Perfume ads exemplify printed media's communicative authority

Although digital advertising is diverting money away from print ads, research demonstrates that forming a bond between consumer/brand/product happens quicker when the message not mediated through a touch screen. If Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan was correct when he claimed that ‘the medium is the message’, digital media sends a message of distraction. Print, on the other hand, grounds meaning in a concrete, multivalent sensory world that connects the reader to material life. 

Online readers sense that the screen’s buzz compromises their attention. From the abundance of information to the strain on the eyes, screens homogenise the details they present. Breaking news and cat videos are reduced to pixels. Information is either visual or aural, though spoken messages are easily avoided with mute. Touch screen phones may claim tactile satisfaction, but it’s a monotonous tap that condenses diverse message to a single experience. Tap and read is the modern scratch and sniff; multivalent pathways of information collapse into a producing/consuming unit. Screens replace involvement with more, more, more information, increasing distraction while mitigating investment in presented messages.

Print media retains potential for communicating and disseminating meaning by appealing to the senses beyond the visual. While an artistic front-page can hardly compete with the availability, reproducibility and mutability of digital photos, print media has touch, smell, sound and taste. The feel of the pages, the aroma of the paper, the sonorous thud of a weighty issue, the metallic twang of fresh ink: print products supply readers with a dynamic sensory environment.

The perfume ad exemplifies print’s ability to stimulate the senses. Once integral to fashion and celebrity magazines, bland digital adverts have largely replaced them. Printed on weighty cardstock, the perfume ad announced its presence in the magazine. Browsing the newsstand, the reader could choose Vogue rather than Elle or Vanity Fair based on the number of inserts, visible at a simple flick of the spine as they were printed on narrow pages. The decreased width accommodated that all-important flap, under which might hide perfume ambrosia or the stench of decay. It was never clear which, though a vaguely floral odour permeated every magazine with the inserts. 

The roster rotated: an Estee Lauder scent appeared around Christmas (when they promoted their seasonal gift boxes available at Macy’s), Clinque Happy defined Seventeen and DKNY seemingly loved Lucky. Each season ushered in a new aroma, varying in one or two drops of synthetic compound from last year’s scent. But the promise for renewal remained. Peeling open the flap, the reader altered the width of the page, changed the scent of the magazine and integrated themselves into the message. Rubbing their wrist against four inches of condensed perfume, the magazine and advertisement imprinted themselves onto the reader’s body. The temptation was to sniff it straight away, but the smell developed while reading about Karl Lagerfeld’s latest creative endeavour. When the smell had settled itself properly into the pores, it remained a facsimile of the true scent. A trip to the perfume counter and chat with the salesperson was required to determine whether the aroma nestled in the pages of Marie Claire matched what sprayed from the bottle.

Touch, transformation, smell, visuals, conversation: perfume ads represent the immersive sensorial experience print advertising and media offers readers. This immersion is compelling in an age when every brand manipulates similar visual cues for communicating their brand. Successful digital ads naturalize themselves into the environment, hiding between real posts to produce no more emotion in the viewer than a non-sponsored image. Digital media produces alienation, not immersion.

Print immerses with more than perfume and beauty product samples. Nike’s inserts city-specific running maps, including recommendations for refuelling stops and tips for form. Immersive print ads aren’t limited to inserts. Play-doh’s self-mocking ads re-situate the viewer’s perception of their physical alienation and the company’s ability to bridge the gap between image and material. Apple’s multi-page watch ads translates their seamless aesthetic for the magazine’s form, incorporating the spine into their design. Sharpie juxtaposes a rumpled page with color and known cultural icons to create a visual joke that implies the product’s role in the material creative process . Whereas a digital ad needs to be crafted to invisibility and naturalization, the print’s physical presence retains communicative strength.

If print media is dead, then sensory stimulation seems doomed to becoming ever more homogenized and alienating. Digital media provides simple, visual images that are momentarily arresting before the viewer becomes distracted by a more shocking message. These messages might be impressive, but they fade away as quickly as they came. Print might require more time to produce, but it has a longer life cycle in readers’ lives and minds. What advertisers need is a way to present their message that takes into account the inherent diversity and characteristics of media consumption. Long live the perfume ad.  

What the Anna G Anniversary Corkscrew Teaches us about Good Design

Alessi’s Anna G Anniversary Corkscrew (or AGAC) is ostentatious. That’s the point. You must stop and think before grabbing its oversized head, hidden behind a mask that slides on top but doesn’t stay in place. Stop, think. Good design asks us to revise our interactions with everyday objects by liberating us from mindless routines and offering space for reflection.

Founded in 1921, Alessi is an Italian company that combines smart design with industrial production. Until the 1950s, Alessi produced mainly small wood and metal objects for the home. As the economy industrialized and consumerism too hold, design became an essential tool to stimulate consumer desire. Form may have followed function, but form was an increasingly integral to function. In 1955 when Ettore Alessi decided to introduce product collaborations with external designers, he asserted the industrial object’s potential to be an artistic product. Italians mitigated society’s transition to consumerism by uniting an object’s aesthetic value with its use value.

It’s not immediately clear how AGAC manifests this union or if it does at all. The corkscrew jars with Alessi’s sleek spoons and clever kettles. The garish plastic body and oversized magnet mask seems to combine a day of the dead mask with a vintage doily. You turn away. And then you turn back. Because Alessi’s AGAC isn’t a bottle opener but an invitation to celebrate daily life.

I discovered the AGAC as a sales associate at Eataly. They were released to commemorate the twenty years of the corkscrew’s manufacture. AGAC cost $150. We received four and sold them all, including the sample. This surprises people who don’t believe in spending more than $20 on a single kitchen tool. But when you buy an AGAC you don’t purchase just a kitchen tool. You buy an invitation to the party, a conversation piece, a moment of reflection.

I was carrying the floor sample while searching for a colleague. You have to hold the AGAC upright so the head doesn’t fall off. I circled the store once, twice, three times. My face pinched into a mask of annoyance. I’m trying to do something important, I fumed, where are they! I walked by a mirror, caught a glimpse of myself and laughed. In my hand was a $150 corkscrew with an expression that suspiciously resembled my own strained scowl. How could I be angry? For a moment, I saw from afar. I’d become so invested in my invented drama, I forgot myself and my surroundings. AGAC brought me back.

Good design forces us to step outside of ourselves and re-examine our situation. Good design doesn’t make acts thoughtless. Absentmindedness is a flaw of bad design. Think about the duvet you toss over your bed or the shoelaces you notice only when they turn black. Whereas bad design reminds us of its presence through its flaws, good design directs us to reconsider our routine. Think about your buttery smooth leather wallet or the magazine whose pages feel pleasantly weighty in your hands. These moments invite us to reconnect with our actions and thereby cultivate a more mindful attitude. Good design finds reason to celebrate the ordinary.

The Enchanting Universe of the Experimental Cocktail Club

The exteriors are unmarked. Except for the line. It may just be two or three people, perhaps a few more on Friday evening, but savvy drinkers know to arrive early to secure their seat at the Experimental Cocktail Club. Started in Paris in 2007, this mini-chain — it has locations in New York and London — presents itself as an exclusive speakeasy. But this isn’t a Gatsby gaudy stage set. The Experimental Cocktail Club exudes an effortless style that allows both mixed drink aficionados and novices to assimilate subdued modern glamour for the duration of their drink.

Regardless of the specific city, ECC — as christened by their loyal customers — locates their bars in similar neighborhoods. They sit on the border of an ethnic enclave and hip area: the Marais in Paris; Chinatown/Lower East Side in New York; and Chinatown/Soho in London. The central location lets visitors feign exploration while lingering in their stomping ground.

This combination of the novel and familiar permeates the ECC universe. That seemingly unmarked entrance? Look closer; it’s a sign. In Pairs light glimmers behind blacks velvet curtains; in New York there’s a not-quite hidden restaurant hygiene grade; in London the door is worn down. Although these markings could appear incidental — people do knock on the door in London, the bar must display a hygiene rating in New York — the ECC atmosphere use these markings as tools that build a community in opposition to standard bars. Since their facades don’t resemble a regular restaurant, the visitor experiments when approaching the door. They ring an anonymous doorbell; they clank an unidentified knocker. Through experimentation cocktail lovers enter into a club of people that share an attitude toward drinking.

Once inside, the discomfort of experimentation disappears and the club enchants its members. From the tables and lighting to the drinks and the music, the Experimental Cocktail Club reproduces their bars like a global corporation, while maintaining an exclusive ambiance. Each location retains the same bar, the same low seats, the same glassware and the same beats. Low lighting hides the particulars, leaving a spectral glow of oriental opulence. Trendy tea lights on private tables and at the bar cast an orange-y glow over the space. Subtle variations keep the cookie cutter structure novel. Reorganizations of the proportions position New York’s as a cool American bar, London’s as an updated British gentleman’s club, and Paris’ as an artist’s haunt. The frame is streamlined, but the content is altered.

 Thus, it won’t shock visitors to multiple locations that each outpost’s menu riffs on a limited group of basics. There’s the drink with bourbon and an egg white; the one with rum, a spice and lemon or lime; there’s the sweet one with cognac. These aren’t Starbucks’ globalized offerings. The drinks mix the local accent into the set cocktails. New Yorkers get tropical, tiki inspired drinks, while Londoners sip updated classics. These variations serve the visitor an interpretation of the city in a glass. Entering an ECC incorporates the drinker into a club where cultural differences are experienced as novel twists on a familiar structure, emphasizing experimentation’s potential to bridge differences.

This hybrid of familiar and novel naturalizes the speakeasy gimmick. Although the hidden door satisfies an imagined prohibition nostalgia, drinking at ECC doesn’t feel contrived. Once inside, the speakeasy script finishes. Apart from a reservation, there’s no code word required to order a drink. There’s no insider knowledge needed to decipher the menu. It’s experimental. The bartenders don’t invent, but present riffs the familiar. ECC experiments with new accents in their different locations and invites their customers to do the same. It’s a club. And the drink’s just happen to be well-made. It’s a cocktail.

On The Myth of Being a Regular Customer

Meet the regular: he always sits at the table by the window. He has a jaunty moustache. Wait: is it really him? Doesn’t he usually carry a canvas tote? The regular is fiction. Although the character woos us in literature and entertains us on television, the contemporary cityscape reduces them to myth through diverse options, hectic schedules and social obligations antagonistic to the development of routine.

TV dramas and sitcoms love regulars. Week after week Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer dined at Monks; Sabrina the Teenage Witch went to The Slicery. But such hangouts weren’t portrayed as active, pleasant choices. Elaine loved the big salad, but the show’s memorable food moments happened in operating theatres and soup kiosks. Sabrina lamented The Slicery’s perpetually sticky arcade games. These places collected friends, but they didn’t collect good times. 

Creating a habitual spot and attendant group of regulars is a social and spatial concern for producers. Script writers are restricted in their ability to introduce new characters. Thus the regulars must be friends. A complicated background story accompanies one-off appearances. For shows shot in a studio, having a single hub for characters to meet provides an economic solution for set builders. When shows break out of the studio, the regular spot transforms into an endless rotation of social spaces. TV constructed the regular and reflects their demise.

If the regular has left the screen, where have they gone? Blogs and magazines locate them at the bar. They depict an economic relationship; regulars go where they get discounted alcohol. Establishing a friendship with the barman lets the habitual customer stay solvent. After a few weeks of tipping heavily for a Manhattan, the barman will knock off a few cents off the bill and reach for top-shelf Rye. This drink-dispensing therapist is a universal trope: Italy boasts the barista, America the bartender, and Britain the chatty tearoom owner.

Unlike TV, which ignores the benefits regulars enjoy, these articles extol them. The habitual customer enters into a social capital network that ensures a convivial meal is only as far as their spot. This meal will be quality; their friends’ presence implicitly vouches good service, a lively atmosphere and a vibrant history. Through locating the regular in reality, magazines and blogs reinforce the myths surrounding them.

Being a regular is a romantic proposition. It signals an unchanging landscape in cities where nice cafes struggle to survive greedy landlords. The regular believes they’ll always enjoy the best table and feels assured having a reliable spot to suggest for meetings. As social media extends the realm of local to Google map’s scrolling borders, being a regular focuses the world around a specific spot. Goodbye debilitating choice. Goodbye postmodern city life. The regular enjoys this drink in this place at this time. Being a regular is a coping device for modern life. We’re not coping well.