Branded Male

Alain and Marcello on the metro

Maybe tough times are encouraging us to reach for timeless values, because nostalgia is all the rage in Paris at the moment. Especially, it seems, when it comes to male icons. By now you may have already heard the buzz that Dior has selected a 1966 picture of living legend Alain Delon to advertise Eau Sauvage.

The choice makes perfect sense: the fragrance was launched that same year, and Delon has a feline grace that goes perfectly with the brand. I also have a theory that men find it hard to look up to actors of their own age. They suspect that it somehow undermines their masculinity. But to admire the Delon of the 60s (or the Bogart of the 40s, or the McQueen of the 70s) shows an appreciation of the virtues of an earlier time. It's an expression of good taste, like enjoying single malt whisky or Sinatra in his Capitol period. We're also subtly acknowledging that we find today's men slightly weak-chinned and ineffectual: give us instead the heroes of the past.

I was musing on all this when, from the metro today, I spied an image of Marcello Mastroianni,  another model of masculine elegance. His photograph is being used by the department store Le Bon Marché to promote an exhibition called Diva Italia, about Italian movie stars. But who cares about the exhibition? What is really being sold here is style. Dark suit, narrow tie, world-weary expression: perfect.

By the way, the heroes of the past don't always fit in to the antiseptic present. If you look closely, you may notice a slight modification of the Delon photograph (shot by Jean-Marie Périer) in the Dior ad when compared to the original (left).

Life on the B-side

This is not a post about the return of vinyl, although I am considering raiding my parents' garage to recover my old albums. In fact it was inspired by a passage in a book called The Nature of Marketing, by Chuck Brymer. He's the CEO of the ad agency DDB in New York. While I won't dwell on the details, the book is about digital communities. Apparently their behavior resembles swarms of bees, or flocks of birds, or shoals of fishes. If you feel like one of the flamingos in the flying sequence of Out of Africa, Brymer is talking about you.

Along the way, he mentions a campaign that the agency ran for Brazilian brand Brastemp, which makes stolid domestic appliances like refrigerators and washing machines. The agency wanted to create "an emotional connection" with the brand. Its research uncovered the nifty Brazilian concept of the "B-side", which of course refers to the B-side of a record. In Brazil, the B-side is a metaphor for all that's spontaneous, alternative, refreshing and authentic.

"This attitude then became a design philosophy for Brastemp, with products emphasizing the B-side of life (such as) refrigerators that dispensed cans and frosted glasses for party lovers..."

I sat up when I read this. I love the concept. The A-side of life covers all the things that are obligatory and predictable: work, exercise, food shopping, cleaning the house...Not all of these things are entirely devoid of pleasure, but they are somehow forced on one. The B-side is the unexpected, the hedonistic, the purely pleasurable: a posh restaurant mid-week, a day on the beach, drinks with friends, an afternoon movie, a random art gallery, a day off, a last-minute weekend break...or, indeed, a new music track.

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but here's one that should be reasonably easy to stick to. More of 2009 will be spent playing the other side of the record.

I wish you a Happy New Year. And a lot more B-sides. 

Britishness and brands

Back to London again, partly for the rather extravagant reason that I wanted to get a look at the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station, which has been given an £800 million facelift. The building is interesting from a marketing point of view because it is being used as a branding tool not just by Eurostar, but by the whole of London. It's being sold to the international press as a metaphor for the wealth and dynamism of the British capital.

As with most marketing strategies, message and reality quickly go their separate ways. The station itself is an architectural triumph, combining restored Gothic splendour with dramatic notes of glass and steel and a swathe of upmarket leisure, including a Champagne bar. Mix Hogwarts with Batman's lair, add a splash of The Avengers and you've got the general ambience. Unfortunately, the London outside the station is still the shambolic kitchen sink drama we know and love, with a malfunctioning Tube system on the one hand and long, simmering lines for taxis on the other.

I finally made it to my hotel, which was a much more successful choice than my last visit to Blighty. The Courthouse Hotel is indeed located in a former courthouse (and one that's right opposite Liberty, my favourite London department store). Those who visited the hotel in its less welcoming days apparently included Oscar Wilde, Mick Jagger and Christine Keeler, so in its own way it's another historic British landmark.

While I was lunching in the National Gallery's (restored) café, which resembles a superior take on a traditional pub, it occurred to me that big chunks of Britishness are being cleaned up and rebranded. It's no coincidence that the pub at St Pancras is called The Betjeman Arms, after Sir John Betjeman, Britain's most loveable dead poet, whose works invariably painted a rosy teatime picture of the country.

Perhaps the best expression of the Britishisation trend is Bamford & Sons, the new UK luxury brand that has a flagship store in Sloane Square. Founded by the family behind JCB earthmoving machines, Bamford has a dashing, country manor, tweeds-and-MG feel about it. As well as buying soft, huggable cable-knit sweaters and smart jackets and overcoats, you can shop for vintage Rolex watches, leather driving gloves, outmoded mobile phones, Playboy playing cards and coffee table tomes about boats, trains and planes.

We've seen this image of Britishness before - it's peddled by Dunhill and Burberry, among others - but Bamford & Sons do it with a "chocks away!" enthusiasm that almost resembles honesty. Personally I found the whole thing rather suffocating, but then I've always had an ambiguous relationship with my birthplace. I don't like beer, tea, cricket or rugby. And I live in France. No wonder I was staying at the Courthouse Hotel: any more evidence and they'd hang me as a traitor.

Retrosexuals drink Canadian Club

We haven't heard from the retrosexual for a while, but a spate of recent sightings have reassured me that he's alive, well, and in the media.
For a start, the American edition of GQ has just celebrated its 50th birthday with an homage to, naturally, the 1950s. Plenty of sharp suits, jaunty hats and general manliness to be found there. One reporter adopted the attitudes and lifestyle of a fifties male for two weeks. He found that the period suited him just fine. His wife, understandably, was less keen. The magazine also made a couple of references to the TV show Mad Men, which is set on 1950s Madison Avenue. Its dapper heroes may have an impact on male wardrobes.
Finally, in a similar vein, there's this advertising campaign for Canadian Club whisky. It's a neat idea, if you'll excuse the pun. But although the concept is nicely disruptive, I'm not sure how many men will actually want to emulate their fathers, even if the old guys were pretty cool back in the day. The ads were created by Energy BBDO in Chicago - and I'll certainly be using them in my book.

Return from Slovenia

Just back from Slovenia, which explains my rather lengthy absence from this space. I was at an advertising festival called the Golden Drum, the adfest of the New Europe. It's held in Portoroz, a rather cute little seaside town perched on the Adriatic, across the bay from Duino (fans of the poet Rilke will remember his Duino Elegies). I was there to talk about my book ADLAND and moderate a debate about the future of advertising. You can hear a little of what I was rambling on about here if you scroll down a bit.
One thing I liked about the Golden Drum was that, compared to the advertising industry's huge international junket in Cannes, it's a much smaller, more familial affair. The whole thing takes place at the Grand Hotel Bernardin, where all the delegates stay, so it's easy to get chatting to spiky haired Hungarian creatives or willowy art directors from Bucharest. The hotel is gratifyingly strange, too: a brutal post-Communist structure welded to the side of a cliff. You take the elevator down to your room - which has a guaranteed sea view.

Just a short stroll along the coast is another town called Piran. As well as some excellent fish restaurants, it has a pleasantly windswept, salt-corroded atmosphere and still bears traces of this region's ancient colonial power, the Venetians.

One thing I've decided I don't like is moderating debates. The speakers ramble on for ages, and get annoyed when you try to cut them off in a desperate attempt to keep to time. The last speaker is even more furious, because by then you're running hours late. Next year I think I'll just make a guest appearance, rather than taking a starring role.

From Sputnik to beatnik

"Sputnik's instant notoriety...inspired San Francisco Chronicle writer Herb Caen to coin the term 'beatnik' in an article on the Beat Generation."
International Herald Tribune, October 4 2007

Today is the 50th birthday of the Sputnik - a name I've always found highly appropriate, as the Russian satellite resembled a metallic spud with a quartet of sprouts growing out of it. If it had carried passengers, they would have undoubtedly resembled the Smash martians. Until today, I thought the only popular culture phenomenon linked to the Soviet sphere was the laughable 80s pop group Sigue Sigue Sputnik. I never made the link with the Beats. But here is the original column in which Herb Caen coins the word, in an almost throwaway gesture.

After a brief investigation, I've discovered that the Beats never really liked the term. Beat supremo Jack Kerouac found it vaguely derogatory. For him, Beat was a blend of several ideas: the fact that they were all "deadbeat" writers, poets and musicians, the blissed out "beatitude" they were all striving for - and of course the jazz they were all listening to.

The word "beatnik" came into popular usage at around the time Beat was adopted by marketers to sell a half-imagined lifestyle - dancing in smoky cellars, berets, sunglasses, black roll neck pullovers, girls with bare feet and boys with goatee beards. Not to mention records and movies. And here I must declare an interest, because my great uncle George Minter, who produced a string of B-movies in the 1950s, made his contribution to the genre in the form of a movie called Beat Girl. The American title, Wild For Kicks, is even better. Apart from a certain quaint charm (gasp at depravity on the streets of Soho!) the film has one great thing in its favour: music by John Barry, later known for his Bond movie soundtracks.

Feeling kind of Blue Note

Advertising people call them "passion brands", or "lovemarks" - brands that inspire loyalty beyond reason. As somebody who regularly writes about advertising, I've always considered myself immune to this infatuation. I like certain brands, but not so much that my critical faculty becomes blocked.
And then, browsing in a record store yesterday, I realised that there is a brand in which I have absolute, unquestioning confidence. It's called Blue Note.

The jazz label has all the hallmarks of a great brand. First of all - and here's where a lot of brands fall down - the product is superlative. I clicked on the website just now and saw offerings by Stacy Kent, Grant Green, Lee Morgan and Jimmy Smith. Even if you think you don't like jazz, I guarantee you'd love at least one of these discs.
Blue Note has a heritage: it was founded in 1939 and became home to a whole generation of bepop musicians, whose sound transformed it into a legend.
It has a great, timeless logo.

And of course there are those record sleeves.
Entire books have been devoted to Blue Note cover art. The style was set almost from the beginning by the designer Reid Miles and the photographer Francis Wolff. At its most basic it's a combination of expressive typography and unusual portraits of musicians: Blue Note loves the bizarre camera angle or the obscure location. Black and white is popular, but there's also that strange tinted effect, as if we're looking through a coloured spotlight filter.

Often the covers are more conceptual: here's the disc I bought yesterday, and am listening to right now.

But the Blue Note covers are not just fancy selling devices. They really do express what's inside the package. Cool and atmospheric, they give you the impression you're listening to jazz even before the disc is on your turntable. There are other great record labels, but few have the heft, longevity and sheer perfection of Blue Note.
For some reason, I don't listen to jazz as often in the summer. Like tweed, cashmere and Irish whiskey, it goes perfectly with autumn. Maybe that's why autumn is my favourite time of year. Even if it makes me feel kind of blue.

My life, my bag

Fashion brands rarely hire external advertising agencies. Most designers are far too insecure to let another creative person do the creating, lest their genius is cast into shadow. Hence, the advertising for Louis Vuitton is usually overseen by the brand's in-house designer, Marc Jacobs. As you know, his images fit firmly into the "famous chicks with bags" category of fashion branding.
Recently, however, Vuitton decided that it wanted to reactivate the somewhat neglected travel element of its heritage, while also targeting male consumers. So it took the giant step of hiring the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather.
The resulting campaign features this rather uncomfortable portrait of Mikhail Gorbachev, who appears to be making a rapid escape in a limousine, having stolen a Louis Vuitton bag full of money. That explains his worried expression and rumpled appearance. Shot by Annie Leibowitz, the ad closely resembles the current Samsonite campaign ("Life's a journey"). With the exception that I believe Richard Branson and Jean Reno actually use Samsonite bags. In fact, I suspect Gorby uses them too.
Conceptually, though, the campaign reminds me of the one for American Express. Which is not at all surprising, as Ogilvy is also the advertising agency for...American Express.

Cigarettes, cigars and spooks

Christ, I miss smoking. Especially right now, after dinner, when I am at home contemplating an armchair and a book. A cigarette and a glass of wine would fit right in to that scenario. But, alas, I smoke no more. Or maybe only at parties, when I've had far too many glasses of wine to appreciate the aesthetic joy of it all.
Even before I moved to Paris, I smoked Gauloises Blondes. I did so because I wanted to emulate the laconic spy in Len Deighton's series of novels. In movieland this anonymous narrator became Harry Palmer, the bespectacled smoothie portrayed by Michael Caine. The character worked in Soho, drank in Italian coffee bars, and smoked Gauloises. As I was working in Soho at the time, and quite partial to a cappuccino, I naturally adopted his preferred cigarette brand. It was a kind of retroactive marketing. As far as I know, Deighton didn't have a product placement deal with Gauloises - just as Ian Fleming wasn't paid by any of the numerous brands he mentions in the Bond books, from Rolex (not Omega) to Revelation (a brand of suitcase).
I've never been a cigar smoker, although I perfectly understand the appeal of the activity. This appreciation resurfaced on Sunday when I saw a film called L'Avocat de la Terreur, Barbet Schroeder's chilling documentary about the controversial defence lawyer Jacques Vergès. The urbane, silver-maned Vergès smokes a cigar the size of a chair-leg throughout the movie, and looks supremely powerful.
Right now, though, it's not power I'm after. It's the tiny high delivered by a hit of nicotine. But although a packet of cigarettes is cheaper than a Cuban cigar, the ultimate price is still far too high to pay.

Naked in a cellar

Last night I found myself in a wine cellar with almost all the worldwide partners of Naked, the snazzy communications planning agency. It was a pleasant event - not only because everyone was in a jovial mood, but also because it was a wine tasting. Or rather a wine gulping: no swilling and spitting here, just reckless consumption. My favourite was a Poulsard, a very young red wine from the Jura, so light that it resembled a rosé blushing with embarrassment.
Anyway, with a couple of these down my neck I told Nicolas, who'd invited me to the bash, about this blog. "Oh, I use loads of cosmetics," he said. I didn't have my notebook with me, but I can tell you that Clarins was his brand of choice. I asked him if he had anything for dark circles under the eyes. "Try an ice cube," he suggested.
Maybe the secret to researching this book is simply to quiz men about their shopping and grooming habits over a drink or three. I should be doing less blogging and more socialising.