Marketing at its brightest – a food and drink special

A few weeks ago, my grocery delivery included in it a bottle of still water: a sample of a new(ish) product to try to induce me to buy more.

In this case, it was 850ml of ‘Glacéau Smart Water’, which proclaims itself to be: “vapour distilled water with added electrolytes”. “Vapour distilled” should be hyphenated, as it’s a compound adjective, but I’ll stop the grammar pedantry there (possibly).

It claims that it’s “smart because it’s made that way”. And just how is it “made?” you might ask. I mean, it’s Adam’s ale, for goodness sake.

Well, there’s no need to fret for long, as the bottle has a lengthy explanation.

“inspired by clouds

“clean, crisp taste [the absence of capital letters is their idea, not mine]

“sometimes the answer is right under your nose, and other times it’s floating above your head... in our case, it was the humble cloud that got us thinking.

“inspired by the water cycle, we vapour distil our spring water and then add electrolytes to deliver a distinctive, clean, crisp taste.

“smart because it’s made that way.”

The ingredients list – yes, this is a bottle of water, but there are ingredients – reads as follows: “spring water, electrolytes, calcium chloride, magnesium chloride, potassium bicarbonate.”

It’s “Made in GB” and “bottled in Northumberland” – in spite of that “Glacéau” bit trying to give it a spot of Frenchified sophistication.

And reading down through the small print, “Glacéau smartwater is a trademark of Energy Brands Inc”. If you want to get in touch with them, you can write to “Coca-Cola Enterprises Ltd, Uxbridge UB8 1EZ”.

So, how does it taste? Okay: it’s no better or worse than any other bottled water. And no better than the water that is ‘made’ by the filter jug I keep in the fridge.

At 80p for 850ml from the supermarket in question (or 56.8p if you buy a crate of 12 600ml bottles), that doesn’t sound too bad, until you realise that Volvic still mineral water is 60p for 1.5 litres, Evian can be had for 84p for 2 litres and Highland Spring for 33.3p a litre; Buxton Spring Water is available at 60p for a 1.5 litre bottle, Brecon Carreg at 30.6p per litre and the company’s basic brand for as little as 18.8p a litre.

‘Smart water my arse,’ as Jim Royle might put it: ‘smart’ only for global sugar merchants Coca-Cola, who will be laughing all the way to the bank when the gullible buy this new piece of hip marketing – because that’s what they’re buying.

This is water for people who are ‘smart’ enough to recognise the word ‘electrolytes’ from drinks marketed for those doing sport, and who will assume that they’re essential for health and, well, they probably need to ingest some more. They might be put off by buying something from Coca-Cola, which perhaps explains why that global icon doesn’t make more of its name on the bottle.

It’s the same way that much else is marketed these days – not least if it’s to do with health. Some of the claims made for ‘detox’ products are, frankly, every bit as laughable as the description of this ‘smart’ water, but it doesn’t make supposedly-intelligent individuals hand over their hard earned in search of some sort of health nirvana.

There are plenty of products out there that are marketed at people who are trying to be healthy, which prey on that desire and an element of ignorance about health, together with the results of our general lack of a food culture.

Watching TV over the weekend, I was reminded of an advert that had previously earned my attention.

It’s for Bertolli spread.

“Farmers tried many ways to combine olive oil with rich, creamy butter, until they discovered new Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil, so tasty they fell in love with it,” claims an Italian-accented voice, over pictures of a happy, rustic Italian couple enjoying bread heaped with the spread in question, after he patently fails to get his cow to understand what an olive is.

“New Bertolli with butter: a delicious blend with butter and olive oil.”

I have previously asked Bertolli brand owner Unilever, via Twitter, for evidence of the claim that at least two farmers (since the plural is used) had tried to blend olive oil and butter before Unilever managed it, but I have never had any response.

But then, why would anyone try that?

The ordinary olive oil I buy (the one I use for cooking) is Spanish, with the following ingredient list: “refined olive oil, virgin olive oil”.

My butter has one ingredient: “butter”.

Ordinary Bertolli spread has the following ingredients: “Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (38%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Water, Olive Oil (21%), Sweet Whey Powder (Milk), Buttermilk, Salt (1.1%), Emulsifier (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Thickener (Sodium Alginate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Bertolli Light is made up thus: “Water, Vegetable Oils in varying proportions (22%) (Rapeseed, Palm, Sunflower), Olive Oil (16%), Modified Corn Starch, Salt, Buttermilk, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Sunflower Lecithin), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Citric Acid, Natural Flavouring, Vitamins A and D, Colour (Carotenes)”.

Is it any wonder those stupid Italian farmers couldn’t come up with the way to combine butter and olive oil? They forgot to think of the modified corn starch or the sodium alginate. Doh!

But hands up – why would anyone want to spread that on their toast and why would anyone think it healthier than olive oil or butter?

Unilever, of course, has come up with such a product (along with its Flora range) in order to profit from the health advice that fat is bad for you – advice that is increasingly being shown to have been bad itself.

But while that’s one thing – and it’s the way in which big food gets away with marketing yogurt stuffed with sugar, by labeling it ‘low fat’, which is viewed as a synonym for ‘healthy’ – it’s another to wonder how companies are allowed to come up with such fantastical claims as this about farmers trying to blend olive oil and butter.

The marketing for that ‘smart’ water is actually quite clever: it makes no claims about any particular health benefits, including for consumption of its added electrolytes; it doesn’t say that it’s the best taste around or anything similar.

It relies entirely on a certain gullibility.

But then, Coca-Cola has been bitten before, when it emerged after the 2004 launch of its “pure” Dasani bottled water, that what punters were getting for their money was simply tap water that had been filtered three times, using “reverse osmosis”, and with ozone injected to keep it sterile.

Bertolli, on the other hand, is marketed partly via a fantastical claim for which no evidence is given, and on the back of an increasingly discredited belief that the saturated fat of butter is inherently unhealthy.

Its claims of contributing to “a healthy lifestyle” and its entire linking to a simpler, Mediterranean lifestyle, are what give it its power.

So there you have it: two sorts of marketing: two sorts of twaddle.

Spot the war profiteering disguised as charidee

Don't forget the profit opportunities

A few weeks ago, flicking through my Twitter feed, I came across a retweeted contribution from one Douglas Carswell, the newly-elected – and first – UKIP MP.

In just 147 characters, he managed to mention both “sofa government” and “citizen consumers”.

The former is all about government policy being made by senior ministers and a handful of advisors.

The latter refers to an idea that citizens, via their consumption, can ensure that companies make ethical decisions.

It has been done. In the 1980s, declining sales of aerosols producing CFCs forced manufacturers to rethink the products and come up with less environmentally damaging solutions.

But apart from such high-profile campaigns, how much can it work?

For instance, will enough people to make a difference boycott companies that pay such low wages that the taxpayer has to top them up in order for workers to be able to afford to live?

Underlying it all is the ideology of deregulation: if the consumer makes the choices, no government intervention would be needed. And, of course, The Market, given free rein, will provide the ‘perfect’ results (as though the market were somehow not entirely dependent on human intervention, including political intervention and decisions – but that’s a different subject).

All of which sounds lovely, but is as divorced from reality as telling people that, if regulations are removed and those at the top were just allowed to do whatever they want in order to make money, the increased wealth would ‘trickle down’ to everyone else.

It also supposes that the majority of people are, when being consumers, able to make ethical choices that often mean spending at least a little more cash – or that most people have the time or inclination to investigate the ethics behind every purchase that they make, which itself often means digging quite deep behind the façade of corporate bullshit.

Blingtastic way to remember the war dead

In terms of affording the ethical, the fallacy of trickle-down is a major factor in why incomes for the majority have fallen, putting increasing numbers of people in a position where they can less and less afford to look for those ethical options.

Research in the US suggests that consumers (or at least some) want the companies that they buy from to be involved with ‘causes’.

I’ve dealtwith ‘cause marketing’ on this blog previously, but this is just another take on the same thing, spun a little differently and taking it to the level of political ideology.

Over the weekend, there appeared on my TV an advert from Sainsbury’s, linking that store with the Royal British Legion’s poppy appeal.

The company offered, among other things, to recycle your poppy if you return it to the store after use. The advert describes a commitment to the past – and the future – with images of an elderly man (a veteran, presumably) and a young boy (a future veteran?), while also noting that stores sell a range of poppy-related objects (such as an umbrella), with proceeds going to the Legion.

So, is Sainsbury’s doing all this out a genuine sense of charity/patriotism?

Well, it might be. It is entirely possible that the company’s head honchos feel a deep commitment to remembrance and to the wellbeing of veterans.

But on the other hand, that’s not why it’s being advertised in such a way. It’s being advertised to show the company in such a light that it will encourage customers to shop there.

That is not ethical: it is nothing other, at core, than trying to profit from war.

Oh, Sainsbury’s might not make a penny from any poppy-related purchase or act of education or recycling – some of these might even cost the company money. But all that is an investment.

The chances of someone responding to that advert just to pop this year’s used poppy in a recycling tub (instead of in the recycling bag or box they get from the local waste collection service), and not then doing some shopping there seems a tad unlikely.

Will people really decide to make an extra shopping trip just to go to Sainsbury’s – when they do not do so usually – to buy a poppy brolly – when you can choosefrom seven different poppy umbrellas at the Royal British Legion’s own online shop – and then walk out and not pick up a few odds and ends for that midweek supper?

This is about persuading the ‘citizen consumer’ to shop at Sainsbury’s because it shows obvious, outward support for a cause that that shopper cares about. The adverts are deliberately placed to coincide with the annual remembrance ceremonies and Armistice Day.

They won’t be appearing next April, with a message that Sainsbury’s is still caring about remembrance and veterans, even when no poppies are on sale and no commemorations are scheduled.

Poppy pizzas from Tesco

If Sainsbury’s cared about remembrance and veterans, and not profits, it wouldn’t spend hundreds of thousands of pounds creating advertising campaigns on the issue. It could donate that cash to the Legion instead, without making a hoo-ha about it that simply screams: ‘just look how good we are by doing charidee stuff’.

This is cause marketing, aimed at the citizen consumer, and with the prime intent of increasing footfall and, with that, profits.

Of course, Sainsbury’s is far from being alone in such behavior. Indeed, Bill King spotted Tesco selling ‘poppy pizzas’.

A Tesco pizza is probably tasteless anyway, but this takes it to a whole new level.

And there will be be countless more companies playing the same sort of games.

So perhaps the ‘real’ citizen consumer should, then, deliberately refuse to spend money at companies that so blatantly exploit the war dead to make a buck.

They might also consider that the Royal British Legion needs funds to help veterans, because governments that send people to war rarely seem much interested in those veterans once they return, and thus the public is left to fill the pick up the pieces via charitable donation.

But then again, all this would involve real and meaningful ethical or moral choices: and that is not what the concepts of ‘citizen consumer’ and ‘cause marketing’ are remotely about.

Marketing at its brightest: the towering twaddle edition

What could be loosely termed as ‘my’ day-to-day patch in London is largely defined by the bus journey that takes me between Hackney and the area around Euston and King’s Cross.

The latter has been a hive of building activity for some years now, but Haggerston is rivaling it these days, with almost frenetic redevelopment on Whiston Road, after the Kingsland Estate was finally torn down.

There is already ‘Silk House’ and ‘Velvet House’, next to another smaller block that has been thrown up on the site of just one more of the pubs that have been lost to flats in the last decade and a half.

And on the other side of the road there is going be far more of this vast development, which all goes under the banner of ‘City Mills’.

Passing, you notice site hoardings that declare, among the pictures of bright young things looking happily domestic: “Made for living”. Well, what a jolly good thing that will be, since they’re building flats for people to, err, live in.

It’s a fine example of marketing twaddle – but pales into insignificance beside what’s happening on City Road.

First, let’s start with the Canaletto London.

Yes. That’s right: the Canaletto, as in the 17th century painter of Venice.

You can call it 'Canaletto London' all you like ...

Most certainly an interesting-looking piece of architecture – and given that it appears to be taking rather longer to build than some other nearby blocks, the finished building might actually be of a high standard.

But really, just because it’s next to City Road Basin, which butts into the Regent’s Canal, doesn’t justify the suggestion of the Grand Canal.

“Extraordinary waterside apartments overlooking the City of London,” proclaims the website for this 31-story tower. Well, if you’re on one of the higher floors, obviously.

And it’s near “Tech City” too, apparently. Which is news to me.

I thought it was near Old Street roundabout.

It’s been with some relief that I have discovered that I’m not the only one who didn’t know there was anywhere in London called “Tech City”. But we’ll come back to that.

Just a few metres away, the Lexicon London is taking shape in an upwardly fashion. It’s going to have 36 floors, making it the tallest building in Islington – at least until the planned 39-storey one goes up a five-minute walk further down the road.

“It’s the place from which to write your own life story,” wibbles the website.

“The one, two and three bedroom apartments take their inspiration from the culture and landscape of Lexicon’s location.”

I’m not sure that scruffy and run-down interiors are going to sell very well. Will rooms come complete with the smell of traffic fumes too?

The Eagle – also on City Road – is going to be “Art Deco inspired” and, like the Canaletto, will include a residents’ private cinema, a pool and god alone knows what else.

The Caneletto will have a restaurant too, so you won’t even need to cook in what will be, judging by the architects’ computer-generated images, your rather bijou kitchenette.

... but being next to this ...

We may not have gated communities yet, but you won’t need that with such developments.

Not far down the road, the Link is already complete – and is really rather disappointing, given that it was apparently “designed for stylish living”. Surprisingly, it never mentioned the stunning views over the next-door carpark, which is on the site of an old workhouse.

Another block nearer Old Street roundabout that’s well on the way has diamond-shaped windows set in steel cladding – which would probably do your head in on the morning after the night before.

The gobbledegook isn’t limited to developers, though.

According to the London Evening Standard: “The eastern side of the canal basin falls into Hackney borough and has a grittier feel. This is where Jamie Oliver opened his Fifteen restaurant, giving apprenticeships to out-of-work youngsters. Shepherdess Walk is one of the best addresses, with authentic lofts available at The Factory, a decade-old development by Manhattan Loft Corporation. Urban Spaces is selling a 1,481sq ft loft for £945,000.”

Haggerston is so cheap by comparison! But Shepherdess Walk – “one of the best addresses”? Is that complete with the bits of workhouse wall still visible around the carpark? Or is it because of the cop shop?

Seriously, though – how the hell do you get a sensible mortgage for nearly a million quid?

... does not have anything to do with this ...

The old rule of thumb used to be that you didn’t go above three times your annual household income. 

So whoever buys a loft apartment like that should – to be sensible – need to be earning £315,000 a year.

And don’t forget that the average UK wage is around £26,500, according to the Office of National Statistics, while employment agency Reed suggests that the average salary of someone in “strategy and consultancy” is £56K.

In the “media, digital and creative” industries, Reed lists the average annual income as £34,553. A software developer is listed as having an average salary of £44,050.

“Tech City” is nearby, remember.

Who is buying – and going to buy – these properties at such prices and how?

Shepherdess Walk – one of "the best addresses"

Either there’s been a substantial rise in the number of people earning vast salaries or financial institutions are playing the very same games that helped to cause the financial crisis in 2008.

And it is not the former.

London is already crowded, and even the Financial Times has recently carried a piece expressing fears for the future of our green spaces amidthis development madness.

The extra infrastructure is not there – and Crossrail and yet more bleeding supermarkets do not count.

Indeed, local infrastructure is going as the developers move in. As just one small illustration, on Kingsland Road, just around the corner from the nonsense that is ‘City Mills’, a dentist’s surgery and the pub next door have both been demolished to make way for more blocks of flats.

Next to Euston, the community around Drummond Street is threatened by the high-speed rail link to Birmingham (which scheme has both pros and cons about it).

The Link: "stylish living". No. Really.

Camden Lock, with all it’s small, independent businesses, was under threat from that too, but the plans are shifting.

While further afield from ‘my’ patch, Soho is undergoing massive change as the developers waltz in and completely change it’s character with, apparently, the acquiescence of council and police, as Rupert Everett suggests in a remarkable article.

According to Everett, plans are afoot to build huge towers topped by helipads on Walkers Court – after knocking down the houses, of course. The London Evening Standard and assorted architects are merrily trilling about cleaning up one of London’s last “seedy areas”.

Oh yes, the whole city is being sanitised in a puritan’s wet dream.

One visualisation of what might happen to Walker's Court

Denmark Street – Britain’sTin Pan Alley – is also under threat.

Consolidated Developments claims that it “will bring the site next to the new Crossrail station back into use with new shops, a hotel and the regeneration of Soho’s Denmark Street.”

They seem to have conveniently forgotten that it is not currently out of use. And you can bet your bottom dollar that most of the new retail outlets will be too expensive for most small, independent businesses.

The company also says that “a new urban gallery space will celebrate these [musical] links” and “recreate a music quarter for London”.

More verbal diarrhea, intended to calm criticisms of this gutting of the area.

Over at Broadwick Street, Cowling & Wilcox, theart shop that has traded there since 1961, ceased doing soearlier this year, having been priced out by landlord Great Portland Estates, which wants to demolish existing buildings and ‘redevelop’ them.

The planned 'redevelopment' of Denmark Street

It happened in the City at Leadenhall Market – oh, they kept the market structure itself, but rising rents forced the last, real market shops out years ago.

Now, it’s yet another cathedral to the homogenised blandness of corporate franchising.

On Euston Road, right opposite the British Library, there used to be a marvelous bookshop, Unsworths, full of second-hand, remaindered and antiquarian books.

It was driven out by a similar policy of hiking rents. As was a tiny – and very convenient in that area – convenience store a few doors down in the same Clifton House office block.

It took several years after those businesses were forced out to see what we were going to get – I suspect that that means that planning permission was rejected initially by Camden Council before being overturned by Eric Pickles, secretary of state for the biscuit barrel.

Computer visualisation of Clifton House, with hotel

Now, there is a new three-storey glass box on top of an initial six-storey building – which has become a new Premier Inn, and which is near enough to the next Premier Inn on the street for Usain Bolt to make it between the two in little more than 10 seconds.

Meanwhile, back in Haggerston, the word on Broadway Market is that our own dastardly local developer, the dreaded Roger Wratten By Name and Rat by Nature, has got his wayand will be demolishing the old Market Garden pub and replacing it – and the remains of Tony Platia’s old café next door (from which he was thrown outyears ago in highly dubious circumstances) – with a new building.

His initial attempt to get planning permission for a seven-storey block on the site, with restaurant at the bottom, was rejected by the council, so it remains to be seen whether he offered Eric a custard cream and that’s what’s going ahead, or whether there have been modifications to the plans, such as it not having so many more floors than any other building on the street or whether, as plenty of local people mutter, the council is just bent.

Around the corner, theplanned block of flats that was slated to go up, with office space below – inan area where there’s already plenty of empty office space, which then getsturned into another sodding supermarket, with the change in use requiring no furtherplanning consultation – is now being built.

I remain curious as to how that happened, since the council told me that the entire process had been abandoned after extensive local objections from residents and small businesses alike.

Under-construction and planned towers on City Road

Those businesses included some that have subsequently been thrown out of their premises by this development.

Since I had written to the council on that issue at the time and asked to be informed of any council meeting where it was raised, it is interesting to note that I have never received anything about the subject.

So much for local democracy in Hackney, it seems.

I am not against development and redevelopment per se, but it must have human beings at its core – and building vastly overpriced “multi-storey rabbit hutches” as Lucian would have described them in The Liver Birds, is not the answer to our housing problems.

However, I am against simply ripping the heart out of places – not just because of the arrogant disposal of history or even the dreadful, soulless homogenising that follows, but also because of the impact on small, independent businesses and local people who cannot afford the increasingly ludicrous prices for rent or mortgages.

Boris Johnson might have pretended to combust at the mere suggestion that government changes to housing benefit would ‘cleanse’ London of its more lowly citizens, creating Paris-style Banlieue outside the city proper, but all development, the trendification and the gentrification is helping to shove up rents and mortgages, and it will have the same effect.

How will the cleaner who wipes away the wine glass marks from the tables in the Canaletto’s private cinema be able to afford to live anywhere near their place of work?

Denmark Street – still in use

The whole thing is unsustainable insanity that has nothing whatsoever to do with the majority of the city’s people.

Somebody, somewhere needs to seriously start asking why a constantly growing London population – both residential and working – goes generally unchallenged as being positive or inevitable.

Why can not more businesses, in these times of digital communications, locate outside London?

Does “Tech City” really have to be lots of companies all physically based around Old Street?

Locating elsewhere would even provide boosts to local economies outside the capital.

How many more people do we need in a city that already struggles to cope – not least in terms of transport? What will be the tipping point?

In the meantime, while the developers hold sway, it’s small comfort to highlight the towering twaddle that they spout as they try to persuade people to line their pockets.

PS: I have not edited these bits of marketing nonsense: they seem, however, to share a common link of not understanding how to use a hyphen for a compound adjective. Just as the ‘City Mills’ people don’t understand what an apostrophe is.