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Branded
No, not a short story (god save us from hackneyed Will Self-alikes banging out sub-standard English homework pieces) or a poem. Nope, this is a lengthy musing on the world.
And to prevent the defensive “Who are you to say?” outcries, needless to say what follows is my perception, my beliefs and my outlooks. As such, it casts no aspersions on you, dear reader, nor does it leave the door open for “You’re wrong” because to me, my views aren’t.
So, with that proviso and weary header –
There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Something desperately plastic and Stepford-Wife about today’s culture. Take a look around you: a homogenised one-size-fits-all world that promises uniqueness yet strives to put you into an easy-to-sell-to persona.
It pervades the normal high-street. What used to be a thriving community, a centre of activity and social gathering place has been turned into a scene akin to “Dawn of The Dead” with windswept, empty precincts and the occasional fluttering newspaper swirling outside Poundland/Top Shop/Ratners/Mobile Phone Inc.
Except lately there has been some life re-appearing in High Streets, but it’s become something far more sinister than shuffling hordes of undead seeking brains to snack upon.
Where once were local butchers, cafes, bookstores, small record stores run by people that knew what you were talking about and other recognisable stores now squat vast, multi-national conglomerates all striving to appear incongruous and “Hey there, come on in and be happy and friendly”.
Doesn’t matter if you live in Essex, Bordeaux or Utah – these stores are all the same.
Starbucks/Gap/Tower Records/Borders/McDonalds/Blockbuster/Pizza Hut/Nike Town/Warner Bros/Wal-Mart (except they still call themselves Asda here in the UK because of the rising anti-Wal Mart feeling in the US).
Generic stores that have swallowed the world whole and offer up identikit “experiences” and call their staff “partners” in an attempt to appear friendly, local stores helping you to live you life in a stress-free way.
The past 10-15 years have seen the world become smaller and the invention of something called the Internet that has “brought us together” apparently. But with that has come the proliferation of the same old stores the world over and the eradication of any sense of local identity.
Sainsbury and Tesco here did the same, carpet-bombing areas with stores to obliterate independent operators. Harlow has 3 Tesco, a Sainsbury and an Asda. Now it’s a given that if you go do your food shopping, it will be in one of those mega-stores. You still have local corner stores, but because of the cheap prices in these giants, they are forced to charge more because of loss of business, and therefore people dislike paying more and head straight towards the majors. It’s a vicious circle.
Oh, oh – except now you can “Tesco Local”. An oxymoron if ever there was one.
A massive supermarket putting imitation versions of the exact same stores they drove out of business, except with half the choice and generic brands at knock-down prices.
These big players can afford to charge bottom rate and absorb any operating losses due to the sheer size and number. It’s the same as Microsoft losing x number of millions a week, they can afford it so who cares?
The aim isn’t to make a store profitable, it’s to completely saturate an area and remove the choice. And once choice has been killed, prices can then be raised.
Blockbuster does exactly the same, as does Starbucks.
They simply open more and more stores until the competition has been forced out, leaving you with no choice.
There used to be a local video shop in Harlow, it was fantastic and I used it for over 15 years. The staff were knowledgeable, friendly and it was an excellent place to find out about movies you’d never heard of before, just ask the guy.
And then Blockbuster opened about 30 seconds away. 3 months before it opened, they canvassed every home in Harlow and took membership, offering you free rentals if you signed up before the opening. “No thanks” was my reply.
And the local video store closed within the year. So now I can go choose from 45 copies of Terminator 3 and Legally Blonde 2, but the 2 copies of Dark Water are always out and the staff are simply there because it’s a job, not because they know/love film – unlike the old place that was forced to close.
Why?
Why did people switch from their local store to the blue & yellow plastic, slack-jawed megaplex offering of Blockbuster?
It’s the tactic of market saturation plus brand recognition.
It doesn’t matter that they now charge almost £4 to rent or that the selection is ass-awful, it’s ease and brand familiarity.
And that’s the same with Starbucks/Gap etc. It doesn’t matter that they offer wan, lifeless products (personally), but because they know the name.
Branding. Getting your company lodged in our psyche.
The ultimate goal of business/marketing/advertising. To have somebody equate your company/brand with their desire.
It’s not the product that is important, it’s the brand.
Coke is the world’s number one soft-drink.
Its logo is recognisable in every single country. They don’t even need to put the name, just the red & white swirl is enough to tell you. Yet they still spend billions in advertising every year. Why? There’s no need to when you have world market dominance. It’s not to sell more, it’s to reinforce the brand in your mind.
And it’s not about the product, it’s about “Coke”. You can buy merchandise – ranging from jackets to fridge magnets. They are selling the brand to you, not the drink.
Blockbuster do the same.
It’s not about selling movies, it’s about selling you the Blockbuster brand. How does the commercial go? “Make it a Blockbuster evening”. They’re blatantly telling you to turn your evening into a celebration of the company. You can now buy beer/soft drinks/dvd players/sound systems instore, everything you could possibly want to go with your big studio movie you can get from this one store. No need to visit anywhere else, be loyal to Blockbuster and be a happy consumer.
McDonalds is another company that doesn’t need to advertise to gain more business, yet their marketing budget is akin to the national economy of a small country.
It’s all about reinforcing the brand, making sure when you think “I want a mechanically separated, water-filled patty of barely-present meat I want a McDonalds”.
Anyone here remember their old slogan? That went beyond anything I’ve seen, it was bordering on “They Live” style of marketing. Printed on the take-away bags/drink containers etc? “Enjoy More”. Now if that doesn’t make you think “Hang on a minute, what kind of Big Brother world is this” then you’ve been owned hook line and sinker by these marketing bods. “Enjoy More” – a straight out order to you, the vacant consumer to shut up and be happy with your sub-standard food snack.
Nike.
I’m not going to go into their sweat-shop production methods here, that’s for another time. But as an example of branding, they are 100% the leaders.
They don’t even make a product anymore. They closed their factories down and use contractors in other countries. They don’t design shoes, they stopped doing that years ago. They moved away from the costly burden of actually making a product, and instead concentrated on selling Nike as a brand.
The adverts with sporting heroes talking about “the spirit of excellence” etc, the sponsorship of events. It all goes to promoting Nike the brand, not any product.
My personal favourite is Tommy Hilfigger.
Did you know he is not a designer? He’s never once been responsible for designing a single piece of clothing. He simply buys contract clothing and puts his name on.
Yet he’s one of the biggest, must-have names in the “bling-bling” world of hip-hop.
He did a very clever thing, he marketed his gear towards inner city blacks. Employed street-teamers to wear his gear and promote it at street level. The kids would get into it, nobody ever concentrated on them before as a target demographic. Consequently the hip-hop stars wore it, and then white suburban Middle America dutifully followed. In much the same way that you see these clueless, stupid white English kids in massive baggy jeans with no belt and the waist down by their thighs (just as trivia, this fashion started because of prison culture. Belts would be removed to prevent hanging yourself, so the trousers would subsequently hang loose. Style adopted in the ghetto and followed on by white middle-class teens).
Hilfigger doesn’t manufacture any products, there isn’t anything he has to make. He simply sticks his brand on somebody else’s work and you buy it.
And where branding really has worked, has seeped into the culture’s awareness (any where I vent my spleen) is the willingness of you, the individual, to be willing to use yourself as a billboard.
A walking, talking advertising space for that brand.
And you pay for the privilege.
You cannot move without seeing people wearing branded clothing. Be it a hat with the ubiquitous Nike “Swoosh” or any other number of brands.
Designer label clothes in the 80s, the height of vulgarity for anyone too young to remember yuppies, Thatcherism, filofaxes etc kept, surprisingly for the era, a modest restraint on branding.
A small Lacoste crocodile on the front was about as classy as it got (times change).
But today, clothing has become a full-on brand advertising feature. The brand name/logo has taken centre stage to the point where it can cover the front/back completely (or in the case of Hilfigger, all down the arms and legs as well).
And I don’t understand why you do this. I simply cannot comprehend why you would choose to pay for the opportunity to advertise these brands for the companies. Are you a billboard? No, but you couldn’t tell it from 90% of people walking around these identikit world-same stores, all consuming in happy ignorance.
It’s Starbucks for your morning coffee fix, shopping at Gap in your lunch hour, then to Blockbuster for “the experience”. Weekends spent shuffling around shopping centres looking for more branded goods to wear from world-wide stores that don’t even produce a product anymore.
It doesn’t make sense to me why you would do this, really it doesn’t.
And for those people that like to pretend they are cynical and “yeah man, the media is like, soooo cliché”? You can buy t-shirts with Che Guevara on the front, or the communist star, or retro Atari t-shirts.
Sure it’s ironic fashion, but it’s still a brand co-opting whatever “cool” passes these days and using it to sell to you, getting you to parade around as an advertising space.
Why would a person subsume their identity and worth as a person, and choose to be a walking talking brand extension? Are people really that empty?
Unfortunately, the more I look around, the more I tend to think “yes, they are”.
16 million people all watching Eastenders. More people voting for Pop Idol than turned out to vote.
Think about that, you took more time deciding who would have a 15 minute karaoke career than you spent deciding who would run your country for you.
That’s frightening.
It would appear that everybody wants to eat the same (bad) food, wear the same branded clothes, watch the same vacouos television programmes and listen to the same plastic pop music.
A world composed of countries where the only difference is the language spoken and the weather with everybody shopping in the same place, wearing the same clothing and thinking the same thing.
That’s not a world I like the sound of.
McDonalds used to have “ENJOY MORE” stamped all over their waste, and then their marketing people realised that people weren’t, in fact, enjoying more and hey, maybe that idea seemed a tad “Shut up, be happy, buy/eat”. So they spend millions coming up with a new catchy slogan designed to appeal to the children/teens that make up a majority of their customers: “i’m lovin’ it”.
Nice and non-instructional, written in teen friendly lower-case txt speak style to indicate that yes, McDonalds is a car-crash of fat & salt but y’know, they love you really.
i’m loving it?
No I’m not, but it would appear that I’m in the minority.
No, not a short story (god save us from hackneyed Will Self-alikes banging out sub-standard English homework pieces) or a poem. Nope, this is a lengthy musing on the world.
And to prevent the defensive “Who are you to say?” outcries, needless to say what follows is my perception, my beliefs and my outlooks. As such, it casts no aspersions on you, dear reader, nor does it leave the door open for “You’re wrong” because to me, my views aren’t.
So, with that proviso and weary header –
There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.
Something desperately plastic and Stepford-Wife about today’s culture. Take a look around you: a homogenised one-size-fits-all world that promises uniqueness yet strives to put you into an easy-to-sell-to persona.
It pervades the normal high-street. What used to be a thriving community, a centre of activity and social gathering place has been turned into a scene akin to “Dawn of The Dead” with windswept, empty precincts and the occasional fluttering newspaper swirling outside Poundland/Top Shop/Ratners/Mobile Phone Inc.
Except lately there has been some life re-appearing in High Streets, but it’s become something far more sinister than shuffling hordes of undead seeking brains to snack upon.
Where once were local butchers, cafes, bookstores, small record stores run by people that knew what you were talking about and other recognisable stores now squat vast, multi-national conglomerates all striving to appear incongruous and “Hey there, come on in and be happy and friendly”.
Doesn’t matter if you live in Essex, Bordeaux or Utah – these stores are all the same.
Starbucks/Gap/Tower Records/Borders/McDonalds/Blockbuster/Pizza Hut/Nike Town/Warner Bros/Wal-Mart (except they still call themselves Asda here in the UK because of the rising anti-Wal Mart feeling in the US).
Generic stores that have swallowed the world whole and offer up identikit “experiences” and call their staff “partners” in an attempt to appear friendly, local stores helping you to live you life in a stress-free way.
The past 10-15 years have seen the world become smaller and the invention of something called the Internet that has “brought us together” apparently. But with that has come the proliferation of the same old stores the world over and the eradication of any sense of local identity.
Sainsbury and Tesco here did the same, carpet-bombing areas with stores to obliterate independent operators. Harlow has 3 Tesco, a Sainsbury and an Asda. Now it’s a given that if you go do your food shopping, it will be in one of those mega-stores. You still have local corner stores, but because of the cheap prices in these giants, they are forced to charge more because of loss of business, and therefore people dislike paying more and head straight towards the majors. It’s a vicious circle.
Oh, oh – except now you can “Tesco Local”. An oxymoron if ever there was one.
A massive supermarket putting imitation versions of the exact same stores they drove out of business, except with half the choice and generic brands at knock-down prices.
These big players can afford to charge bottom rate and absorb any operating losses due to the sheer size and number. It’s the same as Microsoft losing x number of millions a week, they can afford it so who cares?
The aim isn’t to make a store profitable, it’s to completely saturate an area and remove the choice. And once choice has been killed, prices can then be raised.
Blockbuster does exactly the same, as does Starbucks.
They simply open more and more stores until the competition has been forced out, leaving you with no choice.
There used to be a local video shop in Harlow, it was fantastic and I used it for over 15 years. The staff were knowledgeable, friendly and it was an excellent place to find out about movies you’d never heard of before, just ask the guy.
And then Blockbuster opened about 30 seconds away. 3 months before it opened, they canvassed every home in Harlow and took membership, offering you free rentals if you signed up before the opening. “No thanks” was my reply.
And the local video store closed within the year. So now I can go choose from 45 copies of Terminator 3 and Legally Blonde 2, but the 2 copies of Dark Water are always out and the staff are simply there because it’s a job, not because they know/love film – unlike the old place that was forced to close.
Why?
Why did people switch from their local store to the blue & yellow plastic, slack-jawed megaplex offering of Blockbuster?
It’s the tactic of market saturation plus brand recognition.
It doesn’t matter that they now charge almost £4 to rent or that the selection is ass-awful, it’s ease and brand familiarity.
And that’s the same with Starbucks/Gap etc. It doesn’t matter that they offer wan, lifeless products (personally), but because they know the name.
Branding. Getting your company lodged in our psyche.
The ultimate goal of business/marketing/advertising. To have somebody equate your company/brand with their desire.
It’s not the product that is important, it’s the brand.
Coke is the world’s number one soft-drink.
Its logo is recognisable in every single country. They don’t even need to put the name, just the red & white swirl is enough to tell you. Yet they still spend billions in advertising every year. Why? There’s no need to when you have world market dominance. It’s not to sell more, it’s to reinforce the brand in your mind.
And it’s not about the product, it’s about “Coke”. You can buy merchandise – ranging from jackets to fridge magnets. They are selling the brand to you, not the drink.
Blockbuster do the same.
It’s not about selling movies, it’s about selling you the Blockbuster brand. How does the commercial go? “Make it a Blockbuster evening”. They’re blatantly telling you to turn your evening into a celebration of the company. You can now buy beer/soft drinks/dvd players/sound systems instore, everything you could possibly want to go with your big studio movie you can get from this one store. No need to visit anywhere else, be loyal to Blockbuster and be a happy consumer.
McDonalds is another company that doesn’t need to advertise to gain more business, yet their marketing budget is akin to the national economy of a small country.
It’s all about reinforcing the brand, making sure when you think “I want a mechanically separated, water-filled patty of barely-present meat I want a McDonalds”.
Anyone here remember their old slogan? That went beyond anything I’ve seen, it was bordering on “They Live” style of marketing. Printed on the take-away bags/drink containers etc? “Enjoy More”. Now if that doesn’t make you think “Hang on a minute, what kind of Big Brother world is this” then you’ve been owned hook line and sinker by these marketing bods. “Enjoy More” – a straight out order to you, the vacant consumer to shut up and be happy with your sub-standard food snack.
Nike.
I’m not going to go into their sweat-shop production methods here, that’s for another time. But as an example of branding, they are 100% the leaders.
They don’t even make a product anymore. They closed their factories down and use contractors in other countries. They don’t design shoes, they stopped doing that years ago. They moved away from the costly burden of actually making a product, and instead concentrated on selling Nike as a brand.
The adverts with sporting heroes talking about “the spirit of excellence” etc, the sponsorship of events. It all goes to promoting Nike the brand, not any product.
My personal favourite is Tommy Hilfigger.
Did you know he is not a designer? He’s never once been responsible for designing a single piece of clothing. He simply buys contract clothing and puts his name on.
Yet he’s one of the biggest, must-have names in the “bling-bling” world of hip-hop.
He did a very clever thing, he marketed his gear towards inner city blacks. Employed street-teamers to wear his gear and promote it at street level. The kids would get into it, nobody ever concentrated on them before as a target demographic. Consequently the hip-hop stars wore it, and then white suburban Middle America dutifully followed. In much the same way that you see these clueless, stupid white English kids in massive baggy jeans with no belt and the waist down by their thighs (just as trivia, this fashion started because of prison culture. Belts would be removed to prevent hanging yourself, so the trousers would subsequently hang loose. Style adopted in the ghetto and followed on by white middle-class teens).
Hilfigger doesn’t manufacture any products, there isn’t anything he has to make. He simply sticks his brand on somebody else’s work and you buy it.
And where branding really has worked, has seeped into the culture’s awareness (any where I vent my spleen) is the willingness of you, the individual, to be willing to use yourself as a billboard.
A walking, talking advertising space for that brand.
And you pay for the privilege.
You cannot move without seeing people wearing branded clothing. Be it a hat with the ubiquitous Nike “Swoosh” or any other number of brands.
Designer label clothes in the 80s, the height of vulgarity for anyone too young to remember yuppies, Thatcherism, filofaxes etc kept, surprisingly for the era, a modest restraint on branding.
A small Lacoste crocodile on the front was about as classy as it got (times change).
But today, clothing has become a full-on brand advertising feature. The brand name/logo has taken centre stage to the point where it can cover the front/back completely (or in the case of Hilfigger, all down the arms and legs as well).
And I don’t understand why you do this. I simply cannot comprehend why you would choose to pay for the opportunity to advertise these brands for the companies. Are you a billboard? No, but you couldn’t tell it from 90% of people walking around these identikit world-same stores, all consuming in happy ignorance.
It’s Starbucks for your morning coffee fix, shopping at Gap in your lunch hour, then to Blockbuster for “the experience”. Weekends spent shuffling around shopping centres looking for more branded goods to wear from world-wide stores that don’t even produce a product anymore.
It doesn’t make sense to me why you would do this, really it doesn’t.
And for those people that like to pretend they are cynical and “yeah man, the media is like, soooo cliché”? You can buy t-shirts with Che Guevara on the front, or the communist star, or retro Atari t-shirts.
Sure it’s ironic fashion, but it’s still a brand co-opting whatever “cool” passes these days and using it to sell to you, getting you to parade around as an advertising space.
Why would a person subsume their identity and worth as a person, and choose to be a walking talking brand extension? Are people really that empty?
Unfortunately, the more I look around, the more I tend to think “yes, they are”.
16 million people all watching Eastenders. More people voting for Pop Idol than turned out to vote.
Think about that, you took more time deciding who would have a 15 minute karaoke career than you spent deciding who would run your country for you.
That’s frightening.
It would appear that everybody wants to eat the same (bad) food, wear the same branded clothes, watch the same vacouos television programmes and listen to the same plastic pop music.
A world composed of countries where the only difference is the language spoken and the weather with everybody shopping in the same place, wearing the same clothing and thinking the same thing.
That’s not a world I like the sound of.
McDonalds used to have “ENJOY MORE” stamped all over their waste, and then their marketing people realised that people weren’t, in fact, enjoying more and hey, maybe that idea seemed a tad “Shut up, be happy, buy/eat”. So they spend millions coming up with a new catchy slogan designed to appeal to the children/teens that make up a majority of their customers: “i’m lovin’ it”.
Nice and non-instructional, written in teen friendly lower-case txt speak style to indicate that yes, McDonalds is a car-crash of fat & salt but y’know, they love you really.
i’m loving it?
No I’m not, but it would appear that I’m in the minority.
Page:
Do my eyes deceive me? Goatboy and Bell being civil?
What ever next? More question marks maybe?
What ever next? More question marks maybe?
Yukikaze wrote:
> In a way we deserve to be stuck with corporations because, as Biggles
> hints at, it's our -as in Western society - fault. We idolise
> celebrity of all kinds and that is the heart of the problem. Most
> people respect is reserved for these celebrities. There is a whole
> load of other things too, but you can pin it generally on our society
> as a whole. It does not make sense.
Agreed to an extent, and it's certainly a Western thing.
The issue of branding and dominating the marketplace is beginning to become an issue in China with Murdoch straining to obtain satellite licences, he's agreed to drop BBC World Service at the request of the Chinese authorities because they view it as subversive, along with basically all Western news that is not under state control (one could argue that our news is exactly that anyway, but that's a whole other issue)
Hell, if anyone in power wanted to show
> that the West really isn't Satain incarnate we'd be flooding
> supplies, equipment, buidling materials and so forth into the country
> ASAP
This I'm confused about, because in your point above you've basically criticised Western corporate practices and the shallowness of our cultures?
> And no topic about the USA's somewhat insane passport ideas ? Things
> are slipping.
>
> Kind of reminds me of the end of the Spooks episode where they had
> the false attack on London, if anyone knows which one I mean...
???
If you feel so strongly, instead of throwing in amateur "bait", then write one. Please stick to at least the relevant issues being discussed without attempting to be your usual persona and inserting irrelevant topics to cause a spin-off.
> BTW In case anyone is trying to translate "Yukikazi" it
> means snow-wind, and yes it's another anime (cartoons for Goatboy,
> who maybe doesn't realise that Battle Royale - a film I've seen him
> praise - was originally a manga) reference.
But the Battle Royale I saw and enjoyed is a film. With real people.
Not cartoon monsters and flying pixie horses.
Again, nobody was trying to translate your name because nobody cares to.
And, once again, please do try and refrain from trying to cause arguments, you're not very good at it and it bears zero relevance to the topic.
I do find it amusing to see that you have returned to posting here, after saying that you wouldn't, as recently as yesterday in the Xbox forum.
However, you are a cyclical character and it will go as follows:
You claim not to care about commments, yet respond to each and every one.
You tie yourself in knots arguing, inserting random topics that have nothing to do with the discussion.
It descends into a dick waving contest.
You get huffy and leave.
For 3 weeks.
I'll discuss issues with you, I will not engage in pointless arguments after this post.
Because you always, always end up looking daft and it's boring.
Thanks for the comments that actually had significance to this thread though.
> In a way we deserve to be stuck with corporations because, as Biggles
> hints at, it's our -as in Western society - fault. We idolise
> celebrity of all kinds and that is the heart of the problem. Most
> people respect is reserved for these celebrities. There is a whole
> load of other things too, but you can pin it generally on our society
> as a whole. It does not make sense.
Agreed to an extent, and it's certainly a Western thing.
The issue of branding and dominating the marketplace is beginning to become an issue in China with Murdoch straining to obtain satellite licences, he's agreed to drop BBC World Service at the request of the Chinese authorities because they view it as subversive, along with basically all Western news that is not under state control (one could argue that our news is exactly that anyway, but that's a whole other issue)
Hell, if anyone in power wanted to show
> that the West really isn't Satain incarnate we'd be flooding
> supplies, equipment, buidling materials and so forth into the country
> ASAP
This I'm confused about, because in your point above you've basically criticised Western corporate practices and the shallowness of our cultures?
> And no topic about the USA's somewhat insane passport ideas ? Things
> are slipping.
>
> Kind of reminds me of the end of the Spooks episode where they had
> the false attack on London, if anyone knows which one I mean...
???
If you feel so strongly, instead of throwing in amateur "bait", then write one. Please stick to at least the relevant issues being discussed without attempting to be your usual persona and inserting irrelevant topics to cause a spin-off.
> BTW In case anyone is trying to translate "Yukikazi" it
> means snow-wind, and yes it's another anime (cartoons for Goatboy,
> who maybe doesn't realise that Battle Royale - a film I've seen him
> praise - was originally a manga) reference.
But the Battle Royale I saw and enjoyed is a film. With real people.
Not cartoon monsters and flying pixie horses.
Again, nobody was trying to translate your name because nobody cares to.
And, once again, please do try and refrain from trying to cause arguments, you're not very good at it and it bears zero relevance to the topic.
I do find it amusing to see that you have returned to posting here, after saying that you wouldn't, as recently as yesterday in the Xbox forum.
However, you are a cyclical character and it will go as follows:
You claim not to care about commments, yet respond to each and every one.
You tie yourself in knots arguing, inserting random topics that have nothing to do with the discussion.
It descends into a dick waving contest.
You get huffy and leave.
For 3 weeks.
I'll discuss issues with you, I will not engage in pointless arguments after this post.
Because you always, always end up looking daft and it's boring.
Thanks for the comments that actually had significance to this thread though.
That's because society is everything...
Emperor Xerxes wrote:
> I blame society.
Society gets the blame for everything!
> I blame society.
Society gets the blame for everything!
I blame society.
Large corporate stores have been an ongoing concern over many years, from the 1950's onwards, but the trend follows that of America, where in some towns and cities there are a dozen near identical shopping malls with the same shops in each. BUT...this is changing. Over in the US there is a resurgence of smaller shops cropping up like hermit crabs peeping out of their shells from between the big shopping skyscrapers.
It's the consumer that drives the need for certain types of shop and they will always be the ones driving the profits and future of large and small companies. Our local game shop and book shop both do well because they are personal and friendly. Some of the prices are more expensive than other places and especially the internet, but people continue to go to them because they want a personal service.
If small companies only order for the demand they expect and go that extra mile for service, they will find that word of mouth and regular customers work just as well as big advertisments and media coverage.
It's the consumer that drives the need for certain types of shop and they will always be the ones driving the profits and future of large and small companies. Our local game shop and book shop both do well because they are personal and friendly. Some of the prices are more expensive than other places and especially the internet, but people continue to go to them because they want a personal service.
If small companies only order for the demand they expect and go that extra mile for service, they will find that word of mouth and regular customers work just as well as big advertisments and media coverage.
Ah, the other iterations were various mark 1's, like mark 1.01, 1.03, kind of like windows updates :P
Yukikaze
"Belldandy MK2"
Newbie stats
Today at 4.40PM
??
MK2?
I can only assume that there was insufficient room in your tag for the necessary zeros to complete your message...
"Belldandy MK2"
Newbie stats
Today at 4.40PM
??
MK2?
I can only assume that there was insufficient room in your tag for the necessary zeros to complete your message...
*looks at Light's last post*
Nah, doesn't work Light.
Nah, doesn't work Light.
In a way we deserve to be stuck with corporations because, as Biggles hints at, it's our -as in Western society - fault. We idolise celebrity of all kinds and that is the heart of the problem. Most people respect is reserved for these celebrities. There is a whole load of other things too, but you can pin it generally on our society as a whole. It does not make sense.
I'm surprised (or maybe I missed it) that no one has done a topic on Iran. An estimated 30 000 people, dead in moments, that's 10 times the number which died on 9/11 , and whilst it was a natural disaster this time - exacerbated by the Iranian government and by proxy the West, it received very little attention media wise considering the sheer scale of those killed. Hell, if anyone in power wanted to show that the West really isn't Satain incarnate we'd be flooding supplies, equipment, buidling materials and so forth into the country ASAP
And no topic about the USA's somewhat insane passport ideas ? Things are slipping.
Kind of reminds me of the end of the Spooks episode where they had the false attack on London, if anyone knows which one I mean...
BTW In case anyone is trying to translate "Yukikazi" it means snow-wind, and yes it's another anime (cartoons for Goatboy, who maybe doesn't realise that Battle Royale - a film I've seen him praise - was originally a manga) reference.
I'm surprised (or maybe I missed it) that no one has done a topic on Iran. An estimated 30 000 people, dead in moments, that's 10 times the number which died on 9/11 , and whilst it was a natural disaster this time - exacerbated by the Iranian government and by proxy the West, it received very little attention media wise considering the sheer scale of those killed. Hell, if anyone in power wanted to show that the West really isn't Satain incarnate we'd be flooding supplies, equipment, buidling materials and so forth into the country ASAP
And no topic about the USA's somewhat insane passport ideas ? Things are slipping.
Kind of reminds me of the end of the Spooks episode where they had the false attack on London, if anyone knows which one I mean...
BTW In case anyone is trying to translate "Yukikazi" it means snow-wind, and yes it's another anime (cartoons for Goatboy, who maybe doesn't realise that Battle Royale - a film I've seen him praise - was originally a manga) reference.
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