Brandscape Architects

After a trip, a move, and a short ailment, I’m back wandering the streets of Camden.  At times, I’ve been doing so in the company of representatives from corner shop brands. 

Each ad hoc display is an assemblage of material brought together by different actors, and branding reps play an important part in this curation.  As well as information about current promotions, these reps provide shops with a bounty of branded materials, including carrier bags, canopies, posters, stickers, sign boards, Ramadan schedules, Oyster card holders, window displays, leaflets, and pads of sticky notes.  While some of this material is used at the discretion of shopkeepers, materials are most often put up by the reps themselves.  The reps also advise shopkeepers on styles of display and, when allowed, reorganise products.  They may, for example, move their products to the front and centre of a display or assemble like products so direct comparisons can be made by consumers.

As discussed in earlier posts, brands become markers for ad hoc shops and help announce shops’ presence in space.  The identities of brand and shop are intertwined, especially in kiosks, which seldom display a business name.  To discuss these connections with a brand representative, I suggested how the Wall’s sign acts like the barber pole of the corner shop.  To further my analogy, he told me his posters are like the hairstyle photos inside the barber shop – they tell customers what’s on offer and educate on the latest styles.  

Competition is fierce for surface area and – with shop keepers’ permission – reps will cover the promotional materials of others.  Although reps remove outdated posters, layers of material are evident on all surfaces.  Constant visits to these shops ensure that materials are current, unobscured, and in good shape.

Material properties of the promotional stuff and the shops themselves pose challenges to the reps.  In one shop, packing tape doesn't adhere well to a new "silent" plastic newspaper box.  In another, a stairwell in front of a shop window makes applying stickers a challenge for Lyca reps, whose stickers are sticky only on the back.  Unlike Oyster stickers with double-sided adhesive, they cannot be applied from the inside.  Each new addition is documented with photographic evidence and submitted to the brands’ head office. 

Some reps explain that shop keepers are fortunate to don their brand.  They believe the benefits of brand association are payment enough.  Others offer shop keepers product vouchers or cash to display their promotional materials.  In either case, many brand representatives strike exclusive deals with shop keepers, to limit the presence of other branding on the shop front.  In businesses with such small margins, these deals are hugely advantageous.  Interactions between brands and shop keepers are not without dispute.  Negotiations for exclusivity are on-going and some shop keepers shared their frustration after waiting months for canopies promised after reps reorganised their displays.  Many are still waiting. 

Mind the Gap

I recently found the tumblr blog Things Organised Neatly.  Perhaps it’s a hint of OCD that makes me revel in this sort of order.  Using the “align” tool in Adobe programs – to snap multiple edges in position or distribute objects evenly across an art board – gives the same sense of thrilling satisfaction.  (Surely I’m not the only one who reorganises my spice shelf or wallet to unwind.)

Although the modern aesthetic most often celebrated on Things Organised Neatly may feel miles away from the tangle of ad hoc displays, parallels can be made and seen.

As noted a couple posts ago, there is logic to the organisation of things.  The logics described earlier were more pragmatic, but they guide aesthetic considerations too in the curation of ad hoc shops.

I'm told that above all, gaps should be avoided.  They make shelves look undersupplied and interrupt the smooth plane of goods.  If a product is out, another should always be moved to its place, brought flush to the shelf edge.

In the kiosk where I spend time, stock for products new and old is always coming in, requiring a daily shuffle to ensure spaces are filled.  This sometimes necessitates putting products in another brand's box, finding aptly sized products to fill specific gaps, combining several products in one container, or cutting display packages so they better slide in spaces available.  It feels like an immersive game of Tetris – known as the “brick game” in Bangladesh.

In most shops, colour is also a concern, as it differentiates products from each other.  Similar products with similar colours must always be separated by a contrasting colour.  Most importantly, like products should be grouped together – similar scarves together, gum with gum, like toothpastes in proper piles. 

 

On slow days in the kiosk, we play cards and watch the neighbourhood whirl around us.  When people walk by, they almost always look, but not at us necessarily.  As they pass, it seems their eyes skim across the array of shiny packages.  Their focuses don’t linger at any one point, and I doubt they’re really looking for anything.  Instead, I think the eye enjoys gliding over the flush plane of branded things.  Their neat organisation entices the eye and must improve patronage of the shop as well.

Olympic Hurdles on the High Street

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine forwarded a Daily Mail article detailing the makeover of “tatty” Leyton High Road in East London.  The revitalisation was done in anticipation of the Olympics and the arrival of the torch relay.  These images, from the article, illustrate the transformation:

I won’t elaborate on my reservations about imposing a conservative English village aesthetic on one of London’s most diverse neighbourhoods.  (There's a lot to unpack here!)  Instead, I’d like to focus on the relationships between grooming shopping parades, the presence of corporate brands, and the Olympic trademark.

What I find particularly interesting is how corporate branding is tempered through this revitalisation.  It seems advertising and branding contribute to the so-called “tattiness” of the street.  To spruce things up, the Council evidently clamped down on corporate displays.
 










The irony here is that with the LOCOG’s tight restrictions on using the Olympic trademark, the only way to show support for the Games is to display the branded material of an official corporate sponsor.  Displays of rings, signage, or even mentions of “London 2012”, are forbidden.  Cadbury and Coca-Cola offer shopkeepers more than enough material to show their Olympic spirit... and sell their products.  Many ad hoc shops in my neighbourhood are using such material, and endorsing official products, to “get behind the games” and stimulate essential sales. 

And, of course, the Union Jack always adds a celebratory feel... its own kind of brand.

Press Gallery

I’m told selling magazines and newspapers is a tough business.  Shopkeepers pay for delivery of the material and margins are low.  This is compounded by print media sales being down overall, owing to so much online information and so many free papers.  Shop-front promotion of print materials helps to some extent.  By occupying a significant portion of the frontage, it also contributes to the texture of shops in the neighbourhood.

Newspapers and magazines are promoted in purpose-built frames – affixed to windows, paper boxes, and exterior walls – and on wooden news boards, which hold headlines behind wire mounts.  Generally, the former are designed for blown-up magazine covers, and the latter for newspaper headlines... but rules are made to be broken.

Newspaper headline posters may be sent to shops through the post and positioned by the shopkeepers themselves, whereas the magazine posters are often placed directly by magazine reps who tend to organise them in multiples for higher impact.

Of course, mobile companies like Lebara and Lyca produce posters that also slip into these frames and have created stickers to capture this space.  Shopkeepers use them for their own unbranded promotions too, and tend to use text instead of image. 

News boards are an enduring part of the high street.  Here, an image taken in 1903, on (a now demolished block of) Marchmont Street, shows an array of headlines... not to mention a good deal of chocolate branding in the adjacent windows.  Everything old is new again.

Cadburyfication

A host of corporate producers compete with each other, wooing corner shopkeepers with product and cash for the strategic shop-front placement of their branded material.  London has a long history of newspapers creating branded signage for corner shops; earlier I posted about the Lebara and Lyca campaigns for corner shop frontage.



Official Olympic sponsorship has made Cadbury particularly active in this regard, especially in the more touristy parts of my neighbourhood.  Around the British Museum, a Cadburyfication is in effect!

As well as adhering stickers along the rims of windows, hanging branded bunting, and developing new interior displays, the reps create Cadbury-branded coordinated signage for the individual shops.  Through the process, a number of options are presented to the shopkeepers for consideration.  Although these particular arrangements are designed to last through the Olympics, these relationships are long-standing and will continue after the Games. 

The economic challenges faced by many independent businesses – especially in times of economic crunch – make these arrangements particularly attractive.  And who would turn down free chocolate?!

Event Horizon

Most things in corner shops have a strong horizontal orientation.  In earlier drawings I did of a kiosk, it was obvious that this largely relates to the design of shelving units.  Candy bar displays are no exception -- shiny arrays of sweets are stacked in linear projections.  The design of the product packages, and the orientation of their logos, respect this assumed horizontal alignment.  Indeed some corner shop shelving is designed by the brand itself. 

Flying in the face of these conventions, a café/shop on Great Russell Street has created an exterior display of chocolate bars and -- in light of space constraints -- oriented them vertically.

Despite the familiarity of these brands, it's interesting how unfamiliar and strange these things seem when they're curated differently.