|
Sometimes
it can be hard to cope with the world. The misery and depression of everyday
life, the constant failure, and the uncaring sloppiness exhibited by companies
and organisations that pretend to like me, when in fact they just don't
care about me. I don't earn enough for them to care about me. Which is
why it's nice to see something that isn't sloppy, something that's obviously
been made with diligence and attention to detail. Something that isn't
churned out from a conveyor-belt by a company that doesn't care about
quality, a company staffed by people who just don't care, people who just
want to go home, people who don't care if the product is rubbish, because
it's not their fault, because they stand to lose nothing if it is, and
even if they could understand what's going wrong, they don't have enough
power to nullify another department's inertia. The employees just want
their money, and to go home; the employers just want their money, and
a big house, and a helicopter. They don't have to use the product. They
probably shop elsewhere. They have no personal stake in the company -
their goal is to fatten it up until they can sell it to a bigger company,
so that they can either take the money and repeat the process, or scale
the corporate ladder of the bigger company. The product is just a device
for creating money, it's not something to get passionate about. It's not
the done thing to give the impression that you care.
But one thing gives me faith, and that's After Eight mints. Not the mints
themselves, mind you - they're just cheap chocolate, spread thinly, and
sold at an inflated price with a dated marketing campaign that apes the
snobbish thinking behind Ferrero Rocher, but with professional execution.
People care less and less about class. That's why Lexus sell so many cars
in America, and why Ingram sell so many guns - and as Britain becomes
more sophisticated, it becomes less class-aware, and more American. For
that matter, I don't even like the taste of After Eight mints. And they're
very expensive. I'd rather have a Marathon bar, or a block of Fruit and
Nut, although not very often because I don't really like chocolate all
that much.
What makes me happy, though, is the logo. A lesser company would use a
shot of a clock with the hands pointing at eight o'clock - After Eight,
thoughtfully, have the hands pointing at three minutes past the hour.
The clock is pointing to a time just after eight o'clock. Which makes
sense. To me. And quite probably to you, too. But companies don't make
sense.
|
|
"I am frightened
to say anything so I say nothing."
|
|
Whilst it
may seem obvious that a chocolate called 'After Eight' would be sold with
a picture of a clock set to a time just after eight o'clock, it's the
kind of thing that companies tend to miss, or fumble. They place the hands
at eight, because they just don't see how obvious three minutes past eight
is, or they fail to agree on a specific time past the hour and eight o'clock
eventually becomes the compromise solution. They argue that using the
hands of a clock would remind the buyer too much of the clock on the front
of the Journal of the Atomic Scientists, the one that indicates how close
we are to nuclear armageddon. They decide that placing the hands just
past eight o'clock will confuse the customer, and that people will wonder
why the hands are just past eight, and they will stop buying the chocolate
and money will be lost. They decide that it will be too hard to print
a clock indicating three minutes past, as the hands might appear to merge
into a blob when viewed from a distance. They decide that customer might
see the clock hands as a v-sign being flicked at them, or that Islamic
customers might be offended. A hundred small things prevent companies
from making their metaphorical logo point at a metaphorical three minutes
past eight.
Why? Another hundred reasons. Intertia. People are unwilling to stick
their necks out. It's not my responsibility. I would have fixed it, but
nobody asked me. Insert your own reason here. People are stupid. Teams
of mediocre people produce something worse than mediocrity. We all need
somebody to take charge. And often that person turns out to be a blustering
idiot, unaware of his or her own shortcomings, but loudmouthed and dressed
in expensive clothes. Business is not about success, it's about giving
the impression of competence. Of consistency. An erratic genius is not
as good for business as a consistent mediocrat. Success is hard to achieve
and often random, but you can work on your appearance. It just takes money.
Save up.
|
|
Dating In Hong Kong On FirstClickFriend.Com Offers Online Dating Services And Online Personals For All Regions In Hong Kong. Dating In Hong Kong Can Be Really Successful Ith FirstClickFriend.Com "I have nothing to say."
|
If this sounds stupid
to you, you're wrong. You probably think that I'm being silly. But I'm not.
If your job involves creativity, and you work with other people who are
not creative, I am sure that you will also have been privy to such idiocy.
At school I grew
to learn that schoolchildren, such as myself, were uniformly
conservative, unwilling
to stand up for themselves, and unwilling to stand out in any way. I hated
them. I still do. Kids just want to fit in. They want to be
boring. They want
to be just like other kids. They don't want to admit this to themselves.
And then they leave school and get jobs and get promoted and become my boss,
because the world of business likes people who just want to fit in. People
who are clubbable. People who keep their heads down, people who don't stand
out, mediocre, boring people, these people all become employers. They are
unwilling to employ people who stand out because they are scared that they
might be odd. What's the difference between a head-down conformist at school
and a twenty-six-year-old marketing manager? There isn't one. They are the
same person. Boring. Safe. Shallow. A sheep.
I don't know who makes After Eight mints. But I respect
them. |
|
|
| |