about marketing ale alongside the new resurgence in folk music ages ago I should write up again).

Have a look at this short film about Damsons we made at innocent and see if you can see what I mean...

information overload

A while ago I put together a proposed re-design for Levi's based on putting a load of information on every page but in a very structured way via disitinct categories and tags. It didn't go down to well at the time as everyone thought it was too busy.

Since then (I did them in October 2005) The Guardian has relaunched it's site in a similar manner along witht the ICA. It's good that people are getting used to digesting more information at once now. Or designers are giving them credit to be able to digest lots of information in a structured way. It's no worse than a newspaper after all.

The other part of the concept was to get illustrators and artists to customise the photos on the site on a regular basis to keep it fresh. This example is using some stuff by Kaws.

ethics doctors

I haven't been doing very well at writing up my ideas on here lately, which is a shame as I have loads all the time. Here's one I had this morning anyway...

Start a company of professional ethics doctors. They'd be like those food and nutrition doctors that some gyms have and operate on a bespoke individual service. Clients would go to an ethics doctors and fill out quite an indepth survey (who they bank with/ how often they go on holiday/ how much they give back to charity or their local community/ where they do their weekly shop/ what milk they buy/ if they drive etc etc). The ethics doctor would then evaluate this information in depth and tell their client the top 5 or 10 things they can change to have a more positive effect on the world. I'm imagining conversations like this:

"Peter, it's great that you walk to Waitrose on the weekend and use your own organic cotton carrier bags to take your food home but we really need to look at these return flights to Berlin every 3 months."

or

"Judy, the fact that you support local farming communities and organic producers by buying 80% of your food and drink at Borough Market is commendable but we need to end this Friday night cocaine habit sooner rather than later. It's not doing you or the individuals, communities and farmers being exploited and seriously physically threatened by the criminal underworld any good at all."

A bit of a wake up call as it were?

(The picture is of Dr Albert Schweitzer and was returned off of a google image search on ethics doctors. I liked his tash so choose him to use).

faith marketing

Russell wrote something interesting in this week's Campaign which got me thinking as usual. It was about taking inspiration from a wide variety of sources instead of just from within the exact same sector you are working in.

I went to the Thames Festival yesterday and got stuck behind a group of Harry Krishnas for a while as you do some times in London. It made me consider how religions market themselves and what we can learnt from them. Or how religions market themselves in my own experience I should say (religion is dodgy ground, I'm really not looking to offend anyone with the below hopefully).

Harry Krishnas
I like Harry Krishnas. They're a happy bunch, whenever I see them I try to imagine I'm in India or something. They also provided me with a good couple of free square meals the first time I went to Glastonbury in their tent which became a bit of a refuge as it was one of the years Glastonbury turned to a swamp.

Marketing lessons to learn from Harry Krishnas:
- They're very good at live and direct marketing. Every evening at around 5pm they set off from their HQ in Soho Sqaure with their drums to raise a bit of awareness and spread the message. They don't go out preaching though, it's purely broadcasting happiness.
- They do Random Acts of Kindness like no other religion I know. The free meals at Glastonbury tasted amaizing aswell as being vegan and free obviously.
- The books they sell have great pictures in them of two headed elephants and stuff. They're very good at painting pictures in your ahead of what it's like to live in their world.

Buddhism
I got quite into Buddhism when I was in my early twenties. I've never classed myself as a Buddhist but it's probably the Religion I think makes most sence. I even went out to Dharamsala in India and hang out with the Tibetan community in exhile and get blessed by the Dalia Lama a few years ago. I also went to Lhasa in Tibet to hang out with the Tibetan Community not in exhile a few less years ago. If your ever stuck for something to read The Tibetan Book of the Dead is facinating.

Marketing lessons to learn from Buddhists:
-They talk sence. The most interesting things I've learnt from Buddhism are the things I can apply to my life. To me there are very few brands who represent messages that I can apply to my own life. Those that do though are miles ahead of the rest in terms of my advocacy to them. Howies, The co-opertaive bank and innocent being a few examples.
-They've got lots of famous friends to help them spread their message. Like the Beastie Boys.

Christianity
I went to faith schools from the age of 4 to 16. When I say faith schools I mean schools that make you sing hyms evry morning, read prayers to you and get the local vicar in once a week. Technically I should know more about Christianity than any other religion. When I thought about this the other day however I realised very little of it sank in. Actually none of it sank in. Other than how to hum the lords prayer.

Marketing lessons to learn from Christianity:
-They're very good at storytelling. In fact that's what their whole communications model is built on I think.
-Christianity is a bit like Carbon Offsetting. In that it is in danger of making bad behaviour permisable aslong as you offset it afterwards by asking forgiveness. It relies heavily on conscience clearing.
-I had a few run in's with those extreme Christians when I was in university. The ones that give you little comic books about how your going to hell if you shop in Woolworths on the weekend. This scare mongering to get maximum awareness can be seen in marketing aswell but it always fails in the long run once people start to make their own decisions on things.

Taoism
I climbed up a Taoist mountain in China once. When I got to the top it was like a different world. There were temples like usual religions but the monks were completly self-sufficent. They'd grow all they need off the land around them and didn't care about what they couldn't. It was like the world has shrunk and man could actually live off of belief and a patch of land and nothing else. Real simplicity. I wanted to stay up that mountain.

Marketing lessons to learn from Toaism:
-Be self sufficent. Grow slowly.
-Social enterprises/ co-operatives/ community interest companies and intermediate labour markets all seem to reflect basic elements of Toaism to me.

That's my lot for now. It's just a thought.

web economics and politics

As I've been off work for the last 2 weeks I've had a chance to read the papers a bit more. And in reading the papers I've been able to pick up on a couple of interesting things..

web economics
The first was the above story in Friday's Guardian on 'wikinomics'. A really interesting concept on the potential real world and economical implications of collaborative thinking. It's best summed up with this case study for me...

A large gold mine in Red Lake Ontario, operated by Goldcorp, was ailing and facing financial colapse until its cheif executive heard a talk about open source computer programming by the inventor of Linux. Why not place Goldcorp's secret geological data on the internet and see if there were experts outside of the companies own geological team and see if they could suggest where to mine for new sources of gold with a $575,000 reward for sucessful identification of unlocated veins of gold.

110 new targets were submitted, half of which Goldcorp hadn't previously identified, and four-fifths of which turned out to contain gold. Goldcorp reaped handsome profits, turning a $100m company into a $9bn company.

Interesting isn't it? Seems there could potentially be more to 2.0 than getting someone to make your Superbowl ad for you.

web politics
The second was a story on bloody Bob Crow and his strikes. It mentioned that more than 30 FaceBook groups had been set up expressing their feelings towards him last week (probably more by now).

If you couple this with the stories about Cadbury's bringing back Whisper chocolate bars after a FaceBook campaign and HSBC having to back down on shafting aload of students after a similar FaceBook campaign there's some more interesting stuff to think about.

heima/ hiraeth

This really reminds me of this.

what I recon

I recon this is funny. nbj cfgkwlj j;'r /j.,b ns b.

spike spends saturday with mia

How Spike got a black eye and other interesting stories here.

wahaca - mexican market eating

If Habitat fell short on their story telling then Wahaca have gone beyond the call of duty. Wahaca is a new resturant in a similar theme to Wagamama's and Nando's but based around mexican market food.

The guy that set it up is a mate of Mark Turner from work so I thought I'd have a look and a bite to eat there last night after leaving Bronte's place. I'm glad I did now. They've got a great expanadble concept in place, the food is very good quality and a reasonable price and they're up to some great story telling.

Mainly told via a newspaper format brand publication which doubles as a menu. It covers the story behind the concept of mexican market eating and the types of food available but also gets really into the detail of where to food is sourced. There is a bit of a conflict between Wahaca's mission statements of serving genuine mexican street food and using locally sourced market produce as much as possible. This is dealt with in a very transparent way though (their struggle to find chillis that are grown in the UK etc) which makes you get behind them even more.

The standard match box give away has been adapted to chilli seeds in a very nice touch and adds depth to their own campaign to find and encourage more chilli growers in the UK.

It seemed to tick all the burgeoning foodies audience key boxes of..
- High Quality Ingredients
- Traceability
- Authenticity
- Seasonal Producer
- Specialisation
- Honesty

It's worth a visit.

scandi kitchen

I dropped by Bronte's scandi kitchen yesterday afternoon to say Hej. Bronte used to work at innocent before going to have a baby and setting up a scandi kitchen. I bought some Ploop and Sweedish cider (Ed's a big fan of Ploop apparently).

She's been doing some nice stuff with the brand aswell including changing the board out side her shop everyday which Russell has been picking up on. And some nice little touches in her point of sale stuff...

It's always a worry doing copy at innocent and being able to match Dan's unique standards. Bronte was always very good at it though and her out of office reply has even featured in John Simmons Great Brand Story on innocent (page 103, worth a read if you're ever stuck thinking of original out of office replies).

It's great when someone takes a similar sentiment and does it in their own way though like B has here though.