New second edition of brand terminology

Just released and available now in both paperback and Kindle editions. Includes 2020 terminology. 

Dmitry's computer thinks he is a woman

My friend the photographer Dmitry Kostyukov recently experienced rich dialog with an algorithm belonging to a swimwear company. He's been mistaken for a Y chromosome, and invited to be a brand influencer. This exposes one facet of what advertising has become. Caveat emptor. I reproduce below the text of his statement about the project illustrated here. After the statement, the curated photos. Well done, Dima.

My computer thinks I am a woman.

I found it quite a long time ago, but it was mostly just a funny topic for a small-talk between friends.

How I've recognised this about my computer? Sometimes via the feminine form at google translation, sometimes by "Merci, Mademoiselle Dmitry Kostyukov d'avoir acheté votre TGV ticket", sometimes by automatic redirection to the Women section at online shops and other small things. Did I do something, especially for this? No. It's just happened somehow. But one day I got an email with a proposal of collaboration. After a brief conversation, I realised that it's a proposal of collaboration to me, but not as a photographer, but as a model for the women's swimming suits brand. And yes, they produce swimming suits only for women, founded by women and of course they are very progressive, from the North of Europe and publish diverse models.

I was never hiding my identity, and I decided to say "yes" to collaboration to check how the algorithm really sees me. So on January 22, I became Bright Ambassador with a nickname Bright_Woman. I was recommended to have a Bora-Bora bikini or Scarlet Cora One Piece. I decided to start with Scarlet. I received a welcome email from CEO (obviously automatic), the possibility to share 15% discount with my friends (let me know if you need one) and of course a package with a swimming suit - welcome to the connection of online and offline world. Indeed, I know this is the way how brands trying to sell their products - all of us know it - but there is also the way how the machine see us. So what may it see? I am 82 kg which probably means a plus-size (for the average height) woman, which sometimes reading feminist texts, with 10K followers at Instagram. Apparently, I suit for this advertising.

Is it all true? I got the message during the winter. If my computer knows me at least a little bit, it should know I never even go to the beach vacation. I've probably gone to the proper holiday when you need a swimming suit, and consciously go to the beach maximum two times in my life. I am not even sure if I have swimming trunks or shorts, in general. But the algorithm assumes I do all this.

Using the brand's Instagram and iconic Dutch beach portraits as references, I went to the nearest beach - at The Hague in February, with the crazy wind, rain and +7 degree C (which feel like 0) - to connect the algorithm and contemporary brand's vision with my actual reality.

Bright Swimwear

Double brand hijacking in Varna

Dropped into a deserted hotel zone north of the famous holiday destination on the Black Sea. A closed store caught my attention. This is the equivalent of a minimart serving tourists, mainly Russian, who flock to this Summer haven. The store's not remotely connected to the American big box chain Best Buy, but has co-opted and adapted their logo. Nor are they associated with the global supermarket brand Lidl. Despite the presence of big names like McD and Pepsi, the former Iron Curtain countries still don't have much time for respecting IP.

A Challenge to Readers

Take a look at the form the impeachment politicians are using today to put a query to the Senate.

I find it so interesting on so many forensic levels - culturally, socially, technologically, politically, how and where it figures in the history of graphic design, typography, in the simple mechanics of form design, and ultimately notions of beauty.


So, my challenge to you is to forensically respond to this eloquent piece of utilitarian graphic design with an online answer. Without urging you in any particular direction, it might take the form of a scholarly treatise, an anthropological interrogation, or animated rebranding, but you decide.


I alone will be the judge of the winner, who receives signed copies of 3 of my novels and my 3 most recent brand books to acknowledge their Herculean effort. Your winning entry promotes over social media as you would expect, and this blog. Send entries to info [at] diganzi.com.
Deadline: February 7.

New espace DiGanZi merch site

Hello all.
You're cordially invited to visit espace DiGanZi, a new merch site, which offers books, and printable objects
https://diganzi.wixsite.com/espacediganzi
New items will be added to the printables page every month.
Enjoy!

3 new SMoss books reviewed by Jack Yan

http://lucire.com/insider/20190629/on-the-pulse-of-our-modern-world-travel-editor-stanley-moss-releases-three-books/#rCPMArm9wqZ13Ph3.97

DEATH OF A SALESMAN

A few weeks ago the world’s most visible international brand consultant, Wally Olins, passed away. Obituaries and tributes immediately appeared in European papers and industry trade journals. Curiously, so far nothing of substance has surfaced in major American media, who prominently cover the deaths of actors and obscure Austrian documentary film-makers dead from malaria, those whom I –as an international brand advisor- consider of lesser interest and importance than Wally. Mr. Olins was a global presence, whose work, writings and opinions made headlines over a career which spanned a half century. The radio silence from American shores is deafening.

It can’t be because of his success or failure rate, both considerable. Olins and partner Michael Wolff founded the formidable Wolff Olins consultancy, the name and reputation of which still survive as a division of Omnicom, though both of the principals long ago left the practice. In their heyday Olins & Co. advised the Beatles on the Apple brand, turned an obscure telecom into the phenomenon still called Orange, rebranded British Telecom, renamed Guinness into Diageo, revamped Cunard, tried to repackage the UK as Cool Brittanica, and endeavored to convince the world that Poland was a vital place to do business. He proposed many of those strange-sounding and quickly dated hybrid names (Invensys, Unison) that thankfully never took hold in the popular mind. In his later years as CEO of Saffron he championed culture as the essential aspect of a brand. His last great public act was a spirited defense of the 2012 London Olympics logo which his namesake firm had created. Late in the game he became an advocate for place branding which sometimes works, but not always. His final book (he wrote seven, which were translated into 18 languages), “The Brand New – The Shape of Brands To Come”, released a month ago by Thames & Hudson, is already ranked in the 28,000s on Amazon, no mean feat for a nonfiction title.

Once upon a time branding was called ‘corporate identity’, and referred to a rigid system of graphical standards which visually defined an organization. That idea was expanded on by Wally Olins, who felt that brands encompassed deeper and more dimensional values than veneer can effectively suggest. But he never really left the visual idiom far behind, and he barely engaged the philosophical questions that practitioners actively debate today. Though his ultimate book is rich with machine-gun questions, it’s clear that Wally never left the world of advertising, hype, and its ready engagement of emotional manipulation. Brand people today ponder the implications of consumerism, waste, climate change, sustainability, workforce contentment, community building, ethics. Wally did champion authenticity in his last act, and that is a valid part of the defense. But he never seriously challenged the bottom-line agenda or short-horizon thinking that has got the world into such a confusion. Can organizations do good at the same time as doing well? While he asked it, Olins never answered that question.

Like or disagree with what Wally Olins preached, the fact remains that he presided over an era where the brand discipline came into its own, migrating away from simple cosmetics, differentiating our lot from admen and marketing types. He barely pondered the ingrained complicity with bankrupt economic paradigms. It is a brand new world, and brands are strategic tools for transformation. Emerging economies will have the same troubles if they adopt the old practices. Homogenization won’t be the problem, as Wally Olins feared. Changing the name, changing the look, summoning rhetoric only works so far for organizations. Stakeholders understand this. Marketing is on its last legs, advertising -executing a wild somersault- now brands itself “content-creation.” Which may be the reason America has gone silent on the passing of this lion of the Old Guard. The guy asked too many questions.