Branded Blog

Visiting London always feels like a mixed blessing to me. I’ve always had a bit of an ambivalent relationship with the original “Big Smoke” city, and this visit was no exception.

On one hand, it’s the most fabulous city to visit – so much to see, so many new ideas. Even if you ignore or bypass all the wondrous tourist stuff, it’s an awesome place to look for inspiration and new products and interesting people doing interesting things – sometimes odd, but usually interesting!

But on the other hand, it has a feel of entrenched wealth that you couldn’t accumulate in a lifetime that slides by in it’s black taxis and actively ignores the walking / bussing / tubing masses who are mostly these days from very different places around the world and who are working hard doing all the things that the Brits think they’re above doing. They either have too much money, or would rather be on the dole and have kids so that the Government rewards them with a house.  Cleaning hotel rooms or collecting rubbish is just not an option. And possibly the worst shows up where these classes meet – or don’t meet, more to the point. It breaks my heart that people here don’t greet each other. The people in restaurants don’t acknowledge the humanness of the waiters or smile and ask how they are. They don’t see the people at the check-out tills and they don’t hear the guys working on the roads. They simply look through them. The sheer surprise and joy that comes from greeting a waiter or teller in London is, well, telling.

So it was not without some trepidation that I agreed to go to London with a favourite client of mine in June, and do some meetings and some inspiration gathering, but I certainly wasn’t going to turn it down!

And as always, it certainly was an experience.

My last trip there was during the “Cool Britannia” phase which gave off the distinct aroma of the Brits trying to Americanise. Never a good starting point. This time was slightly different on that front.

We arrived the day after the Jubilations and the barging down the river Thames had been completed, and about 8 weeks before the official Olympic kickoff (no pun intended), and probably 4 weeks before Olympic fever took hold, and it was a totally different place!

The Brits had had their Queenie flames lit well and truly, the Union Jack had come back into fashion, and the city felt like it knew who it was again.

‘This is London, and no-one could be prouder’ was the mantra running through all the shop windows, packaging overhauls, building signs, flying flags…

…even “Best of Britain” foodstuffs seem to have gone from the niche farmers market idea direct to the shelves of Sainsbury’s and M&S, and all the rest.

It was actually hard to find anything that didn’t have the Union Jack involved somehow, it was absolutely everywhere.

Even Marmite capitulated, very cutely I thought.

And after about a day of acclimatizing to the British overload, and setting my cynicism aside, I got into the swing of it and enjoyed the Union Jack spotting as we went.

It struck me on about day 2 that, as the Friend Who really (really) loves Flowers had said after her UK trip in May, that the Brits are finally proud of who they are again this year. And it makes it so much more interesting to visit the place. After all, if the people who live there don’t love it, why would anyone else?

I love the fact that the confluence of the Jubilee and the Olympics have reignited the British passion for all things British, and they’re enjoying their stuff again. I like the fact that they’ve embraced who they really are and are proudly putting it on display rather than trying to Hard Rock Café the brand into the “Cool Britannia” shops, which it has to be said are still dodgy tourist traps of underlying American persuasion.

I like the fact that it reminds us all that if you really want to be interesting and enticing to others, you need to be yourself fully and you need to love yourself and fly your flag, as it were. Otherwise why would anyone else be interested in anything you have to offer? Go ahead, be the London of your category – fly the Union Jack of your brand with pride and toot your horn as you barge down the river. Own it, and everything else will come!

Well done, Britain, you’re rocking 2012.

Epitaph

Sadly, for me, I lost more than I gained while in London this time. I lost a little Granny. She passed away back in Cape Town on the second day of our visit, having slipped into sleep just as my parents visited her on a stormy Cape Town day. She was my last grandparent, a turning point in the generational cycle. And she was the link to my dad’s distant Norwegian origins. She was a delightful lady, who knitted all the jerseys of my childhood, crocheted many a lappie and gorgeous table-cloth, and never arrived without something to eat after church on Sundays – sometimes a freshly baked batch of loaf-shaped Norwegian rusks, sometimes granadilla pudding for after lunch and sometimes a beautiful simple vanilla Madeira loaf.

She was always a ‘vris’ lady, but she loved having her hair done and I inherited both a no-nonsense attitude and a passion for shoes from her – both which have stood me in good stead. In her later years she grew down and lost a little of her soft roundness, and was visibly delighted the day we coined her new “Little Granny” moniker – she always smiled when we called her that, even in the last few years after the stroke when she didn’t always know where she was or who we were. She always recognized us as those who call her “Little Granny” and she always smiled when we said it.

Last weekend we laid her ashes to rest in a tranquil little garden in Pringle Bay, and said our goodbyes in the soft rain. I think she would have approved.

Good-bye Little Granny, I’m glad to have known you and will always think of you when visiting that special seaside town close to my heart – as are you.

You are missed already, and loved as always.