{Rainbow’s post quote removed – Mod}

You think you’re worried about the future of our country? Try being us reading that.

Me too. But then I’d also laugh at a joke about a bacon factory situated somewhere near the UK’s largest single span suspension bridge.

Dan Hanebrink’s been trying to push the whole quad-bike tyred MTB for years – always been quite partial. The stoke monkey equipped ones appeal.

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Dennis / USA – 2010-02[/url] by Aevon[/url], on Flickr

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The Glory Hole, Lincoln[/url] by SaRah Cutts[/url], on Flickr

Where does the prick in his/her ferrari put the wheel chair???

Disabled parking badges and wheelchairs aren’t mutually inclusive.

That said, the extra width of the disabled bays is handy for preventing those parked alongside from dinging your paint work when they open their doors.

I blame the logo.

Only 5 Ranchos left. I always really like them!

Ha! First thing I searched for too.

the frame build quality was a bit suspect

What was the issue? I read a few remarks around the net about disc tabs being misaligned and small things like that. Anything major?

but it’s alfined up

Is the alfine showing any signs of suffering from the weight you’re putting through it?

Here’s a link to a previous discussion on this subject

Ta, don’t remember seeing that at the time.

To be honest if I wanted to transport stuff on the cheap I’d bodge a trailer.

Interesting thread I was reading yesterday about a chap who’s used one of those saddle-less trials bike frames as a chassis for such a creation. He fitted an assist motor to the wheel too, so it can be used as a pusher trailer.

Bump for the evening shift. Anyone?

Typical MCN victim-complex, paranoia mongering sub Daily Wail journalism. I love motorbikes, hate that bloody paper.

Though I admit it does make a rarely made point about safety of pushbikes vs motorbikes, even if it does use ridiculous statistics:

…cycling in a city is a knuckle whitening 45.7 times more dangerous than riding a motorcycle. Our own government regularly declares that motorcycling is 40 times more dangerous than using a car, so if you bring these two together, that makes cycling 1828 times more dangerous than driving.

People never take me seriously when I say city motorcycling is far safer than city cycling, but even without that mathematical glitch quantifying it, it’s always been the case.

Unfortunately the article uses the point to make the same, tired old point about how cyclists escape tests and insurance. They were clever enough to not mention ‘road tax’ but most readers will have chuntered it over their Ogri mugs.

Try the Retrobike forum[/url] mate, really good knowledge and resource base for older stuff.

Sheffield is a far more bohemian place than any northern post-industrial city has any right to be. It’s really not as dour as people might think. We have high student retention rates for a reason. They like it when they get here and don’t want to leave when they’re done.

The reason I really would miss the place if I left is that I can ride from my door and with no more than 5 minutes spent with wheels on tarmac I can be in the Peak District or Wharncliffe woods.

It’s a great place as cities go. It’s big without feeling big. Manages to feel more green than grey. Like anywhere, it is what you make it.

But like many a rider, for me the main appeal is where it’s situated. Few major cities can compete with it. When you live here it seems rude not to be into outdoor stuff.

Are you not there to add value to the business? If you’re doing that you’re not just a number and are unlikely to be binned.

You can only add the value they decide can be added. Those goal posts can be moved on a whim.

HR at my last employer referred to the 150 staff they supposedly served as a “resource”. A resource doesn’t have to support the mortgages or families that so frequently weigh down troublesome people, so they’re easier to ‘bin’.

The only consolation is, as said above, that it’s nothing personal. Sorry to hear of your predicament.

XT would be my choice. Shimano are unbeatable for brakes if you ask me.

Mine recently went out of business after TandemJeremy made them see sense.

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Design Week last issue[/url] by magCulture[/url], on Flickr

Interesting article.

Mark the ‘Resident Grumpy’ admin has said repeatedly that what you post here should be no different to how you’d conduct yourself in public. It’s such a shame people often seem to disagree with that, and refer to the internet as somehow “not real life”.

I actually know someone (a fellow rider) who openly admits that he only posts on here to wind people up for his own amusement. He’s fine with being a troll. He’s an engineer studying for a doctorate in his spare time. A bright, witty and gifted person for whom I have much respect. But online he comes across as an attention seeking, hyperactive child. It’s ridiculous.

I don’t think the anonymity is solely to blame though. I think there’s also something else at play.

In the outside world, anyone behaving in such a way as to annoy everyone around them generally quite quickly find themselves having no friends.

Most of us figure out as children that being unpleasant to those around us results in our loneliness, so we moderate our behaviour to suit our environment. If I had a reputation for hijacking conversation, lampooning discussion and undermining people for my own selfish amusement, I wouldn’t be invited to join in with any conversations. I’d get that feedback pretty quickly.

So it’s a self policing dynamic – it never becomes much of a problem. Yet online it goes on day in, day out.

Here, you can just post indiscriminately, at whatever point of whatever discussion you see fit, in whatever way your mood dictates, because that ability of the group to self police by shunning the unpleasant is taken away. Those undeserving of our time and attention can online ensure they get both.

They’re an offshoot of Carcraft, so avoid like the plague.

One of three hip young lads in skinny jeans and fashionable clothes, yesterday:

I’m gonna drink a can of spaghetti hoops and have a Radox bath.

my family ownes a shit load of land, i bet you it wasnt there land, ring the police right now, they will go see the land owner, and i bet you it wolnt be them. mainly coz we all go shot guns not rifles and dont act like lower class people

Post of the day!

Agreed.

I would suggest that many posting here read William Gibson’s trilogy Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History as these books are entirely about marketing and it’s uses and forms, like viral advertising, and are also noir-ish as well, and are totally brilliant.

*Toddles off to Amazon with intrigue*

If you hang on a bit longer i can look up some public health studies on the effect of cigarette branding and marketing if you want?

I’d quite like to read that, colonel wax.

It reminded me of this:

Australia already has some of the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world, with grotesque pictures of cancer tumours and gangrenous limbs printed on every packet, and cigarettes hidden in cabinets out of sight of consumers in shops.

But the plain packaging legislation would arm the Australian authorities with the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world.

Needless to say, Big Tobacco is determined to prevent the measures from taking effect, fearing the consequences in other, more lucrative, markets around the world. Britain, Canada and New Zealand are considering similarly stringent laws.

Tobacco companies could also be hit especially hard in emerging markets – where branding is a vital marketing tool in luring smokers from cheap cigarettes to more expensive ones – if governments there followed Australia’s lead.

Big tobacco fighting for their right to save branded packaging. Despite manufacturing a product that is actually addictive, they’re still desperate to cling on to their packaging, knowing that losing their brand image entirely will damage their profits.

Thanks for bringing that up, CW.

Personally, since the very beginning I’ve not really thought much further evidence was actually needed beyond the eyes in the front of our faces being pointed in the general direction of pretty much everything and anything we’ve ever known.

But if that was insufficient, as it appears it was, then you’ve certainly given the thread what it needs. Either that, or minds have been made up and facts won’t be allowed to confuse anything.

Still, I’m sure you somehow fail to understand. Quite what, I don’t know. But you no doubt, inexplicably, fail to understand.

Jeremy – contributing repeatedly and tenaciously to a 30 odd page thread, then suddenly having the temerity to suggest it’s gone on too long having arbitrarily got bored of it yourself suggests you have little concept that other people might have things to say beyond what you consider to be the final word.

Which perhaps in turn suggests why trying to explain to you something that doesn’t align with your deeply entrenched, immovable and often seemingly and quite bafflingly inward looking views could have been a futile pursuit from the outset.

Other people are still talking, and their views are as valid as yours.

Even if advertising is successful and say IBM wiped out Mac. How we would know it was not down to the product actually being better rather than the advertising being brilliant.

The iPhone outsells its rivals by a margin I assume is huge, yet I’ve heard that technically it’s actually the inferior product. I certainly hear my iPhone 4 using acquaintances moaning about how poor an actual phone it makes.

If that’s right (I use neither so can’t myself vouch for it), we can I think safely assume that the power of the brand, in the current iteration of the instance you suggested, is having the desired affect on millions of consumers.

But that’s anecdotal. Somebody else might be able to link to that chart comparing the specs of the smart phones which highlights Apple’s failings. I can’t. I’m happy to be proved wrong if I am.

I will though continue to stand by any suggestion I have made so far in this thread that quality and validity of a product can and often does play a distant second fiddle to the aspirations inherent in the brand, and that branding is a hugely effective, powerful and influential communication tool, with reaches spreading further than many people think.

I suspect many brands and names exist and pre-date when people paid attention to this sort of stuff – kellogs, heinz, Ford , VW shimano ?

Yes, they may have done. And the reason they’re still hear is partly due to the fact that they kept up with changes in commerce. Alongside those long-standing companies were many more we’ve never heard of which fell by the wayside when consumer buying habits changed focus from need to desire.

Henry Ford was famously a no nonsense businessman, noted for that famous quote “you can have any colour as long as it’s black”.

Today, that very same company, still owned by the same family, uses this language:

“With its dynamic styling, wealth of intuitive technologies and precision-engineered performance […] the new Focus delivers a truly addictive driving experience.When you start the new Focus, you start so much more than a car.”

That, taken from the website, talks directly to the heart, not the head. Yes, those dots in my quote cover some facts about the car’s CO2 performance which the head likes to hear, but for many, many people standing in a car showroom logic plays second fiddle to that which floats their boat. Just to find yourself spending multiple thousand pounds on a new car shows that logic has often already been thrown out of the window. And Ford knows it. “So much more than a car.”

It’s worth noting the above is trying to sell a practical, mid range, middle-of-the-road family hatchback. I’m sure we can extrapolate from there to the sort of language used to sell their more emotive products, such as those with convertible roofs, two seats, large engines or sporting pretensions.

Tellingly, another of your examples, Kelloggs makes quite a big deal of its heritage. Recent adverts have focussed directly on it. It has turned its longevity into a brand device. That heritage is hugely valuable to them, but only if they can ensure you remain aware of it. How do they do that? They build their brand around it.

They dedicate the top strip of every box to that well known logo, which is little more than a stylised take of the company founder’s signature. And you make the direct link to its heritage immediately enough to use it as an example on this thread.

I’m with teej and crikey on this..

I’m too long in the tooth for snake oil..

ok.. I’m not going to read through a gazillion posts of pedantic trite.. but I’d like a little more concise and reasonable version if you will allow it..

Right, well basically, TJ said that branding is pointless and not as effective as people make out. Then MF said that it is actually, and TJ said that it isn’t. Then I said something left wing, verbose and ridiculous, which got ignored. Then TJ said that it was still rubbish. So then MF said that actually if you look at these fonts, you’ll no doubt tell a difference. TJ remarkably couldn’t tell a difference, right, so what happened then is GrahamS said that basically you can’t separate the brand from the object, but TJ then took issue with this, right, so what he done the lad is he’s gone and said that what we’re doing, right, us branding types, is that we’re confusing a brand with an actual product and that he doesn’t do that, and that we’re failing to understand. So what happened then right, Jamie chips in, and the everyone goes of to make omelettes for some reason, but then we’re all like egg bound and that but we didn’t let it distract us from what the real point was, which is that TJ can buy stuff without paying attention the logo, or something. Then Molgrips came back and made some points about more stuff that TJ wasn’t interested in. Then elfin got banned right, which started another thread that was different to this one. And not as good right, so we all came back here. Then I tried getting the nazis and maggie into it, which seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Seems a bit much now but at the time, you know how it is right. Then Binners started posting bags of crisps which I didn’t really get, though I’m sure he had his reasons and it was mega funny at the time anyway. then what happened is we made a load more omelettes, for which, like, you know, as the saying goes, you got to break a few eggs, which is why eggs, so then eggs right, and then it was all like cos of the eggs, and Molgrips was all like no, eggs, and we were all, yeah though, cos eggs, and Druidh and ST were all giving it all like, yolk and eggs stuff right. Then TJ won the thread so far in a way nobody but himself can understand, but he did win anyway right, cos he did and we’re all wrong. Then Molgrips came back and made some points about more stuff that TJ wasn’t interested in. Then elfin got banned right, which started another thread that was different to this one. And not as good right, so we all came back here. Then I tried making a serious if again laughably left leaning point which was ignored, seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Seems a bit much now but at the time, you know how it is right. Then Binners started posting bags of crisps which I didn’t really get, though I’m sure he had his reasons and it was mega funny at the time anyway. then what happened is we made a load more omelettes, for which, like, you know, as the saying goes, you got to break a few eggs, which is why eggs, so then eggs right, and then it was all like cos of the eggs, and StillTortoise was all like no, eggs, and we were all, yeah though, cos eggs, and Druidh and ST were all giving it all like, yolk and eggs stuff right. Then TJ won the thread in a way nobody but himself can understand, but he did win anyway right, cos he did and we’re all wrong. Then Don Simon came back and made some points about more stuff that TJ wasn’t interested in, except for the time when for some reason he kept posting dots. Then Binners started posting pictures of dam drain holes or something, which I didn’t really get, though I’m sure he had his reasons and it was mega funny at the time anyway. then what happened is we made a load more omelettes, for which, like, you know, as the saying goes, you got to break a few eggs, which is why eggs, so then eggs right, and then it was all like cos of the eggs, and NedRapier and Clubber was all like no, eggs, and we were all, yeah though, cos eggs, and Druidh and ST were all giving it all like, yolk and eggs stuff right. Then TJ won the thread in a way nobody but himself can understand, but he did win anyway right, cos he did and we’re all wrong. Then you turned up, and asked for a recap, so I wrote a recap which I’m doing right now as evidenced by the fact that I’m posting this post that I’m about to post and will have posted by the time you read it, even though said evidence plays no part in the actual proof of the existence of this post, so don’t go getting big ideas, right. And then, right, in the post after this one, TJ just quotes the very small, miniscule amount of posts that back up his preposterous point as if they are true gospel, vindication of all he’s been saying, whilst categorically ignoring all the ones that were more considered and better thought out that didn’t align with his own view, whilst simultaneously accusing the rest of us of having closed eyes.

Egg?

I hoe its entertained others as much as it has me.

It has me mate. I bowed out this morning, but I’ve continued to follow. This really has been the highlight of the internet for me this week. I’ve never before laughed, completely by myself in an otherwise empty building, at such absurdity. I do hope I’m not alone.

People saying this thread is pointless and boring are failing to see the humour in it. TJ’s definitive ‘final post’ followed immediately by two more posts just finished me off.

And then:

Do flowers have meanings, TJ?

Literal and full bodied LOL.

just my twopence worth like..

Twopence? You’ll have to do better than that. Admission to the Bullingdon Club would look like a positive bargain compared with this now. Try here.

Splendid thread all round.

Isn’t it a shame a car conversation almost immediately results in accusations of the OP being a chav.

It’s as narrow minded as those threads on Pistonheads referring to all cyclists as lentil-eating hippy do gooders that should all be run off the road for not paying road tax.

So if you were clever enough to invent a system that used the rim as the braking surface then you’d have a brilliant brake.

Yeah, until it either wore out, got covered in crap, etc

The best solution to this issue is to combine the two. You have a secondary rim near the actual rim, which you use as a braking surface. Erik Buell does this and calls it perimeter braking.

I happen to think that Bora looks really rather nice.

I am into my cars, very much so. To the point where I recently got ride of mine.

Sorry. Gah.

I agree with jacks post almost in its entirety.

All I said was marketing and all the associated bolloxs is a lot less effective than people think as many of us ignore it

Then actually you don’t agree with my post. That’s fine, but you don’t.

I’m claiming that it’s far, far more effective than you or in fact most people in the world think. Sorry, I might not have been clear.

That really is it this time.

Some of you seem to think that the logo/font style or quality of the logo will affect my decision as to whether to buy it. It wont in the case of nestle or the power band- so we can all be impervious to the owe rof the logos and marketing some of the time – I dont se ehwy some of us cannot do this the majority of the time or all of the time.

I think the debate has become distracted by the specific abilities of one person to buy objectively, unaffected by the power of branding.

I don’t think there really is any doubt (from me) that many people can and do look beyond the brand when they buy goods. No doubt TJ does, no doubt you do. I know it’s possible because I do it as often as I can myself. I don’t buy into hype, and I think I’m quite successful at it. I genuinely have no idea what a Power Band is, for example.

BUT the point is branding isn’t an irrelevance. Actually it shapes the very world in which we all live. It does work. It’s not “bullshine”. If it was, it wouldn’t exist on the scale it does.

It’s been likened to Emperors New Clothes, compared with Hypnotism. Neither of those comparisons are true. That’s what sparked the issue. Branding is a real thing, it really works, it’s effective on a global scale, and you can’t escape it’s reaches, no matter how vehemently anti-corporate you might decide to be.

You can buy objectively, day to day. You can be impervious, yourself, to the power of branding when it comes to buying things. But while doing that very thing, you have to accept that as a member of Western society you live in a world shaped by a corporate power elite that has, very successfully, branded (among other things) itself into power.

Apologies for repeating myself, but there’s no doubt that today the pound in your pocket you spend every day is a far more effective democratic tool than the vote you get to cast every half decade or so. That didn’t happen because lots of companies made basic goods we all need and suddenly became all conquering. Companies doing that seldom go fortune 500. In fact at the moment I can’t think of one, yet I could reel off a hundred global purveyours of pointless tat.

We find ourselves where we are now because the sheer effectiveness of marketing, branding and advertising was discovered and utilised to exploit the deep seated aspirations of generations of people, turning them from troublesome humans to placid consumers.

So by using that democratic tool in your pocket wisely, yes, you are doing your own bit to counter the situation the world is in. But you must accept that the world is in that state; there can be no doubt about that. I’m glad a minority of people are even staying “off grid” by dismissing the big guys one vegetable box at a time, but it takes place in, because of, against a backdrop of, commercialism driven in no small part by the effectiveness of branding.

Branding affects us all, every day. Subconsciously, overtly, personally, collectively, politically, socially.

Again, to repeat myself. Just refocussing on the smaller scale that at the top of this post I claimed is, rightly or wrongly, a distraction to the thread:

You can separate your buying process from the world of branding, by choosing completely objectively and without prejudice that which you feel suits your needs best, while positively ignoring any branding it may wear. Yes. You can.

Good for you. But the choices you get to make, the range of products you get to draw that very choice from, are on those shelves because they’ve been successfully branded to enough regular consumers that the profits are sufficient enough to justify mass manufacture.

Chances are, the shop you stand in making your objective choice exists because it’s branded itself well.

The transport you took to get their likely exists because it was branded well.

You’re a part of it while you try, with all your might, to avoid being a part of it.

Anyway, that’s the last post from me because in the quest to add something to the debate I’ve walked way too far down the one way road of sounding like a sanctimonious nob.

That and I’m totally egg bound.

Right.

I need to look into fitness in more depth I think. Been at a bit of a plateau for a year or so now. Won’t hijack Onza’s thread. Might be some more threads on the subject coming from me!

Yeah – mixing it up is very good for your legs.

Why’s that?

(Genuine query)

Jack – well feel a bit happier. what you say is all too true in many ways – but there is a whole section of society for whom it does not. Because they do not play that game they are not seen and are discounted.

some friends of mine have recently set up a co operative veg box delivery scheme. This sort of thing is growing and works outside of the consumerist society. No profit is involved, no branding, the only marketing is simply about making basic information available.

I’ve had similar initiatives come to me for branding since I changed the focus of my output to the the third sector. They’ve gone away happy.

So some of yuo keep asserting. Some of us deny it. No evidence has been offered merely an attempt to shout me down.

What evidence would you like? What evidence could anyone possibly provide that would offer greater proof of that point than for you to open your eyes to the world around you and accept that what you see might not align with what you previously thought?

I’ve done that. It sucks. I can see why you might not want to.

I HATE, as I’m sure I’ve made clear in previous posts, the power branding has on our lives. I hate commercialism. I hate our society’s seemingly blind devotion to ultimate profit rule. I hate the power that has been handed to private enterprise in the belief that the free market is better equipped to deal with the running of our nation’s services than any government.

I hate that those companies that will be given the reigns might not necessarily be those most capable of doing the job, but rather those who have branded themselves well. Those who talk a good fight yet have no substance behind their spin.

I hate that people buy what they want and not what they need. I hate our consumer culture. I know it exists because we have shopping malls filled to the ceilings with goods nobody really needs, only things they want. I hate that TV adverts are paid for by vastly successful, disgustingly profitable companies making millions out of convincing the stupid of their need for pointless, vapid tat.

I hate that people spend their Saturdays traipsing round the shops slavishly buying into the super brands, mistakenly believing it will provide some sort of satisfaction beyond that which is momentary.

I know people are seduced by brands, as I can see, when I look with my eyes, the prices of named logo shirts that are higher than plain shirts. Those higher prices are justified only by people’s willingness to pay.

I hate it. I hate it all. It sits completely at odds with what I want to believe. But me not liking it doesn’t stop it from being true.

Why would I say it? Why would I stand by a point that doesn’t sit well with me? Why would I assert a point I don’t like, unless it’s true? What benefit could possibly come from me saying something exists that a) I don’t like and b) doesn’t exist?

Simply to argue with you? No. I say it because it’s true.

Provide counterpoints to those points I’ve made above and prove me wrong.

Is branding actually ineffectual? Am I wrong in what I say? If so, good. I’d really love to be.

This is where it started. This is what the debate is about:

TandemJeremy
Loving the attacks on me – emperors new clothes again?

TandemJeremy
Thats just part of the money wasting circle jerk

TandemJeremy
I pity anyone who believes in all this stuff and who wastes their life and / or money doing it.

TandemJeremy
MF – my point is the difference is only to people in your world who care about logos – the rest of us it makes no odds to at all

mastiles_fanylion
You under-estimate the effect brand has on most people TJ.

TandemJeremy
MF – and I believe you vastly overstate it.

This is the debate I’ve been contributing to.

Jeremy has dismissed the world of branding. He said, basically, that only us self satisfied arty farty types can tell the differences between one brand and the next, and that nobody outside the ‘circle jerk’ pays any attention.

In case you missed it above, it was here:

TandemJeremy
MF – my point is the difference is only to people in your world who care about logos – the rest of us it makes no odds to at all

That is TJs point. The point this discussion has hinged on, and the point I think my posts among many others have categorically corrected him on.

The branding of goods – a practice in which logos play a huge part – has, does, and will continue to have a profound effect on the daily lives of all who live in our current society. Even those who, quite admirably, try to avoid being suckered in by it.

That’s not overstating the power of branding – it’s pointing out a rather sad fact of life. You can be as anti brand as you like. You could never buy a new product in your life, but if you consider yourself a member of our society – as must anyone with an internet connection – you’ll never escape it. It shapes the world in which we live, it effects the day to day lives of every single person on this thread and most off it.

The power of branding, of which logos are a key component, is very real.

TandemJeremy therefore simply has to, in the face of the sheer volume of considered evidence that has been put forward to him since, concede that this:

TandemJeremy
MF – my point is the difference is only to people in your world who care about logos – the rest of us it makes no odds to at all

the initial point he made and therefore the point this entire debate is hanging on, is simply not true.

Logos make odds to the vast majority of people in our society, and some of those outside it, every single day.

But what I imagine will happen is it will now be reduced to semantics, where the difference between a ‘logo’ and ‘brand’ are debated. But doing so will only detract from the very real truth that TandemJeremy has, in this thread, for some time now, been proven really quite wrong.

For 24 hours this has raged. I had to come back and catch up. Awesome thread, even if its led to me having 40 omelettes.

The claim by anyone (who’s in a position to comment on a web forum) that they are utterly, categorically impervious to branding is naive. Branding has shaped, and continues to shape, the very world in which we all live. Even those completely impervious to the ever-alluring messages of the super brands still live in a world shaped by branding.

As this is STW, I feel it is my duty to bring to this thread that which, despite it’s biblical length, has bizarrely been so far lacking. I will make huge and very tenuous pseudo intellectual leaps so as to involve both Thatcher and the Nazis. I think you’ll all agree, from whichever side of the fence you stand, that this is the correct thing to do at this juncture. So here goes:

The Nazi party was successful for many reasons, but part of its strategy for success was to brand itself very well. We don’t know how much of an effect the brand had on the success of the Nazis, but the potential benefits of it meant it was a worthwhile consideration at the time. We went to war with the Nazis. Thousands lost their lives. That world war had a profound effect on the world we now live in.

Branding has therefore had an effect on TJs life.

The capitalist idea, so beloved of Thatcher among many others, that handing the nation’s reigns to the free market economy is the best way to run a society has led a generation of politicians into kowtowing to big business. Big businesses therefore hold significant sway over the governance of our nation. Big businesses get where they are by marketing and branding themselves well.

Branding has therefore had an effect on TJs life.

But aside from that, rather more seriously:

The products that are on the shelves now are generally there because they’ve been successfully branded and marketed. The few new items Jeremy does objectively choose to buy are only those from that list. Therefore the objects he gets to buy are only available to him because they are successful brands.

Branding has therefore had an effect on TJs life.

Thatcher: Check.
Nazis: Check.

Eggs.

This will be good.

Or it’ll be a tragedy for a fellow forum member.

Good luck with the outcome alfa. Sorry to hear about this travesty.

You can call a cat a dog but it will never bark.

That’s true. But many, many people who want something that barks will buy that (metaphorical) cat if they’re convinced it might bark. You might not, Jeremy. I know I wouldn’t. But many people will. And do. Every day.

Red Bull. What is it? Nothing, really. It’s a superfluous product, and an expensive one at that. I wouldn’t touch it. Yet it sells by the absolute bucket load.

Lynx shower gel. Cheap nasty chemical tat. Sells by the bucket load.

Stella Artios. In its own country I hear it’s a budget, cheap nasty beer. As a fan of good ale I know it tastes nasty, it’s overly strong, vastly overpriced and I have more than a few mates who claim it gives them headaches when they drink it. Yet it’s branded as a premium product here. And it sells buy the bucket load.

It’s crap. So much of what fills our supermarket shelves, our high street stores is crap. But it all sells. By the bucket load.

I don’t buy it. You don’t. Many, many people are like us. But many, many, many more aren’t. It’s why this preposterous consumer culture we’re up to our sorry eyeballs in can exist. People are, on the whole, not as sharp as you or I would like them to be. If they were, our western world wouldn’t function the way it does.

I’m one of the people you keep referring to as “believers” or “marketeers”. I work in branding. I understand the difference between a brand and a product. It’s my job to know that. I create brands out of a product or service.

I generally buy based purely on my needs – not what has been branded the best. As someone with a keen interest in industrial design and engineering I take a pretty objective view to my purchasing – I buy well made products that do the best job they can, whilst giving me the best value for money within my budget. I buy with my head, not my heart.

It seems we are probably quite similar in that respect Jeremy. Where we differ is that I can accept I’m in a minority. And I also accept that, even though I know it inside and out, occasionally still, despite how much it pains me to say, I might get suckered in by branding.

A couple of years ago I realised I found the whole branding sector – the sector my professional life had been dedicated to based on decisions I made when I was 14 – vapid and soul destroying. I was creating brands for products I thought had no relevance. I was just a cog in a big money making machine. I was just on this planet to help sell crap to people who didn’t need it. So eventually I walked out in a strop. I had a bit of a breakdown.

I came home in tears and stayed in bed for two days wondering what went wrong with my life. Wondering how I become a pawn in the corporate world I so despise. When I managed to gather my thoughts, I went back to work to hand my notice in and made myself wilfully unemployed right in the middle of a global financial meltdown.

I don’t know how to do anything else, so I became self employed and turned my skills to branding charities and community sector organisations. I use what I’m good at to help do good. And like I said before, I don’t have to sell my services. People now come to me, and they go away happy. I benefit their organisations, and they’re grateful.

What I do actually helps. A local or regional charity struggling to get taken seriously can come to me, and I can make them look like the serious, effective organisation they are. And it’s amazing how local politicians and local media start paying attention once a charity has dropped its comic sans and started looking like the real thing. It’s a benefit I frequently see, first hand.

I earn a fraction of what I used to earn, but I sleep well at night knowing I’m making a difference. I’ve focussed my skills towards the good. I see it first hand.

Just as I experienced, and was brought to tears by, the effectiveness of branding when used purely for commercial gain. First hand experience.

First hand.

But that experience is clearly not going to be enough for you. You know best.

Your now astonishingly immovable belligerence, and repeated use of the same phrases suggested you ran out of steam a while ago, but have gone too far to ever admit, even to yourself, that you might be wrong. There is therefore no point continuing this debate.

God damn I’m hungry for eggs.