My mum lived opposite what used to be called a parade of shops:
Fish & Chip shop, Café, Sweetshop, Grocers, Newsagent, Butchers, Chemist, Iron Monger, Shoe Repairer, Greengrocers, Post Office.
Perfect for all the local pensioners, who didn’t have cars.
Because it was so busy there was always a zebra crossing there and, for a long as I can remember, it worked perfectly.
People stood and waited for the traffic to stop.
When it stopped they crossed.
One day, in their infinite wisdom, the town planners decided a zebra crossing wasn’t enough.
They had a brand new updated piece of technology.
They replaced it with a Pelican Crossing.
They were immensely proud of this new piece of modern technology.
The only problem was, nobody who lived in the area had a clue what it was or how it worked.
Or why it was even called a Pelican Crossing.
There were no pelicans anywhere on it.
It seemed to be a combination of traffic lights and a zebra crossing.
So did that mean you could cross on the green?
In which case what was the point of the traffic lights part?
Or did it mean you could only cross on the red?
In which case what was the point of the zebra crossing part?
As usual, the experts had managed to take something that worked perfectly well and screw it up by overcomplicating it.
The local pensioners got very confused.
One day an old man with a walking stick approached it, he thought it was a zebra-crossing so traffic would stop.
But a lorry coming down the road only saw the green light, he thought he was clear to go.
The old man stepped off the kerb in front of the lorry.
The lorry driver braked as hard as he could, but he hit the old man.
The old man went flying.
He went one way and his leg went the other.
The lorry driver jumped out of his cab.
Seeing the old man lying there in separate pieces, realising he’d killed a pensioner, the lorry driver had a heart attack and collapsed.
At that point the old man got up and dusted himself off.
He was a tough old boy, he’d lost his leg in the war.
It was his false leg that had come flying off.
He hopped over to collect it and began strapping it back on.
When the ambulance came they expected to find a dead pensioner.
But instead they had to begin giving oxygen to the unconscious lorry driver who’d had a heart attack.
The pensioner went to the cafe to sit down and have a cup of tea, but the lorry driver had to go to hospital.
All because the experts can’t leave the simple things that work well alone.
Because the experts didn’t see the Pelican as too complicated.
In fact they’ve since introduced ‘Puffin Crossings’, and ‘Toucan Crossings’.
And presumably there’s more to come.
The experts have to keep complicating things to justify their job.
Because their goal is always to satisfy other experts not ordinary people.
The truth with experts, in our business as much as any other, is they’re not interested in ordinary people.
They’re only interested in their own cleverness.
They’re only interested in impressing each other: other experts.
Ordinary people are left out of the process.
Ordinary people get what they’re given.
Whatever the experts have decided is good for them.
Although, of course, it’s really only good for the experts.
Ordinary people have no place in experts’ thinking.
Whatever the crossing I tell my daughter to never trust it…always keep looking at the traffic.
I was interested in the comment some time ago about the Cinzano campaign done by Ron Collins, presumably the one with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins. That this was clearly so good it didn’t need to be researched. In fact, if they had carried out research after it had gone on air they would have found that most people thought it was advertising Martini, and was therefore money spent promoting Cinzano’s main competitor. Why?
The campaign very successfully sent up up the famous Martini campaign ‘Any time, any place, anywhere’ which showed jet-settee people drinking Martini in jet-set places, ski-ing, in the Caribbean and so on.
Very banal.
So Cinzano had Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins in similar jet-set locations with Joan always ending up having the Cinzano spilt over her. But because the settings were Martini – ish, people read it as a Martini ad, not a clever send-up. Martini owned that territory.
Similarly BMP ran advertising for Dry Cane white rum that tried to send up Bacardi type advertising. It showed a man on a beach in Barbados getting very excited when a girl loses her bikini top throwing a ball. Bacardi advertising always showed sun, sea, sand and sex which Dry Cane emulated. I bet most people recalled the Dry Cane ads as being for Bacardi.
The moral of the story is though it is always a very attractive idea to take the piss out of a brand leader by making a joke out of its imagery, the brand leader owns that imagery and if you use it you promote them and not you.
“Ordinary people are left out of the process.
Ordinary people get what they’re given.”
so true in so many ways.
Many years ago, in a spirit of social conscience, I stood for and got elected to my local town council. One of my concerns was that there was no zebra crossing from the very busy hospital over a road where most people lived. I asked the town clerk how we could do this. It turned out that there had to be ‘enough accidents’ to warrant it. Never mind accident prevention. ‘Ordinary people’ would have to get killed or injured before it went on the list of things to do. The same people who voted the council in and paid their expenses. It would also cost in excess of £30,000 (this was over 20 years ago). I was flabaghasted. So I got a can of white paint and a brush and attended a council meeting, where I threatened to do it myself. The crossing was instigated soon after, because they didn’t want anyone showing them up. The ‘ordinary people’ who put the councilors in place were ignored once elections were over. I never stood for re-election after my 4 years were up. I was way too demoralised. But I do get a small sense of satisfaction when I drive over the crossing.
Excellent Jon, well done