Is this minty?

Most people know that Thailand is my spiritual home and where my daughter waits for me. I've never caught more natural smiles than while walking through Klong Toey market than in any other place on the planet - I've always felt more at home with the underprivileged and the people of Isan than the plutocratic and plundering Bangkok ruling elite such as the former Prime Minister Taksin Shinawatra (Owner of Man City Football Club) who is under investigation for human rights abuses including those 3000 or so extra judicial killings a few years back.

No, I don't mean the smiles that are laid on in the environment of the 'White Collar' classes which you can read more about over here. I mean the smiles that are free, simple, unpretentious and generous of life.

I deeply regret what the West did by selling electrification and the automobile into Siam. An idyllic and rural paradise on earth that can still be glimpsed today in out of town places and where the people in the past, were in harmony with their environment, where they turned from agrarian littering of discarded banana skins and coconuts that decomposed naturally into the environment, to plastic bag throwers that blight most of the cities of S.E. Asia

But this ad I stumbled across earlier is I believe not a showcase example of this wonderful country, and as we talked about over here could well be yet another example of latent racism. Thailand you are bigger and better than this. It is my belief the creatives tried to put the right message in at the beginning, when I thought it was starting to look like a WORLD CLASS AD.

Friendship Store

I had one of those epiphanies last night that tells me so much about this country I could easily write for days. Near my apartment is a Friendship Store. It's a nondescript department store with a supermarket, but I'd already noticed that things weren't the way you'd expect, after an emergency provisions run last night, I worked out a little more of what the Friendship Store is about.

It's a fragment of unreconstructed Communist China still alive in the 21st century. It's amazing. A state owned enterprise department store, with all the quirks you'd expect from the equivalent of say Debenhams, run by the most prudish and bureaucratic parts of the civil service. It really is a jewel.

The first lasting impression is the lack of customers that make it the most delightful shopping experience I've had outside the Prada Tokyo store. Look at those shopping aisles, gloriously empty of customers! OK, so they don't have every item that one might expect from a supermarket but the luxury of not having to work my way around the hoi polloi is beyond words. I'm convinced I was royalty in my last life ;) However, nestled amongst those state sanctioned goods for sale are the pearls of trade that the elite foreign diplomatic community, for whom these Friendship Stores were created, insisted upon in former times. I believe that at one point it was de rigeur for foreign leaders to do a quick shop here.


Look at that! Out of nowhere I was suddenly confronted with the most expensive tins of fois gras I've ever seen in a supermarket outside of France. Now forgive me but I've long suspected the French keep all the quality gear to themselves, so you kind of know that this sort of treatment by our cousins across the Channel is how they maintained 'cordial relations' with La Chinoise. I've always thought the Brits were a bit narrow minded on gift giving. We might not know how to make good vino but we can always make good pie right?

I then remembered when I was reading this book back here a few months ago that Chairman Mao, was fond of pigging out on the occasional delicacy. It's not beyond the realms of possiblity that any 'surplus' was redistributed into the Friendship Store to flog to the cities' diplomats, and raise some much needed hard currency. The tin just missing out of this shot on the left below cost over 200 Euros! An enormous amount of dosh in this part of the world even to this day. Anyway most of the above is just speculation but my interest to explore the Friendship Store from top to bottom had been precipitated and by yesterday afternoon at four, I had concluded it was well worth it.

I resolved to head to the top floor first, intending to work my way down. Before I even made it to the elevator, I came across the one must-have item I could not have wished more for. I don't quite know how to explain the piece above fully. It's an ancient court piece of beautifully cast porcelain ancient Chinese style letters of the most exquisite shapes set in a fixed surrounding of some indeterminate subsance. It was really beautiful and the sales assistant pointed out my eye for the expensive when she explained it was the oldest and most expensive item she had amongst the usual souvenir items. 23 000 Euros to be precise, and so I had to leave it there. She did let slip however that there is a state owned warehouse of this stuff and they drip feed it through to the store every once in a while. How cool is that? I'll be nipping back there on occasions for sure.

There were also a spread of posters that were more in my price range. I've a bunch of these from the last time I worked in Shanghai, and if my memory serves me correctly, I gave them out to three friends as gifts. I did particularly like this one with advertising for torch batteries. It's a reprint but from the 50's so they aren't quite original.

Then the lady really persisted in trying to sell me one of those stone carved 'royal seal' stamps that every hand written letter writer or person of importance should have. Here she is doing some stamping action on an old business card of mine, with a little one that was still over 2000 Euros.

That red paste on the right is the ink. Here is what it looks like close up on some better and more absorbent paper.


The sales assistant was really trying to get me to buy this. I nearly did too, because the little man on the left is the inspiration for the Beijing Olympics 2008 Logo. I know we all had a bloody good laugh about the logo the other day on that funny cartoon that it breaks my heart not to put up here, in the interests of ahem 'sensitivity', but I was really revved up when I realised there was some history to this little fella and also that the lady was trying to explain that its related to spas and being healthy. Unfortunately as I'm finding out over here, the Chinese way is to sometimes over explain a concept, so I didn't understand her fully in the end. Anyway it was a very tempting buy, but I remembered that I only write handwritten letters when I want to express condolence or love, which is the same thing I guess, and that I'm not really all that important anyway, so I couldn't justify a couple of thousand Euros on it. I do however totally endorse people buying old stuff and not new stuff so if you want a seal just let me know. Also if someone Chinese knows more about the little man, I'm keen to learn.

I then popped into their tailors and the lady working there was keen as mustard to sell me some nice Chinese tailoring, but I couldn't justify buying a summer suit in the Winter. I did get a snap of a photo with Nancy and Ronnie Reagan when they were in town wearing this tailors clobber.

Last off, and with a bit of shopper determination, I found a stash of old movie posters including some that were so kitsche seventies, I became practically tumescent at the sight of them. The one I bought though seemed to be about right before I return later and buy the rest for Christmas presents.


Right I thought, after buying this. Time to get the hell out before I get lathered up into a consumer frenzy of buying shit I want but don't need. The lady and the stamp on the way out had different ideas though, and she collared me before I snuck away, with a full on Socialist half Nelson to buy a complete set of the revolutionary workers matchbox package print collection, from around the time of the cultural revolution. They are a complete story of Mao's life in propaganda artwork, and it was too much to walk away from. I also intend to scan each and everyone and give them back to whoever needs them for whatever purpose on the internet. I got the analogue ones though if anybody wants to buy them once they are scanned. I'm not really into 'stuff' per se. Attachment causes suffering and all that.

Branded Utility

One of the reasons why I like the folk at Anomaly in New York, Piers at PSFK and Zeus Jones in Minneapolis is because of their understanding of where our business is heading. Way too many advertising people are in a state of delusion when it comes to the overall efficacy of the marketing communications that we do. I'd argue that a lot of the wallpaper we paste up conveys a given amount of trust because there's an implicit cost factor when viewing paid up media space. Something along the lines of "If you can purchase that media space and come up with some reasonable production values, then you must be a reasonably reliable brand". That's it folks. We buy trust most of the time.

Most wallpaper is reassuring. If you're not convinced then live in a room stripped of it for a while.

So on Friday after a quintessentially self indulgent and non engaging advertising awards ceremony that almost defined how sclerotic our business has become, I came across a terrific quote on Dino's de.licio.us bookmarks for Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad as saying

"Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking."

I'd be inclined to agree. However there is a momentum in the beginning of this third millennium for marketing as doing. The digital era seems to be ushering in a breed of young folk who have no time for crafted messaging and are intolerant of not getting the information they need in the quickest way possible. I've never seen anything like it before. It only takes a browser to crash a few times and the digital savvy young folk of today delete the free software as if its a cancerous tumour. What happens when Wikipedia or Google's new idea Knol start to do product evaluation? The kids who are mostly digital natives, only want the information and that is a trend that those of us who grew up in the propaganda age (frequency and penetration) of marketing communications need to think long and hard about. The middle path is marketing as doing and there are some great ideas that have been put forward by the folk I mentioned at the beginning, in posts over here, here and here. That doesn't mean I'm anti advertising. It means I'm against bad advertising and for good information delivered cleanly and with the minimum of fuss.

I got thinking about this because I just happened to pass a blood giving bus close to the Xidan shopping area above, and I thought how smart the location was and doing this with a mobile blood donor unit. Somewhere to lie down for 10 minutes and give blood without really interrupting the day, I wanted to donate myself but the nurses didn't speak English. Then I got thinking if Nokia was a brand that could get involved in branded utility activity like this, given that its not too far removed from the traveling roadshows around the rural and semi urban areas that are often done in the mobile phone category over here. You know, communicating a need and helping encourage trial and action.

Later on at Wangfujing I saw them once more. So I thought about it again. I mulled over the notion of 'Connecting People' and it occurred to me that there probably isn't any greater connection than the one being done in the bus above. Probably that's an idea that is too visceral for most people's taste but the notion that the way a brand speaks is the only thing that matters, is the gravy train thinking of 20th century marketing and it's coming to an end as we see people controlling the information they want and continued digital emancipation taking place. I'm guessing the half a billion or so people whose first internet experience will be via the mobile phone will be equally intolerant of dishonest attempts to be interesting as I find people like Sam, Charlie and Adam now are.

I'm sure this makes me seem like I'm taking myself way too seriously and I probably am, so in the interests of not disappearing up my own bottom, here's a couple of pics from last nights clubbing action. First off is Puff Charlie keeping it real for y'all in the White Rabbit China town Lucky Street hood. Stayin' tuff all through the night and standing ma ground outside.

I know Sam can do a much better Ali G than I can but he's not here so that will have to make do. It was looking well mean down in the basement of the club. White riot everywhere and even the bitches were packing heat.

I ask you what has clubbing come to? Seriously though it wasn't a bad night but a less hipper crowd than I was hoping for. The music was better than the previous Friday, and we even slipped out for some of those ace kebabs that the folk from the far Western provinces of China rustle up in the Sanlitun area. They are easily the tastiest meat things on a stick I've ever eaten. I also noticed some stuff about the affluent local Chinese that was worth hanging around for. The Beijing crowd are very much different from the Shanghai lot and I don't think it's reflected in the way advertising is created for them.